Byzantine culture in the Russian humanities - Sergei Averintsev 4012-059C-OG

The classes have been designed as the first part of a cycle aiming to familiarize Polish students with the profiles and achievements of great Russian scholars of the 20th century. The names of M. Bakhtin or Y. Lotman are relatively well known in Poland, while A. Losev, M. Gasparov, A. Mikhailov are almost completely unknown. Sergei Averintsev, who is the subject of just one book in Polish, deserves much greater interest. His treatises, encyclopedia entries, popular articles and poetic works could be extremely inspiring for young scholars of the humanities.
Averintsev's major and lesser works lend topicality to themes that are seemingly unimportant for contemporary times, they link issues from different eras into a certain whole. Following the advice of his teacher, Mikhail Bakhtin, Averintsev encourages his readers to join a dialogue held in "great time". The titles of Averintsev's works are sometimes confusing, a sign of the times in which he lived, the result of an intricate though successful game with the censorship of a totalitarian state. Beside a lecture presenting the materials, we will reflect on different ways of practicing the humanities and analyze Averintsev's texts, those already translated into Polish and those translated specially for this course.
Of necessity, the basic reading will be the only book by Averintsev published in Polish: Awierincew S., Na skrzyżowaniu tradycji: (szkice o literaturze i kulturze wczesnobizantyjskiej); przeł. i opatrzyła wstępem oraz notami bibliograficznymi D.Ulicka, Warszawa, PIW, 1988. - 423 s. [Averintsev S., At the Crossroads of Tradition: (Essays on Early Byzantine Literature and Culture); transl., introduction and bibliographic notes by D. Ulicka, Warszawa, PIW, 1988. - 423 p.]. Other reading will depend on the group's linguistic skills. Knowledge of Russian is not required, though welcome.