It is proved that one of V. Nabokov’s most famous novels Invitation to a Beheading is a fictional narrative with a complicated interaction of various types of story‑telling instances. There are persons of a non‑diegetic narrator, who incorporates the features of an all‑knowing and a limited teller, explicated with a different degree of definiteness; a diegetic narrator – the main hero, – who is thinking his state over, is talking to himself, is writing a letter to his wife; a non‑personalized narrator, similar to the abstract narrator in a set of traits; and a hardly definable narrator, who is telling the text story addressing the main hero in the second person and who can be identified as a non‑diegetic or a diegetic narrator talking to himself. The article defines the correlation of these indefinitely outlined story‑telling instances (convergence, binding, juxtaposition), ones identified with difficulty. Conducted is a lingual differentiation of the mentioned story‑tellers’ expression, mainly, via deictic elements (mostly, pronouns); addresses; the “historical past” and “historical present” tenses; predicates that mark the participants’ diegesis or non‑diegesis as well as various intonational and stylistic means (the expression of evaluation, diminutive or augmentative noun forms and others). It is considered perspective to attempt to classify the lingual means of expressing the types of story‑telling instances in different belles‑lettres genres, to analyze the semantic and pragmatic reasons for forming the “story” and the “discourse” of a narrative. In general, the problem of the linguistic “dimension” of narratives is a perspective direction of investigation where there can be revealed semantic and pragmatic categories of production and perception of any type of narration, firstly, belles‑lettres – fictional by dint of its deep nature.

In this article I try to think about the terms “stories” and “ontologies” in Ewa Domańska’s works: Mikrohistorie. Spotkania w międzyświatach (1999; 2005), Historie niekonwencjonalne (2006), Historia egzystencjonalna (2012), Historia ratownicza (2014) and I try to compare my conclusions with her latest publication. I am interested in the turning point in her thoughts, giving up the theory and methodology of history and switching to the ontology of the dead body. In order to do this I look through these publications and indicate which threads could help work out the excellent, innovative, and fresh conception of Nekros. The main part of the article is a detailed discussion of this. In the other part, I consider how to interpret more traditionally a past description like “cultural memory” and whether Domańska’s works accidentally invalidate them. I suggest a short statement of Marcin Napiórkowski’s and Stephen Marks’ works to show closer (Marks) and further (Napiórkowski) parallels or completely different presentations of similar problems.

Japanese literature has been known in Poland at least since the end of the 19th century, when first translations were made of Japanese prose and poetry (although via English or other languages). I consider the first translation made directly from Japanese into Polish language a short story by Kikuchi Kan, entitled Tusz ('Ink'), published in April of 1939, in a monthly magazine "Echoes from Far East." In the same magazine we can find also many examples of stories and poetry written not by Japanese, but by Polish authors, fascinated with Japan and its culture. Works by the same authors: Maria Juszkiewiczowa, Aleksander Janowski, Antoni Kora, Leon Rygier, Remigjusz Kwiatkowski and others were published also in other newspapers and magazines, and as separate novel books. While some short mentions about the earliest translations may be found in books on Japanese literature and contacts between Poland and Japan, novels, stories and poems written originally by Polish authors inspired by Japan are now all but forgotten. Hardly any of them were published again after World War II and they are not to be found in regular libraries. In the present paper I concentrate on the forgotten jewels of Polish prose (and to some extent poetry and drama) based on Japanese themes, published before World War II.

The paper takes under scrutiny Michael Köhlmeier’s novel Abendland, which portrays the history of the twentieth century in the form of oral family stories based on the biography of the main protagonist of the work, Carl Jacob Candoris, written down by his godson Sebastian Lukasser. Authentic historical events and actual characters are intermingled with fictitious figures and events. The article poses questions on individual and collective memory as well as the significance of oral history in the life of an individual.

The article characterises the artistic language of Vasily Shukshin, laying special emphasis on the role of dialectisms in his short stories, as well as in literature in general. However, the main focus of the article is to point out and analyse the types of equivalents that were used in the Polish renditions by the following translators: I. Bajkowska, Z. Gadzinianka, J. Landesberg, K. Latoniowa, T. G. Lipszyc, E. Niepokólczycka, J. Olszowska, I. Piotrowska, B. Reszko, D. Rymsza‑Zalewska, I. Szpak, A. Wolnicka. Translators utilise various translation equivalents but they do not fully recreate the qualities of the original units. Translators predominantly tend to convey the denotative meaning. As a result translations lose the local flavour of a Siberian village.

The article is concerned with methods of translating V. Shukshin’s occasionalisms into English. The study material has been extracted from translations done by A. Bromfield, K.M. Cook, R. Daglish, W.G. Fiedorow, J. Givens, G. Gutsche, G.A. Hosking, D. Illiffe, L. Michael, H. Smith, N. Ward. Based on the analysis of the material the following means of conveying V. Shukshin’s occasionalisms can be distinguished: translation by substitution, translation by means modifying idiomatic expressions, applying semantic calquing, using a descriptive method to recreate occasionalisms, as well as lexical and grammatical transformations. Two of them can be considered fully equivalent ways of recreating the writer’s occasionalisms (translation by means modifying idiomatic expressions, semantic calquing), the rest, however, should be regarded as only partially accurate.

The study of inner speech is appropriate to carry out in the plane of interaction of various scientific studies. This approach allows us to analyze the specifics of functioning of inner speech at the level of artistic discourse. Such phenomenon as inner speech presents not only the protagonist's outlook, their emotional state or social aspects, but also demonstrates, under the influence of extraordinary factors, the intensity of affect expression in the addresser's speech activity. Inner speech in an emotive situation is marked by peculiar characteristics, which indicates its unique multidimensional essence.

In the present paper, we extend previous work on the speech act of threatening by including in our analysis a corpus of crime fiction based on 700 English books, a characteristic trait of which are threats. By including data derived from written narratives in prose, imaginary rather than factual, this research aims to identify potential differences between fictional and authentic threats, thus contributing to the general panorama of this speech act. Here we concentrate on a single construction, known as disjunctive conditional or pseudo‑imperative, which is analysed in terms of parameters employed in previous studies and modified to meet the purposes on the present research.

This study analyzed the role of PERFORM 3D in the preliminary evaluation of seismic performance of engineering structures. Firstly, PERFORM 3D was briefly introduced, and its material constitutive model and basic model were analyzed. Then, taking a high-rise building project in Yulin, Shaanxi, China, as an example, PERFORM 3D was used to evaluate its seismic performance. After establishing the engineering model, five seismic waves were selected for simulation. The results showed that the maximum values of X-axis inter-story displacement angle and Y-axis displacement angle were 1/500 and 1/360 respectively, which were far less than the standard limit; the overall energy dissipation was good, the damping was small, the overall deformation was good, and the seismic performance was also good. In conclusion, PERFORM 3D has a good performance in the preliminary evaluation of seismic performance of engineering, and it is worth further promotion and application.

The control of structural vibrations due to ground motion can be done by the installation of a passive, active, and hybrid base isolation system. The primary function of the base isolator is to support the superstructure and provide huge horizontal flexibility and a long period of vibration. In this paper, a special HRDB base isolator is made from natural rubber with special elastic property and hardness. This base isolator is designed to support gravity loads of two-story RC building. The experimental hysteresis loop of this isolator is validated with analytical modeling hysteresis loop using Hysteresis program. The Bouc hysteresis rule was chosen as a model the hysteresis loop, and it is similar to experimental hysteresis loops. Later, a single bay two-story RC frame with a base isolation system was modeled using Ruaumoko 2D program subjected to three levels of earthquake excitations. After analyzing this frame under the 1994 Pacoima Dam Earthquake, the 1995 Kobe Earthquake and the 1940 El-Centro 1940 Earthquake. The numerical results show that this isolator is quite efficient in reducing the damage of structural and non-structural elements of the structure through minimizing inter-story drift, lateral displacement, and story acceleration. Therefore, this special HRDB based isolator is recommended to be used for low rise and medium-rise building in seismic regions.

The article analyzes the works of two novelists from Sniatyn (Ivano‐Frankivsk) Vasyl Stefanyk and Vasyl Tkachuk for special (similar and distinctive) features in their national vision of the image of the land, which for Ukrainians as an ethnic group that has shaped its agrarian culture for centuries, remains the greatest value, holiness, a symbol of spiritual stability. Therefore, this image in Ukrainian culture is very deep, has archetypal features, because the land for the Ukrainian people was not only evidence of prosperity and wealth, but also a moral imperative and this is widely reflected in folklore and the cultural heritage of Ukrainians, including literature. In the Carpathian and Transcarpathian mountain regions, the peasant’s attitude to the land was aggravated by the fact that there were few small plots ‘won’ from the mountains and adapted for cultivation. That is why the life of peasants is marked by a special complexity during a long historical period and of social changes. So, the first emigration of Ukrainians began who since the end of the 18th century sought happiness in the fertile lands of the Canadian prairies. V. Stefanyk and V. Tkachuk grew up and formed as writers in one region, for both the life of the Carpathian peasants, which they portrayed with a deep psychology, became the main theme of their works. There are many parallels in their short stories, but the most complete for both artists is the image of the earth, which has become the subject of our comparative studies.

The design of new investments with underground floors in the downtown urban fabric calls for determining its impact on existing, often historic, neighboring facilities. The article presents the results of own research on 3D spatial arrangement numerical modeling of this type of investment. The scope of the research includes the analysis of neighboring buildings (including historic buildings), construction of the 3D numerical model, and calibration of the subsoil model taking into account the actual results of geodetic measurements. Own research as well as the completed housing development complex in Poland, downtown Warsaw, including data from project design and implementation documentation serve as the basis for research and analysis. As a result of said research and analysis, it was found that 3D computational models allow mapping of actual impacts within the designed new buildings and neighboring buildings, and as consequence - after appropriate calibration - a good reflection of soil displacements in the area of the planned investment. The knowledge of the anticipated values of soil displacements related to erecting new buildings is necessary at the design and implementation stages to ensure safety in all phases of works of existing buildings.

This essay is a new reading of Jan Barszczewski's collection of stories Szlachcic Zawalnia czyli Białoruś w fantastycznych opowiadaniach [Nobleman Zawalnia, or Belarus in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination] in the context of the 19th-century reception of the Arabian Nights and, more importantly, as an example of a genre which combines the oral and the literary traditions to express the identity-fostering experience of living at a time of upheaval and epochal change. This approach has little interest in revisiting the connections between Barszczewski's tales and Belorussian folklore. Instead, it places his stories in their direct historical context, i.e. a series of famines in Belarus the first decades of the 19th century, and the significance of 1816, the year in which the action of the stories is set. It is no coincidence that it was also the Year without a Summer, a catastrophic global climate anomaly, which made a great impact on the Romantic imagination.

This article argues that the short story ‘Ave Patria, morituri te salutant’, first published in a book of Stanisław Reymont's short stories in 1907, shows an overwhelming influence of the expressionist aesthetic. It is conspicuously present in the story's stripped-down sentences, spiked with highly emotive (animal) imagery, and cast in lines that move inexorably towards the catastrophic end. It manifests itself in the disillusioned, sarcastic tone which the writer uses to take up old certainties like military glory and patriotism. Finally, it brings to the fore the conflict between man and nature, man and the universe, the individual and the crowd. As all of those elements are evidently part of the narrative and dramatic structure of ‘Ave Patria…’, it should be viewed as an exemplification of Reymont's drift from realism to modernism (preexpressionism). That transition is also signalized by the tripartite structure of the story. The divisions are worked out with the precision of a master craftsman assembling ‘an epic clock’ (to borrow a telling phrase from Kazimierz Wyka's analysis of the structure of The Peasants), or a painter designing a triptych. The article pursues the latter analogy further by discussing the impressionist technique of framing and cutting off the dispensable elements of the picture.

The article examines the presentation of wars, uprisings, and life in the Polish army in children's magazines in the years immediately preceding World War II. The analysis, primarily focused on Poranek. Tygodnik dla starszych dzieci [ The Morning — A Weekly for Older Children] (1937–1939) looks into the contexts of the publication of that content.

This article is an attempt to identify the main themes in the literary work of Zygmunt Haupt, a Polish writer, journalist and painter, who emigrated to the United States in the aftermath of World War II. His writings show a keen awareness of the issue of absence/presence and the related problems of memory traits, identity and literary representation. Drawing on the psychoanalytical criticism of Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva and the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, this reading of Haupt’s fi ction, especially his short stories (whose collected edition was published in 2007 under the title The Basque Devil), is a critical reassessment of his work. As a storyteller he excels in the depiction of scenes of terror, desire and the uncanny. The article argues Haupt’s work represents not only a remarkable literary achievement but also offers an interesting study case for critics whose approach is founded on literary theory, psychoanalysis and anthropology.

The paper presents how the pluralism of relations in the early Muslim sources concerning the memory the Qādisiyya narrative is problematic for reconstructing the event of the battle by modern scholars. Specific studies of the early Islamic sources concerning the Battle of Al-Qādisiyya lead to the conclusion that it is certainly easier to interpret the functions of particular topoi than to determinate the facts about the Maʿrakat al-Qādisiyya. The main, unsolved questions related to the Qādisiyyah narrative are the uncertainty of the date of the battle, the size of the Muslim and Persian forces that fought in the Maʿrakat al-Qādisiyya as well as some contradictions and different presentations of the battle. Scholars have undertaken many attempts to make the conflicting accounts more coherent but in fact, they only made some speculations or, at the best, case scenario – explanations made on the basis of limited and uncertain evidence. For these reasons, the paper contains the suggestion to avoid an undue emphasis on the importance of the Maʿrakat al-Qādisiyya and to replace this term by the more general expression “the Mesopotamian campaign 634–637.” The critical evaluation of the Muslim sources leads to a more general description of the Battle of Al-Qādisiyya as an element of the campaign (stage 634–637) whose unambiguous evaluation is impossible.