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This article tackles the allegorical mode of Russian realism using Ivan Turgenev's novella Spring Torrents (1872) and its political implications as a case study. We argue that this deeply intimate story of love and moral fall can be read in the context of the "social imaginary" which, in Turgenev's manner, is wrapped in motives and symbols correlating to "revolutionary" and "reactionary" discourses. The article shows how this projection emerges in the narration without direct political discourse by means of allegory. It is this mode that ties together the intimate and the natural and gives Turgenev's novellas a political dimension, which is obvious in his novels but latent in the novellas, thus opening them up to various sociological interpretations. Employing various theoretical readings of allegory, we explain how allegory is built upon and around the subjectivity of Turgenev's characters, implying concepts such as sexuality and the unconscious that had not yet been coined as such but directly influenced future European fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tom Tykwer's 2010 film, 3, is reviewed. Hanna and Simon are the couple at the center of 3's story, which is based in modern Berlin. Bonded by nearly 20 years of life together, Hanna and Simon have reached a plateau in their relationship. Although their connection is still strong and loving, the lessening of sexual passion is definitely taking its toll on their intimacy. First Hanna and then Simon meet Adam and begin independent romantic relationships with him. Life, birth, and death are themes that are woven throughout the film. The three main characters come together at the end to forge a new experiment apart from the mundane and stifling long-term coupledom that is expected of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an encomiac poetic sequence about his house in Austria entitled ‘Thanksgiving for a Habitat’, the Anglo-American poet W. H. Auden described it as a space that simultaneously fosters intimacy and secures a sacrosanct privacy. Auden shifts in ‘Thanksgiving for a Habitat’ from writing various forms of paysage moralisé – psychological, symbolic, or allegorical landscapes – to composing a maison moralisée. What the house symbolizes and allows is the civilizing act of creating a common world. This is the domestic ethos that the sequence presents as an over-determined alternative to several ‘problems’: the loneliness of the middle-aged Auden; the sentimentalized Freudian family romance; and the apocalyptic fears of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hanif Kureishi's works contain numerous autobiographical features and are peopled with characters that often bear a striking similarity not only to the author himself but also to his relatives and ex-partners. Intimacy (1998) is conceived as the dramatic confessional monologue of a middle-aged man about to leave his partner and two children to live with a younger woman, an experience the author himself had not long before its publication. This article deals with the novella in the broader context of the author's late 1990s texts in order to distinguish between autobiographic narrative and writing from experience, showing that the latter rather than the former is employed in these works. Supported by Kureishi's defence of the book as a literary game it also argues that rather than providing a hateful perspective on femininity the novella offers a variation on one of the author's idiosyncrasies - a hopeful belief in love and humanity. The article further attempts to explore the possibilities and limitations of the genre of confessional narrative as exemplified in Intimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is reprinted from the November/December 1947 issue of the journal. It provides a poetry criticism for the works of Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. The author outlines Mistral's use of the themes of childhood and the relationship between mother and son. The lack of European influence on her poetry is also noted.

The article reviews the book "Rendez-vous," by Christine Angot.