This article follows the publication of the essay «Hello? A requiem for the telephone» by Martin Kohan in the Russian magazine «Inostrannaya literatura»3 and anticipates the expected release of Miguel Vitagliano’s book «Engine room» in August of 2025. Although it is an interview with two distinguished voices of contemporary Argentine literature, those were originally two conversations carried out separately and at two different moments, which eventually could not but complement each other due to the affinity of the interviewees’ reflections on today’s world marked by the omnipresence of machines (smartphones, computers). Martín Kohan and Miguel Vitagliano, both novelists, winners of the Konex Literature Awards (2024), academics and literary critics, have been bound by close ties of friendship since, two decades ago, they founded Tantalia, an independent publishing house in Buenos Aires. The interview includes fragments of the texts that present another facet of their work, namely, the critical essay.

Five members of the Second Russian Expedition to South America (1914–1915) spent most of their time there in remote and inaccessible areas. They dreamed of knowing life in the greatest power of its manifestations, in the richness and greatness of forms, colors of the world of plants and animals; they longed to know the origins of the development of human spiritual life getting into contact with primitive tribes in remote areas of the tropical jungle. Naturalists Ivan D. Strelnikov and Nikolai P. Tanasiychuk stayed in Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay for almost 20 months, sometimes in difficult and life-threatening conditions, conducted scientific research, collecting exhibits for Russian museums. For more than eight months, they worked at the Puerto Bertoni science station in Paraguay. Human survival and adaptation to tropical conditions is a constant topic in their diaries. In Russia, they promoted the continuation of the scientific study of South America. The circumstances of the First World War and the Russian revolution did not allow them to fully process and publish all the results of their ethnographic, zoological and botanical research. Later Ivan D. Strelnikov in the manuscript «In the forests of Brazil» expressed his impressions and delight at the world of the virgin nature of the South American continent. Strelnikov’s diaries, which his family recently sent to the Kunstkamera of St. Petersburg, are published for the first time.

Space and time are the most organic coordinates of culture; therefore a culture of any country or region can be studied both in time, i.e. historically, and in space, i.e. geographically. The analysis of national geocultural systems has become the object of research by scientists who study cultural geography. The evolution of this branch of geography in Russia has not been easy, which makes its new wave even more remarkable: the range of research is becoming ever wider and includes the ethnic diversity of countries and peoples, sacred geography, linguistic and regional studies, the geography of art and literature. Taking into account the achievements of foreign cultural geographers and using the example of national reality, Russian researchers have already created their own methodology, which is applicable to the cases of foreign countries. The Ibero-American countries have a plethora of components to study precisely through the lens of culture and geography. Naturally, many historical and archaeological monuments, architectural objects, natural and cultural landscapes both in the Iberian Peninsula and in Latin America are included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. The idiosyncrasy of the Hispanic and Latin American culture, its characteristics, the features that the Iberian area and Latin America have in common and those that set them apart from each other literally call for research through the prism of geography. The present article aims to showcase the diversity inherent to the cultural and geographical landscapes of Ibero-America. In addition to mentioning sacred places, architectural objects, and other elements of cultural infrastructure, there is a special emphasis on the reflection of geographical space in art and the perception of the image of a landscape in literature. The synthesis of such components helps to get a generalized understanding of cultural and geographical regional studies.

The meaning of the word landscape has gradually changed over time, to the point that today it has become a complex and polysemic concept, whose interpretation depends on the context, subject area and authors’ point of view. Landscape is understood to be the interconnection of space, time and society with their perception and expression in culture, infused in visible and invisible, material and immaterial ways. The natural landscape gives rise to the cultural landscape, which in turn includes the material, humanized, constructed and designed landscape, as well as the imagined, interpreted and depicted one. Spain should be experienced through its landscapes and the sea. Mountains, hills, deserts and wastelands, continental and marine waters, mild and harsh climate, countryside, towns and cities are all full of memories, feelings and meanings that hold the keys to unlocking Spain’s identity. It is impossible to imagine and experience Spain without the sea: it is part of its spatial (geographical), temporal (historical) and cultural life. El Ser español — «being Spanish» is always marked by the sea. The sea is an entire cultural heritage where particular attitudes, feelings and circumstances interact. The relevance of this heritage is such that it is necessary to propose a new specific Spanish term for a «seascape» — maresaje. The Spanish landscape has its own languages and different interpretations. Travelers, geographers, poets, artists, writers and many others have found their creative destiny in landscape, building a personal and artistic relationship with their vision of space and nature. Landscape is a notebook in which the path of a society is written and rewritten; it is a historical totalizer, but also a compass for charting a course, preserving historical memory, and protecting national identity.

«Allegories of the Five Senses», a series of paintings by Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder held in the Prado Museum, is the result of artistic cooperation and co-creation of two great painters of 17th century and an example of synesthesia in Flemish painting. The works of Rubens and Brueghel portray the five senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch) through allegorical female figures set in landscapes and surrounded by multiple still lifes. Flower garlands, being symbols of sensory experience, serve not only as decorative elements but also as links between physical sensation and its visual representation. The article explores the complexity and conceptual integrity of these works, as well as their visual richness within the kunstkammer («cabinet of curiosities» / «wonder-rooms») genre, which depicted cabinets filled with symbols of knowledge and represented sensory experience. The research is based on iconographic and stylistic analysis and draws on lesser-known sources, including exhibition catalogues and materials from archives. This approach allows for a new interpretation of the interaction between figures, garland elements, and surrounding objects. Allegorical and floral motifs typical of 17th-century Flemish and Spanish art gained a new meaning in the context of the Counter-Reformation. These works were part of the cultural policy of Archdukes Albert VII (1598–1621) and Isabella Clara Eugenia (1598–1633), governors of the Spanish Netherlands: art was a tool of political and ideological strategy of the state and sought to convey the image of prosperity and welfare of Flanders as a territory under the dominion of the Spanish Crown.

This paper discusses the concept of avant-garde in arts in two aspects. On the one hand, avant-garde does not always manifest itself as a homogeneous, programmatic and «conscious» movement that defies the long-established processes in the artistic system, which is already part of the canonical concept of avant-garde. On the other hand, the avant-garde can be defined through the prism of cases that, in an episodic way, contradict the ways in which art had been understood in Argentina until then. At the same time, the works studied were part of a debate on the avant-garde that was taking place at the same time as the national system of modern painting was being developed. Two works by Pío (Alberto) Collivadino, painted in 1924 and 1935 respectively, and another by Florencio Molina Campos painted in 1949, show that these artists set the picture plane with a view to creating a total work of art that overcomes the divisions that existed in the art at the time. In the case of Pío Collivadino, he relied on his relationship with the arts, namely painting and performing arts, and with crafts, whereas Florencio Molina Campos sought to combine painting, literature, cinema and audiovisual arts in his work. In this sense, it is argued that these works contribute to the constitution of the national avant-garde.

The article focuses on the history of Brazilian–Icelandic coffee trade in the first half of the 20th century by putting the issue into a broader context of globalization and transatlantic trade. Based on official trade reports and newspapers of the time, it explores not only the economic dimension of the issue, but also its cultural aspects to answer the following question: what was the role of Brazil — the leading coffee producer and supplier in 1900–1940 — in the formation of a unique Icelandic coffee culture? To begin with, the article finds the reciprocal influence of trade and culture, as coffee brought new forms of social interaction and new social conflicts to Iceland, whose inhabitants witnessed new phenomena in their daily lives. Besides, it reveals new links in the transatlantic trade system, as Brazil and Iceland, both previously having been on the margins of the postcolonial trade system, gradually established direct trade ties which, in turn, led to more mutually beneficial sales conditions. Moreover, the increasing bilateral trade caused a spillover of economic cooperation into culture, as new images — both literally and figuratively — of Brazil spread among Icelandic intellectuals and photo enthusiasts. The article also presents new datasets on annual imports of unroasted coffee into Iceland in 1912–1945, on average annual prices of coffee imports into Iceland in 1914–1945, and on shares of leading coffee importers in the Icelandic market — all these can be used for further research into the issue of transatlantic coffee trade.

The famous Chinese proverb It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice is a predicative universal autosemantic metaphorical aphorism. Elevated by Deng Xiaoping to the level of a model for transforming the economy and society, it is now widely used in media discourse as a powerful tool for achieving cognitive, communicative and pragmatic goals by skillfully adapting to the contextual environment. It seems relevant to consider how this metaphor functions as a text-forming tool using examples from modern Spanish-language analytical publications. In the analyzed materials, the text-forming function of a metaphor is revealed through its deployment, through a number of metaphorically used words representing a group of thematically related lexical units: the phrase cat of Deng Xiaoping, which is used metaphorically, associatively serves as the basis for developing the content of other words that convey a metaphorical image. In a passage of particular length or in an entire text, in the course of describing real events or actions, the metaphor of the cat unfolds in the form of interspersed links of the thematic chain, which serve as components of the basic metaphor or thematically related lexical units, becoming a kind of metaphorical statement and characterization of actions and circumstances, summarizing the meaning of the text and acting as the author’s subjective personal assessment. In each case, the links of the chain are lexically and grammatically extended. The cats themselves can also be characters of the narrative, denoting, like the heroes of animal fables, certain power structures or subjects of economic activity. The results of the study are of considerable interest, since the original metaphorical microtext is an effective text-forming resource that contributes to the actualization of metaphorical and pragmatic meanings.

There is an ever-increasing collision between two global processes that determine the way the modern world is, namely globalization and the «rebellion of exceptions», i.e., greater emphasis on particular features of people’s communities of various types, levels and scales, from small territorial associations to civilizations). Therefore, it is of paramount importance that we reconsider certain phenomena, which are vital both for the further development of people’s ideas about themselves and the world around them, and for determining the main directions of further activity of homo sapiens: globalization, human rights, and the manifestation of rationality in different civilizations. The article by M. Fernández Calzada is one of those very rare works that meet this demand. The author updates the legacy of F. de Vitoria and the Salamanca School, which is essential for providing a new outlook on the universal dimension of human history. That outlook is very different from the type of universalism whose content is determined by the formal rationality of Western origin and character, which embodied the «spirit of capitalism» (M. Weber). It is important to stress that the worldview of F. de Vitoria and his associates is «human-centric», yet at the same time, these Catholic thinkers completely rejected ultra-individualism based on the aforementioned type of ratio, which allows for direct parallels with the personalistic tradition of Russian philosophy. M. Fernández Calzada’s analysis of F. de Vitoria’s approach towards human rights helps to reconsider the issue, as we face the task of universalizing the concept of human rights and overcoming the tendency, which is still dominant in the global information space, towards limiting the interpretation of anthropological problems to the framework of the Western political and legal tradition. M. Fernández Calzada’s article points out that the Salamanca School and above all the works of F. de Vitoria represent a qualitatively different type of human rationality as compared to formal rationality. It is a rationality of values, which overcame the antagonism of faith and rationality and achieved their synergy. Finally, the «anthropological optimism» identified by the researcher as one of the defining qualities of the current she is studying, evokes direct associations with the «anthropological maximalism» of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which allows us to conclude that certain currents in the Ibero-Catholic and Eastern Christian traditions are essentially close.