основни

Before examining the most general propositions that Isaac Passy formulates and defends in his book on tragedy, I will dwell on that chapter of it which bears the title "Aristotle's Dispute with Plato". Let me be allowed to begin with a topic that I myself have been developing for years. I will justify my desire with one more circumstance: my research, although unmentioned in Passy, ​​has had an impact on his book, and for me it is not without importance how this happened. I want to assure the reader that I will not abuse his patience and will not devote the initial part of my article exclusively to personal authorial interests. Because, on the other hand, the chapter in question reveals some important features that characterize Passy's book in general.

Two recent international congresses - the Belgrade Congress of the (international) Association for the Comparative History of Literature (ASIL), 1967, and the Prague Sixth International Congress of Slavists, 1968, updated the issues of comparative literary studies, confronted us with the need to clarify our attitude to this science unequivocally. At the Belgrade Congress, a proposal was adopted to prepare a collective work on the comparative history of European literatures, the Literary Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences received powers from ASIL and the obligation to coordinate the work scientifically and administratively, and in Budapest the first volume of a series of collections that examine preliminary problems is already being prepared for publication. At the Prague Congress, the Soviet delegation launched the idea of ​​writing a collective history of Slavic literatures, it seems to me, without achieving much success. Although each of the undertakings is independent in organizational terms, there is an internal connection between them. The success of the first undertaking should prompt us to develop the second: how Slavic literatures will be represented in the comparative history of European literatures will depend on the objectivity and scientific merits of Slavic literary history.