The marine science fiction works of Alexander Belyaev, a pioneer of Soviet science fiction, are centered around a unique cluster of ecological imagery—"the deep sea," "the giant ship," and "the shipwreck"—constructing a narrative system that intertwines the cultural DNA of Slavic frozen soil civilization, Soviet techno-utopian fantasies, and the sacred natural worldview of Eastern Orthodoxy. Through the lens of ecocriticism and literary geography, this paper systematically analyzes the progressive relationship and ecological metaphors of these three core images in Belyaev’s works, revealing how they transcend the unidimensional framework of "technological eulogy" prevalent in Soviet-era interpretations to form a distinctly Slavic ecological critique, one imbued with both warning and religious aesthetic dimensions.

The "deep sea" imagery embodies the Slavic people’s complex emotions toward the "old-world wilderness." On one hand, the deep sea is envisioned as a "liquid primordial forest," extending the resource-rich symbolism of terrestrial woodlands; on the other, its perilous environment—populated by monstrous creatures and sunken wreckage—reflects humanity’s awe and fear of nature. This duality stems from the frozen soil civilization tradition, shaped by Russia’s geographical determinism, where nature is simultaneously a lifeline and a threat—a "dualistic wilderness worship."

The "giant ship," as a materialized symbol of technological myth, lays bare the violent encroachment of anthropocentrism upon marine ecosystems. In works such as *The Amphibian Man*, the ship’s clamor, pollution, and predatory acts are reinterpreted through the estranged perspective of the non-human protagonist, Ichthyander, as "acoustic colonization" and "optical pollution," highlighting technology’s transgression of natural order. This imagery poignantly captures the rupture between traditional frozen soil civilization and Soviet industrial fervor, as well as the collective silence on ecological ethics during this period.

The "shipwreck" imagery culminates in a religiously-inflected natural judgment, deconstructing techno-utopianism. Drawing on the visual narrative of tempestuous seascapes in Orthodox art (e.g., *The Ninth Wave*), Belyaev portrays the shipwreck island as an altar to nature’s divine power: human technological creations (ships) decay and vanish before the timeless ocean, while nature, through wildfires and currents, enacts its "agential rebellion" to punish civilization. This imagery not only perpetuates the Slavic ecological view of "nature as divine law" but also establishes a Russian ecological warning mechanism distinct from the Western "garden-machine" paradigm.

Belyaev’s ecological narrative exhibits a polyphonic structure: superficially a hymn to technological progress, yet deeply a lament for civilizational self-destruction. This duality arises from the inherent tension between the author’s theological heritage and his role as a Soviet sci-fi pioneer. Ultimately, through the variations of "deep sea–giant ship–shipwreck," Belyaev exposes the eternal peril of technological rationality overstepping natural limits. His ecological narrative not only serves as a literary lens for understanding ideological struggles in the Soviet era but also, with its uniquely Slavic religious reverence for nature, offers ethical insights transcending anthropocentrism for addressing contemporary global environmental crises.

This paper engages with Sisir Kumar Das’s seminal contribution to comparative literature through a close reading of selected essays from Indian Ode to the West Wind: Studies in Literary Encounters. It demonstrates how Das’s literary perspective embodies an inter-literary approach, highlighting encounters between Western and Indian traditions and advocating a cross-cultural framework for understanding literary transactions across diverse texts. Das’s critical praxis is marked by a deep awareness of the epistemological frameworks and methodological paradigms that inform literary studies across cultural, linguistic, and disciplinary borders. Central to his scholarship is the interrogation of monocultural literary historiography and the assertion of a dialogic, inter-literary model grounded in reciprocity and mutual illumination. By traversing the five thematic divisions of the book — reception, influence, cross-cultural hermeneutics, travel writing, popular literature, and comparative inquiry — this paper foregrounds Das’s call for a polycentric and border-crossing literary discourse. Through his emphasis on literary transactions between Indian and Western traditions, Das challenges the unidirectional flow of influence and articulates a contrapuntal methodology that disrupts hegemonic literary hierarchies. His conceptualization of ‘literary encounters’ functions within a transnational and translational framework, where texts migrate, adapt, and resonate across cultural and linguistic frontiers. This paper argues that Das’s vision of comparativism is both corrective and generative—corrective in its critique of parochialism, and generative in its projection of a globally networked literary consciousness. By theorizing literature as a dynamic site of negotiation rather than fixed identity, Das reconfigures the conceptual terrain of Indian literary studies and expands the comparative horizon to accommodate plural affiliations, multilingual crossings, and dialogic affiliations. Ultimately, this paper repositions Das’s comparative poetics as a vital intervention in both national literary discourse and the broader praxis of global comparative literature, offering a model for thinking through literature as a practice of crossing borders—geographic, linguistic, and conceptual.

Vietnam is one of the countries in the East Asia cultural circle that is most deeply influenced by Chinese Confucian culture. There are many folk tales in China and Vietnam, which contain rich Confucianism. Taking the "fish-dragon" story complexes of the two countries as examples, they both emphasize the Confucianism of collectivism, striving for progress, unity, individual social responsibility and sense of mission, fairness and justice, integrity, etc., reflecting the strong cultural influence of Confucianism and the high acceptance of Chinese Confucian culture by Vietnamese traditional culture. The influence of Chinese Confucianism on Chinese and Vietnamese "fish-dragon" story complexes is mainly reflected in the specific plots and the symbolic meaning of the stories such as the Chinese "Carps Leaping through the Dragon Gate" allusion and the legend of the "Fish Leaping Through the Wu Gate" in Vietnam. Due to the fact that the social circumstances of China and Vietnam are not exactly same, these valuable Confucian thoughts were integrated into the local society of Vietnam, and the process of "localization" occurred, which was expressed in folk stories and other art forms, thus playing a pivotal role in promoting the evolution of Chinese and Vietnamese culture and civilization, and profoundly affecting the social development of the two countries, especially the Civil Service Examination System of China and Vietnam.