No 4 (2024)

In the article, the Bible is treated as a component of the Old Russian literary tradition. Particular attention is focused on the functional uses of the Bible in Old Rus’, the texts of the biblical periphery, interpretation of biblical texts, and the peculiarity of the biblical poetics. The first Slavic editions of biblical books are analyzed alongside with the main trends of biblical humanism. The observations are introduced into the context of South Slavic and Western European traditions.

A number of researchers have repeatedly commented on the autobiographical nature of I. A. Goncharov’s prose, tracing figurative and quotation parallels in his epistolary and literary texts. Nevertheless, in certain cases, his letters and works feature typological rather than reminiscent connections, engaging with external sources, e. g. borrowing ready-made romantic formulas of the secular novelas of the 1830s. Samples of such borrowings are the recurring motifs of love-electricity, passion-ailment, magnetic/hypnotic gaze and unequal love. Therefore, this article is an attempt to offer a more comprehensive understanding of the emergence of magnetic analogies in the Romantic fiction of the early 19^th century, as well as to analyze similar typological parallels in Goncharov’s epistolary legacy.

The «chapter from the novel» sent by I. A. Goncharov to E. V. Tolstaya under the title Pour et Contre is traditionally considered in publishing and research as one of his letters. However, despite its inherent autobiographical features, the text follows the principles of artistic convention, which is reflected in its genre, compositional and stylistic features.

The article offers the reflections on M. N. Virolainen’s Russian Romanticism as a Problem and On the Genres of the Golden Age Lyrical Poetry, that offer a new perspective on the poetry of the Pushkin era, and touches upon a number of points put forward therein. The central issue under discussion is the attribution of poetological thinking of the first third of the 19^th century to the genre thinking that informs the epoch of Classicism. Even though some of the arguments put forward by M. N. Virolainen in favor of this seem valid, she considers the use by the poets of the Golden Age of elements of the Classical genres in the new contexts while preserving the memory of their origin to be a property of new poetry, rather than Classicism, and, accordingly, the underlying thinking is not a genre one, but new.

The article offers a detailed reconstruction of the writing and publishing contexts of Pushkin’s poem «From Hafiz» («Do not be Seized by the Glory of the Battle…»), written during the poet’s visit to the military zone in the course of the Russo-Turkish War and first published shortly after his return. By examining the transformations of the peritext from the autograph to the first publication, the author highlights the poem’s «domestic semantics» concealed behind its Oriental poetics, offers a more specific interpretation of the mystifying title used for the first publication (From Hafiz), and outlines the significance of this text for the formation of Pushkin’s autobiographical narrative of the 1830s.

The article deals with the issue of the genesis of the anti-nihilistic discourse in the Russian literature of the 19th century. With the discourse chosen as the subject matter of the research, the question of the genesis of the anti-nihilistic line in the Russian literature is approached innovatively: its origins are associated with the tradition of depicting the Voltairian characters, primarily in the 18th century drama.

The article presents new documents related to the publication of N. M. Minsky’s book Poems (1887): the poet’s correspondence with A. M. Skabichevsky, the author of the scandalous review; excerpts from the newspaper and magazine polemics, speeches in defense of the poet by A. Volynsky and N. K. Mikhailovsky; Minsky’s letter to Mikhailovsky (1888), «a programmatic» text that captures the changes in the literary situation — the transition from positivism and utilitarianism of the «sixties» to the aestheticism and idealism of the early Symbolists.

F. Sologub’s essay The Mongolian Paradox, written in 1904, is presented to the academic community. Failing to publish it during the Russo-Japanese War, Sologub went back to it during the First World War, as late as 1916. The text went through some amendments at that time. Minimal editing, while preserving the main body and the paradoxical nature of the ideas expressed, added to the essay’s actuality and turned it into a response to current historical events.

The publication features the correspondence between A. A. Izmailov and I. I. Yasinsky (1917). It focuses on Yasinsky’s collaboration with the Petrogradsky Listok newspaper: Izmailov took over as its editor in April 1916 and, along with the other well-known writers and journalists, enlisted Yasinsky to become one of the contributors. The correspondence traces the evolution of Yasinsky’s position between February and October 1917 and shows how his attitude to the events in Russia was adjusted in his book of memoirs The Novel of My Life.

The article, based on the research in the personal archives of N. K. Gudzij (Department of Manuscripts, Russian State Library) and the Russian Archive in Leeds (UK), traces the impact of I. A. Bunin’s work on his life and academic legacy. The data help to restore the history of Gudzij’s correspondence with V. N. Bunina and L. F. Zurov, as well as to clarify the circumstances of the emergence of the scholar’s unpublished article I. A. Bunin’s The Life of Arseniev in the Soviet Editions (excerpts from A. K. Baboreko’s letters to Gudzij are published). The full text of the article in its final version is published in the Appendix, the discrepancies with its original version are outlined in the footnotes.

The article examines a neglected translation of the Letter of a Certain Sicilian by P. J. Marana, stored in the Panin Archive (RGADA). It is suggested that this text represents a revised version of A. D. Kantemir’s translation of this work.

The note discusses the «Mailbox» section of two St. Petersburg humor magazines, Satirikon and New Satirikon. It is suggested that the source of the title of Mikhail Bulgakov’s unfinished work, that eventually received the title Theatrical Novel, but was called Notes of a Dead Man by the author, could have been a letter from the Editor-in-Chief of New Satirikon Arkady Averchenko. This letter, published in the «Mailbox» section of this magazine, mentions the title of a short story «Notes of a Dead Man» by an unknown author, rejected by New Satirikon.

[Review:] Annenkova E. I. O Gogole i istoriko-literaturnom kontekste. SPb.: Izdatel’stvo «Rostok», 2023. 536 s.

[Review:] Understanding Bakhtin, Understanding Modernism / Ed. by P. Birgy. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024. 291 p. (Bloomsbury Series on Understanding Philosophy, Understanding Modernism).