No 2 (2023)

The article deals with the transition of Russian literature to the literature of Modern Times. The sources under examination include plays and travelogues.

The Tale of the Galician-Volhynian chronicle about the capture of Kyiv by Batu in 1240, with its detailed descriptions, has attracted historians for centuries, firmly occupying the niche of the main source for the reconstruction of the event. In parallel, many details of the Tale were proved to be based on the borrowings from the Byzantine literature. The goal of the article is to show that the identified features of the work of the Old Russian chronicler were prompted by the significance of Kyiv for his contemporaries as the sacred center of the «Russian land», and the literary parallels of the Tale do not seem to deprive it of its properties of a historical source.

The autographs of many of Pushkin’s critical notes published in Literaturnaya Gazeta have not been preserved, and those that are available are mainly derived from the so-called First Arzrum Notebook. A number of perceptive observations concerning the dating of these articles were made by Ya. L. Levkovich, who prepared the description of this notebook. However, a more subtle look at the content of the notes and the exact time of publication, has helped us to further clarify their dating.

The article deals with an obscure almanac Daguerreotype (1842) by Nestor Kukolnik. His publishing strategy is reconstructed through the analysis of the contents of the almanac and the features of its publication, as well as through the examination of Kukolnik’s diaries, introduced into scientific circulation for the first time; based on several critical reviews of the Daguerreotype, conclusions regarding the place of the almanac in the literary field of the 1840s are drawn.

The article deals with the main formation sources of the allegorical image of the wolf-nihilist Mark Volokhov in the novel The Precipice by I. A. Goncharov. Citing the correspondence between L. N. Maykov and his university comrades, we can assume that, apart from the mythopoetic, literary-philosophical and typological reasons, Mark can be likened to a predator due to certain biographical prerequisites.

A century ago, A. I. Beletski, a young Soviet scholar from Kharkov, published a couple of I. S. Turgenev’s letters to E. Ja. Kolbasin of 5 (17) and 9 (21) August 1879. The letters suggest that Turgenev received a certain «correspondence» from his long-time friend. The message excited Turgenev so much that he immediately decided to translate it into French and have it published in a prominent Parisian newspaper. What was the «correspondence» in question? There is no definite answer to the question. The present article seeks to identify the missing link in this story, examining the French and Russian press of 1879.

The article traces the textual history of A. A. Blok’s poetic sketch «Rejoicing and Spinning.», which was previously erroneously treated as a completed work. The final argument in resolving the issue is the previously unknown letter from A. A. Blok to D. N. Friedberg, discovered in the V. N. Orlov Foundation at RGALI, which is being introduced into the academic circulation for the first time. The circumstances of the two Symbolist poets’ cooperation in V. A. Ternavtsev’s educational and enlightenment project, the publication of textbooks for the primary classes of the «folk schools», are revealed. The analysis of the microtext — the notes and marginalia adjacent to the sketch — is instrumental for tracing the influence of V. Bryusov’s folklore stylizations on Blok’s early experiments with the form of «childish» or «naive» poetry.

Dealing with the mythmaking problem in Russian Symbolism, the article analyses transferring of the images and motifs of the novel The Dark Night from the book Posolon’ (1907) by A. M. Remizov into the realities of the most famous locus of Symbolist culture, Vyach. Ivanov’s The Tower. The author deciphers its latent meanings and offers a new reading of the Remizov’s tale as a work that attempts to replicate the mythological folk mentality. The additional meanings are derived from Remizov’s rare autographs, in the subtext of which there is an episode associated with M. V. Sabashnikova. The true story from the literary life of the Symbolist circle helps to fill the gaps in the biographies of the two personalities, and reflects the significant literary and cultural phenomena of the early 20th century.

In the years 1907-1908, against the background of the confrontation between the leading Symbolist periodicals and the writers’ disputes in Moscow and St. Petersburg regarding the «mystical Anarchism», the poets consolidated around the Vesy (Libra) magazine (Yu. Baltrusaitis, Andrei Bely, V. Hoffmann, A. Kursinsky, M. Likiardopulo, Ellis); they were looking for alternative publishing solutions that would incorporate related creative spheres. The article deals with the history of their collaboration with the magazine Russkii Artist (The Russian Artist), edited by P. N. Mamontov.

The article deals with I. Babel’s stories My First Fee and The Reference as the two equally important texts featuring the same plot; neither of them was published in the author’s lifetime. It turns out that The Reference was created later than My First Fee. This, in particular, is confirmed by the author’s dating of the texts of the stories. The earliest source of the story The Reference, a typescript entitled My First Fee, is published here as the appendix and thus introduced into the academic circulation.

The article details the background of translation and perception of B. Pasternak’s legacy in China. The translation of B. Pasternak’s works can be divided into three stages: limited circulation of the translations before 1980s, when B. Pasternak gave a narrow circle of Chinese youth a unique opportunity to get acquainted with the outside world; official translations and publications of his works in the last 20 years of the 20th century, when B. Pasternak, and especially his novel Doctor Zhivago, were read throughout the country; B. Pasternak as a modern classic in the new century, with his poems being translated and reinterpreted by the modern Chinese poets. The work of B. Pasternak is also analyzed in the context of the self-development of the Chinese writers and poets.

[Review:] A Dostoevskii Companion: Texts and Contexts / Eds. Katherine Bowers, Connor Doak, and Kate Holland. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2018. 535 p. («Cultural Syllabus»).

[Review:] Asadowski Konstantin. Russisch-deutsche Verflechtungen. Ausgewählte Beiträge zur Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts / Hrsg. von Fedor Poljakov und Natalia Bakshi. [Paderborn:] Brill Fink, 2022. 389 S.

Meeting Abstract

Meeting Abstract