Russkaâ literatura

The article analyzes the descriptions of «the unknowns» in the medieval Russian literature, beginning with those dwelling in the «countries of the East», in «Shem’s Domain», and those from the faraway lands, Persia, India, Northern Europe and Siberia. There’s a brief introduction to the literary history of the works on these countries ( The Tale of Aphroditian, The Story of the Irania Star, A Journey Beyond the Three Seas by Afanasy Nikitin, the Tale «on the unknown peoples from the countries of the East» etc.). Besides, the description of the quaint anthropomorphic and anthropozoomorphic human-like creatures, dwelling in the remote parts of the inhabited world and having a peculiar appearance and/or lifestyle is considered. These characters were migrated into the Russian letters from the translated versions of The Chronographs, Alexandria, The Tale of the Indian Kingdom . The first original Russian work that mentions the human monsters was the Tale «on the unknown peoples from the countries of the East» that contains both real and mythological facts on the Samoyed people. The article highlights the textual parallels in the description of the exotic nations between the Tale «on the unknown peoples», the Tale of the Indian Kingdom and the other medieval Russian works and the folklore data; it lists the most suggestive types of such creatures: blemmia , the humans with a mouth on the crown of their head, monomers and the Blessed Peoples. Apparently, the source for the descriptions of the exotic people, that later became rather widespread, was the folklore of the Samoyeds. The approach is shared by Academician M. P. Alexeev, who believed it was «plausible» that most of the data from the Tale «on the unknown peoples from the countries of the East» represented «the recording of isolated links of Northern epic cycles». The legends of the blessed (happy) peoples are amid those «isolated links».

The article outlines prospective expansion of the traditional approaches to the studies of the 19 th century Russian literature, focusing on social aspects. The full understanding of literature of this period can only be gained through the integration of historical, literary and sociological methods, so that literature would be studied not only as an aesthetic phenomenon, but as a social and political institution as well. Traditional literary scholarship, based on the studies of the legacy of the «first-rate» writers, does not seem to offer the full picture of the 19 th century literature, ignoring «minor» authors and a wide range of social and cultural contexts. The article calls for innovative approaches to the social history of Russian literature and for the emergence of new, data-driven approaches to literary studies.

This article examines M. S. Shaginyan’s pre-Revolutionary poetry. Her books First Meetings (1909) and Orientalia (1913–1922) are considered in their sociocultural context, tracing the paramount importance of the gender and nationality of the author for the books’ reception and the evolution of this reception under the influence of political and ideological factors.

The article offers extensive historical and literary commentary on the parody by a renowned critic A. A. Izmailov Gordik and His Sons (Not from Mickiewicz) (1905). The parody was a response to the «literary» activities of the «plagiarizer extraordinary», Ivan Kallistratovich Gordik. Archival data and press publications are used to offer a detailed reconstruction of the audacious literary purloining of the novels by I. I. Yasinsky, G. A. Khrushchov-Sokolnikov, as well as to consider the other proven and plausible cases of illegal appropriation of texts in the early 20 th century. The article gives a detailed account of the reception of the scandals and exposures linked to I. Gordik’s name. The data from the Literary Fund and evidence of the contemporaries helped to prove the existence of two brothers, full namesakes: one was a plagiarizer, shamelessly using the works of his brother, the other one was a diligent amateur writer whose literary activities were cut short after the 1903 scandal. The fact makes this disastrous story unique in the history of the Russian literature.

The article analyzes the evolution of A. V. Vampilov’s dramaturgy in contrast to the principles of the official Soviet aesthetics. These principles were manifested in the playwriting textbooks of the Vampilov era, as well as in the articles and speeches by theater critics. The article shows that with each new play it’s more and more of a challenge to incorporate Vampilov’s work into the framework of traditional theater. Furthermore, the author’s deliberate deviations from accepted dramatic conventions become more apparent.

The article examines the editorial policy of the Theatrical Bulletin of the All-Union Copyright Agency ( Plays from the USSR , At the Theater , Soviet Theater , 1977–1985). It focuses on the recurrent sections of the Bulletin and on VAAP playwrights’ community. These playwrights represented the USSR abroad. We traced the interaction between the late and early Soviet drama and analyzed the partnership network of the Agency, focusing on the demand for the specific plays of the ‘long seventies’.

The article offers the first publication of the letters of E. A. Protasova to V. A. Zhukovsky, related to his first proposal to her daughter in November 1807. The letters are instrumental for determining the date of this event, the previous, erroneous, dating being 1805. They provide insights into the contents of Zhukovsky’s unpreserved letters where he offers his hand in marriage to Masha Protasova, and into his response to her mother’s refusal. The article is based on ca. twenty previously unpublished letters of M. A. Protasova to Zhukovsky, 1802–1807, and analyzes the dynamics of their relations. It touches on the Russian marriage legislation before and after 1917, as well as on the public sentiments that point to the rejection of the type of marital union that the poet aspired to (between an uncle and his niece).

The report quotes the three autographs by Ernest Renan (1823–1892), an outstanding French scholar in humanities, from the Department of Manuscripts, Pushkinskij Dom; Renan had multiple friends and acquaintances amid the Russian intellectuals. Those implied here were E. E. Trubetskaya, the hostess of a well-known salon in Paris, and P. D. Boborykin, a notorious writer and memoirist.

The article reconstructs an episode from the history of preparing the first collected works of K. N. Leontiev. The main «characters» of the study are the publisher of this collection, Archpriest Josef Fudel, and literary critic Boris Griftsov, whose creative career was at its very beginning. In 1912, both were united by deep interest in Leontiev’s work, which culminated for Griftsov in writing an article about the fate of the philosopher. The semantic center of the small study is the publication of an unknown letter from Fudel (1912).

The article examines marginalia that were not previously introduced into academic circulation, made by N. Ya. Mandelstam in the 1957 of the works by Baratynsky that belonged to her. Both individual underlining and copious notes in the margins are examined in detail, which, on the one hand, comment on the reception of Baratynsky in the poetry of O. E. Mandelstam, and on the other hand, restore some biographical realities associated with the fates of N. Ya. and O. E. Mandelstam.

The article is yet another contribution to studying the activities of the World Literature Studio, founded in the 1970s by the Russian Literature journal. The authors turn to the ephemeral chronological framework (June–August 1919), that plays, however, a crucial part in the philological scholarship, the history of Russian sinology and the creative biographies of Vasily Mikhailovich Alekseev (1881–1951), a key figure in the history of the emergence of the Russian classical Chinese studies, and N. S. Gumilev (1886–1921), one of the prominent employees of the Gorky’s publishing house, the period of the Studio of Chinese Poetry. The article examines the stages of emergence of the World Literature Studio, the place of the Chinese Poetry Studio in it, V. M. Alekseev’s approaches to teaching and its essence. The Appendix features documents that are important for at least three reasons: they reproduce the voice of the greatest Russian sinologist of the 20 th century; the subject matter itself, especially the translations by the Studio participants, reflects the contemporary approaches to the translation of classical Chinese poetry and narrow down the circle of probable poetic sources of Chinese imagery in the poetic culture of the Art Nouveau era.

The article cites and explores the new archival data concerning the doctors from Kharms’s inner circle. The data help to verify the popular memoirs of A. Poret and disclaim those of them that depict M. A. Chapot (Dr. Chapot) as a semi-insane ignoramus. The data that is introduced to the academic community negates the concept of Kharms’s dislike for the «official medicine» prompted by the memoirs, and helps to establish the literary models that the memoirists used as their guidelines.

[Review:] Acta Slavica Estonica XIX. Trudy po russkoi i slavianskoi filologii. Literaturovedenie XIII / Otv. red. Liubov’ Kiseleva. Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 2024. 506 s.

The article systematizes the results of the intertextual research of 2014–2024 in the works by V. V. Nabokov. The historical and comparative analysis reinforced by linguistical and textological methods is deemed to be the most productive way to analyze Nabokov’s allusions and reminiscences. The researchers’ interpretations of Nabokov’s intertextual techniques depend on their ideas concerning the identification of the implicit author.