Volume 17, 2019 year

 There still remain some “obscure passages” in the “Tale of Igor’s Campaign” that have no convincing interpretation. However, even those interpretations that seemed quite clear, sometimes need a revision. The article aims at specifying the meaning of the phrase “biebryan sleeve”, present in Yaroslavna’s Lament. Upon completion of the research work by N. A. Meshchersky, it was commonly accepted that “biebryan” means here ‘made of byssus, silk’. Recently, however, this idea as well as the very presence of the word “biebryan” in the original text of the Tale was called into question. It is necessary to find out whether this doubt is well-grounded. The meaning of the word “rukav” (sleeve) did not raise doubts among researchers. It was accepted that it means a sleeve of a female dress. To correlate this meaning with the context the word is used in, researchers had to presume that Yaroslavna wiped clean Igor’s bleeding wounds with a sleeve of a long sleeve shirt. It is arguable, however, that this is exactly a sleeve and not any other part of a female dress. To understand the meaning of the phrase one needs to take into account research works on the history of the Byzantine and Old Russian dress, the phrase berchat sleeve found in bylinas, and Serbian songs about warriors (“yunatski”) where female characters “wipe clean” and bandage wounds of heroes.

Keywords: “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”, Yaroslavna’s Lament, biebryan sleeve, berchat sleeve, bylinas, Serbian songs about warriors (“yunatski”), byssus, silk, Byzantine female dress, Russian aristocratic dress in 11th and 12th centuries, long sleeve shirt, poetics

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The Tale of Christ’s Godson is a literary landmark of the 17th century, studied insufficiently. It is based on a legendary international fairytale plot about a trip of God’s godson to the heavens, where he becomes a “deputy God” and holds court over sinners (Comparative Index of Plots. Eastern-Slavic Fairy Tale, 800). A textological analysis of over 30 manuscript copies of the Tale of the 17th—19th centuries allowed us to identify its five editions. The article studies genre features of these editions, discovers ties of the Tale with hagiographic, apocryphic and visionary literature as well as with edificatory tales from patericons and “Great Mirror”. At the same time, the Tale can be seen as an early sample of the Russian “Easter tale” (the event takes place at Easter) and a parable. It contains a deep philosophical sense: a way to God, to the Godfather, is only possible through the knowledge of love and mercy toward Man as the supreme values. In order to interpret the Tale, the author of the article draws other texts from manuscript codices.

Keywords: the Old Russian literature, genre, Easter tale, parable, fairy tale, legend, wandering plots, manuscript codices

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The article is devoted to the study of the eschatological context of Gogol’s comedy “The Inspector General”. The famous play is put in touch with the prevailing mysticism of the previous Alexandrian epoch, which maintained its influence during the following reign. The role of the works of Western mysticism in shaping an “apocalyptic” perception by contemporaries of the current events of Russian and world history is emphasized. The influence of the religious-fiction works of the German cultist and mystic I. G. Jung-Stilling, popular at that time in Russia, is studied. The significance of Stilling’s “prophecies” about the end of the world in 1836 for the creation of the “Inspector General” (completed in the same year) is appraised, as well as the role of Stilling’s “Loging for the Fatherland” in formation of the apocalyptic overtones of the comedy and the author’s interpretation of its plot in Gogol’s later work “The Endgame of the Inspector General”. The problem of understanding the spiritual content of the eschatological aspirations of the first half of the 19th century is posed. Gogol’s ambivalent attitude to the theosophical heritage of the German writer (whose works were banned in Russia in 1825) is compared with a positive assessment of Stilling’s “prophetic” writings by Gogol’s contemporary St. righteous Theodosius of Balti (canonized as a local saint of the Odessa diocese in 2009).

Keywords: Gogol, biography, creativity, interpretation, hermeneutics, concept, eschatology, spiritual heritage

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The subject of the study resides in certain aspects of a creative history of Lermontov’s poem “Demon” in their accordance with the whole idea of the author. The emphasis of the article is placed on Demon’s song “as soon as the night with veil her…”, Tamara’s portrait given in the 6th and the 8th editions, an episode of salvation of her soul. The poem “When the flavescent fields swing in the wind…” is seen as a contrasting allusion to the seductive song of the Demon. God’s all-presence in the poem is contrasted to the conformity and limitations of existence and the demon’s promises. The comparison of the Demon’s song with the poem allows revealing an artistic and conceptual discrepancy between the editions of 1838 (the 6th) and of 1839 (the 8th). The Demon’s song appeared in the 6th edition of the poem made it necessary to change the ending of the plot, which was proposed in the 8th edition. As a result, the change of the ending of the plot conditioned the essencial editing of the portrait of Tamara in the 8th edition compared to that one in the 6th edition. The passion of the character was replaced by the image of an infant soul the beauty of which is seen through the earthly image of Tamara, as an example of the created perfection. The poem of M. Yu. Lermontov “Angel” (1831) used for the analysis of the Demon, the periphrasis of which is most clearly seen in the ending of the 8th edition, is considered as a part of the poem’s conception. It is concluded that the 8th edition reflects in a comprehensive and consistent way the worldview of M. Yu. Lermontov, his belief in the omnibenevolecence of the Creator and the Supreme intelligence of the universe.

Keywords: the angel, architectonics of the text, a spiritual reality, the Tamara’s portrait, the poem “Demon”'s edition

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 The article reveals the repercussions of Pushkin’s poem “The Bronze Horseman” in the works of F. M. Dostoevsky. In a St. Petersburg poem “The Double” the paraphrase is seen in the chronotope (November, St. Petersburg, a paving bollard), in the risk of inundation and the manifestation of extra personal power personalized by Dostoevsky in the double instead of the statue. Similar to Pushkin’s Eugene, Golyadkin challenges an oppressive power and gets through the catastrophe of madness. In contrast to Pushkin, in Dostoevsky’s poem the destruction comes from both a hostile world and from an ambitious personality of the hero. Dostoevsky interpreted Pushkin’s masterpiece as an existential subject about the abandon of man, who has doubts on the stability of the world existence, by the God. This motif manifests itself first in the “Poor Folk” and is developed later in “The Double”, “Mr. Prokharchin”, “A Weak Heart” where the fear of life and uncertainty leads to a catastrophe. A metaphysic meaning of the so called “seeing on Neva” is analyzed which goes from one Dostoevsky’s writing to another. Along with the mentioned ones, there are also “Petersburg Dreams in Verse and Prose”, “Crime and Punishment”, “A Raw Youth”. The Petersburg text of Dostoevsky is shaped due to “The Bronze Horseman” on the edge of symbolism related to the theme of the biblical Iyov and phantasmagoria of a ghost-town. The poem about Peter and Eugene became the part of the Pushkin code of Russian literature and got a chance to enhance a semantic capacity during the following epochs. Thus, Dostoevsky discloses in the prototext more and more resources implementing them in his own writings. So, the hypothesis of A. L. Bem—S. G. Bocharov about the existence of a genetic memory of literature is confirmed.

Keywords: Pushkin, “The Bronze Horseman”, Dostoevsky, genesis of creative process, abandon of man by the God, metaphysics of the Petersburg text

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The article is aimed at finding the meeting points between the world view of F. M. Dostoevsky and the philosophico-historical heritage of A. S. Khomyakov. Dostoevsky’s texts contain a lot of direct and indirect references at the works of the mastermind of Slavophilism; the writer was acquainted with his philosophico-historical and theological writings as well as the poems. For instance, the article makes an analysis and comparison of two closely related questions in social and political essays of Dostoevsky and Khomyakov: the focus on Russian culture compared with the European one and contrasting Orthodoxy with Catholicism. Proceeding from two core themes of Dostoevsky essays, namely, the identification of Russian civilization against the European one and the criticism of Catholicism, the given research taking into consideration existing significant similarities with Khomyakov’s works seeks to specify some terms and stylistic techniques through the use of which these ideas become more accurate in Dostoevsky’s essays, particularly in “A Writer’s Diary”.

Keywords: soil, national spirit, culture, enlightenment, Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Oriental question, Slavic question

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The article analyses the lyrics of Polonsky’s of the 1860s—1890s from the viewpoint of an artistic consciousness of the author found in his writings. The biographic context applied in the research permits to comment on formation of the value world of the intended poet against the background of the provincial noble culture of the 1820s—1830s. The poet’s writings chosen for the analysis are grouped into two formal content-based categories. The first one have the lyrics that express the contradiction felt by the poet between a “naïve” belief nurtured in his childhood and the Russian atheism of the second half of the 19th Century (“The Mad”, “To One of the Tired”, “Where a cliffy sea cost is...”, “In Memory of V. M. Garshin”, “Stanzas”). At a motif and image level of the analysis in the first group of poems there is distinguished an image of an idealist hero characterized by the motifs of emotional exhaustion, disease, loneliness. A religious aspect of the poet’s consciousness is expressed in allusions to the image of a Biblical prophet rejected by a musty society. There is seen “humanization” of the motifs of Christian love and transfiguration. The second category contains the poems pointing at the truth of a canonic orthodoxy affirmed by the poet (“A dying man”, “At the Temple”, “The Vesper-Bell”, “The Golden Calf”, “The 15th of July of 1888”). The generalized-parabolic character of the given writings is asserted. The motifs of penitence, salvation of the soul, prayers, as well as the topos of an orthodox temple and symbols of the vesper-bell are revealed. The analysis of the poems of the second category allows making a conclusion about formation in the poet’s lyrics of the idea of the orthodox historiosophy, that is, of the dependence of social existence of society on its spiritual condition. This idea is related to the motifs of worshiping the Golden Calf, the Doomsday, and the Revelation. The conducted research has found out the determinacy of the poet’s artistic consciousness by an outside influence and its conditionality by the dynamics of his inner, spiritual movement. In an axiological aspect the selected writings by Polonsky disclose the rootedness of the artistic consciousness of the poet in Russian orthodox tradition.

Keywords: the lyrics of Ya. P. Polonsky, creative personality, religious consciousness, orthodox culture, poetics, biblical subject, motif, image, value world of the author

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The article is dedicated to a comprehensive study of the problem of a revolution and tradition in Leo Tolstoy's epic novel “War and peace”. The chosen problem is regarded in the context of a comprehensive analysis of the paintings of the “bogucharovsky revolt” — the only episode of the “War and peace”, touching upon the theme of popular unrest. The “Bogucharovsky revolt” is one of the spectacular examples of Tolstoy's art of typification, as it appears from the study of the historical material for the first time introduced into the scientific turnover. At the same time, the poetic peculiarities of the episode are conditioned by a religious and philosophical position of the writer. All the minor elements of the poetics of the “War and peace” are perfectly reduced by the artist to this ideological center. Accordingly, an eschatological aspect inherent in the rebellion and self-proclamation theme in Russian history and literature is projected by the writer onto the author's personal conflict of natural life and civilization. Thus, the author’s idea of the contraposition of the national consent of 1812 with the civil unrest trends of the 1860s at the level of the poetics of the episode and the novel, as a whole, follows a rebellious spirit of that time. Between the “War and peace” and the later “Tolstoy revolution” there is a deep continuity.

Keywords: Tolstoy, Pushkin, bogucharovsky revolt, poetics, composition, scene, episode, Pugachyov, Napoleon

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This article deals with the study of the author’s changes of semantics and functions of achromatic colors in Tolstoy’s late artistic prose. The study tested that in Tolstoy’s national stories coloratives with the root “black” are asymbolic and mainly perform the descriptive function. In Tolstoy’s stories of the 1880s these coloratives acquire symbolic meaning and foreshadow the atrocity of the character. In the finale of “Resurrection,” the disturbing semantics of black color gives way to the life-affirming semantics. In “Hadji Murd” when depicting the appearance of characters, black color performs the characterizing function. In Tolstoy’s national stories dark color has the descriptive function, but in “Where Love is, There God is Also” it fulfills the prospective one. In Tolstoy’s stories of the 1880s coloratives with the root “dark” “predict” the sad fate of people who ignored the commandments of God. At the beginning of “Resurrection”, darkness is a metaphor of immoral life, at the end of the novel the colorative with the root “dark” inspires hope for the renewal of life. In “Hadji Murd” coloratives with the root “dark” have the descriptive function. In “What Men Live by” white color recreates the divine nature of the Angel. In Tolstoy’s stories of the 1880s the white color has negative semantics and the characterizing function. In “Resurrection” when recreating images of nature, white color has positive semantics and the prospective function. In portrait painting in “Hadji Murd” white color has negative semantics and the characterizing function. In “What Men Live by” the light is symbolic and is associated with the realization of God’s commandments. In “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” the light gives the character the joy of merging with the world. In “Resurrection” the light acquires a symbolic meaning, “leading” Nekhlyudov to reading the Gospel. In “Hadji Murd” light “reveals” the unreadiness of people to the enlightenment. In “Resurrection”, unlike other Tolstoy’s works, the colorative code is presented with its characterizing and prospective coloratives’ functions. The evolution of the coloratives’ using demonstrates Tolstoy’s intense search for a new artistic system that adequately reflects his attitude to the world.

Keywords: achromatic coloratives, coloratives’ shades, occasional semantics of coloratives, coloratives’functions, color painting, colorative code, Tolstoy’s late artistic prose

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The article is dedicated to the study of the addressing as a communicative artistic phenomenon in the poetic works of I. A. Bunin, the revealing of genre, thematic and stylistic features of the addressing. In his poetry Bunin keeps on following the classical tradition and the preservation of the addressed poems in their genre certainty provided that the “timeless addressing” dominates. The addressing is found in a title complex and the genre of works. In the works of Bunin the Epitaph and Epithalamius maintain a genre shaping function of the addressed genres. The most modified forms are related to the genres of dedications and Epistles. The tendency to the cyclization inherent to the epoch leads to the appearance in Bunin’s poetry of “hidden” personalized cycles (Nadson, Balmont). However, the name of an addressee is the basic and unique unifying principle: the poems-dedication hardly contain citations, allusions or other signs of the addressee. So, the removal of dedications deprives the poem of any distinctive marks of an addressed genre. The most frequent addressed genres are those grouped by the theme of memory and the paradigm of “the death of the poet”, transformed by Bunin into the concept of “tomb / tomb of the poet” as a legendary figure. The special genre of an epithaphical friendly message appears that represent the panegyrical type of the addressing and allows the poet to comprehend the category of “ancestor memory”. The dialogization of the text often has the character of “auto-addressing”. The least represented is an ironic addressing aimed at debates with the modernist aesthetics dominant in poetry. Bunin contributed to the development of new artistic communicative strategies that were formed in the poetry of the twentieth century.

Keywords: Bunin, poetry, addressed genres, “hidden” personalized cycles, paradigm of memory, epitaphic message, panegyric type of the addressing, new artistic communicative strategies

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The sophianic theme, inherent to the Russian religious and philosophical thought of the late 19th — first third of the 20th century, is for the first time envisaged in the article in its relation to the artistic and philosophical creativity of Valerian Nikolayevich Muravyov (1885–1930). In the philosophical mystery “Sofia and the Centaur” (1921–1925) Muravyov brings together two lines of the sofiological theme — theological and artistic ones. Sophia appears in the pages of the mystery as an ideal image of the world and man, and at the same time her image is associated with the theme of the meaning of love, with the ethics of the transformed Eros. It is shown how the key scene of the mystery, the prayer to Sofia of all nature and all mankind followed by the common goal of transformation of the world, evolves into other artistic plans of Muravyov, and is reflected in the sketches of the fairy tale “The Captive Kingdom” (1925) and in the unpublished novel “The Island Buyan” (1926–1928). In the light of the Sofia plot the drama of the philosopher “Adviser for Death” (1927–1928) is considered. The autobiographical origins of the sophiology of Muravyov are revealed.

Keywords: artistic and philosophical creativity of V. N. Muravyov, sophiology, mystery “Sofia and the Centaur”, the novel “The Island Buyan”, drama “Adviser for Death”, transformation of the world and man, motifs, images, autobiographical character

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The article focuses upon the liturgical text in Ivan Shmelev’s novel “The Ways of Heaven” and its characterological function as a major component of ethnopoetics. The author himself classifies his novel as “spiritual” and peculiarities of this genre find expression in the principles of creation of the characters capable of self-evolution, inherent in the literature of psychological realism. The most relevant in the novel’s hierarchy of determinants is a “spiritual determinism” where the participation of Divine Providence in development of the plot and heroes’ characters becomes essencial. Liturgical quotations remain inseparably related to the images of the main characters throughout the whole novel, referring to different stages of their spiritual paths. More significantly, quotations are actively involved in the characters’ internal decision-making process as well as in their formation. A remarkable variety of theological meanings shapes the spiritual space of the novel and of the protagonists, frequently serving as a means of characterization. Testifying to the author’s Orthodox worldview, heroes’ “ways of heaven”, regarded in soteriological terms, are of two types: the one of discovering Christ (the hero) and the other one of following Christ (the heroine). The detailed analysis of the key liturgical quotations in their relation to Victor Alexeevich and Daria Koroleva (the protagonists) revealed a particular significance of the liturgical quotations in structuring the heroes’ inner space. We believe it to be Ivan Shmelev’s artistic discovery and a testimony to a “new aesthetics”, defined by a spiritual quest of the author himself.

Keywords: Ivan Shmelev, ethnopoetics, liturgical text, novel, psychologism, principle of determinism, literary character

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The article discusses the morphology and semantics of the rage and beast motifs in the story by A. Platonov “Odukhotvorennye lyudi” (1942). The motivic organization of the work significantly differs from the Soviet aesthetics of the heroic and the traditions of the heroic epos: in the Platonov’s story the opposition Us vs. Them is disrupted. In the ideological and aesthetic canon of the literature on the Great Patriotic War, the antithesis of the motifs of the people’s rage and the enemy-beast is enshrined (L. Leonov, I. Ehrenburg et al.). The “Odukhotvorennye lyudi” puts a semantic emphasis on the contamination of the motifs of the rage, the beast and the void in the human soul. This motivic triad determines the entire system of characters and pose the problem of devastation / bestiality of a person in a world, which has turned into a bloodbath. This complex of motifs creates a two-level (text–subtext) structure and transfers the conflict from the external (socio-political) into the internal (existential) plan, thus, opposes the title of the work and deduces the central theme of inspiration from heroic rhetoric to metaphysical perspective. The figurative parallel Human vs. Animal that goes back to the myth, in the metaphorical development of the Platonov’s plot receives re-semantization in the context of the New Testament tradition. The motifs of Rage and Beast, concentrating the tragedy of man in the war, remain within the plot, which opens and completes the leitmotif of Love. The free love sacrifice and thanksgiving of life motifs are put in the finale of the spiritual evolution of the characters. The writer showed the spiritual victory of man over the evil of war — the Lamb over the Beast. These meanings of life, obtained by the Russian people through the centuries of suffering, affirmed in their Orthodox spirituality, are discovered by the author and his characters anew in the deadly opposition to fascism.

Keywords: A. Platonov, motif, figurative parallel Human vs. Animal, subtext, context, L. Leonov, I. Ehrenburg, literature on the Great Patriotic WarHuman vs. Animal, subtext, context, L. Leonov, I. Ehrenburg, literature on the Great Patriotic War

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The article offers the analysis of Gazdanov’s story “The Requiem” (1960) in the context of “Christian realism” put forward by V. N. Zakharov as an aesthetic principle. The themes of the spiritual solidarity of compatriots were expressed especially in the literature of the Russian expatriate community. The importance of the article resides in disclosing of a leading idea of the story which main topic is the liturgical word as the basis of the ancestral memory. The thesis about a particular role of the prayer text language as that one expressing the key moments of a human’s life and comprehending them in the terms of a nationwide tradition is brought forward. It is in the nationwide tradition where a person feels involved in other people’s life related to him first via his native speech. By means of the Church Slavic language the protagonist comes to the understanding of the core of the unanimity of the Russian speaking people who ended up outside their motherland. The results of the research are based on the study of the phenomenon of the Russians and the role of the Russian language in alien conditions. Kept in the memory and becoming actual as necessary the liturgical word becomes a sign of the unity among the Russians and expression of the essence of their transcendent (non-temporal, extra-social) existence.

Keywords: Gazdanov, “The Requiem”, Christian realism, liturgical word, Russian expatriate community, language community

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The article studies the dialogue with Dostoevsky developing in Dombrovskaya’s christian metanovel “The way is open… Chekhov. Spiritual wanderings of Timofei the Deacon”. It is shown that the dialogue is of an extensive, systematic and multidimensional character. It is carried on at all the levels of the artistic system of the novel: an author’s message, method, genre, plot, characters system — and allows gaining a hermeneutic experience. In a dialogical correlation of Chekhov and Dostoevsky it is disclosed that both writers have in common the adherence to the evangelic spirit that helps them to be theologically precise/ accurate while judging and making emphases. However, while Dostoevsky interested primarily in the problem of destruction of the religious consciousness and testing the man on the way of freedom without God, disproves the principles and meanings of the Christian doctrine, Chekhov’s spiritual realism that highlights the “movement of an essential layer” in the terms of the everyday life of the man “emanates silence, lives off an inner word”. Besides, Chekhov as a child of his time feels better the danger of Pharisaism. The dialogue with Dostoevsky is carried on not only in philological sketches of the main hero, but is reflected in the destinies of the novel’s characters, in understanding of the spiritual conditions of modern Russia. The article, based on the reasoning of E. R. Dombrovskaya, for the first time asserts that Chekhov’s concept of the beauty is also interpreted both as the extension of a famous Dostoevsky’s principle and as its enrichment with new inner meanings.

Keywords: Chekhov, Dostoevsky, dialogue, Christian metanovel, Christian realism, plot, hero, understanding of the beauty

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