Volume 16, 2018 year

The article explains the phenomenon of historical poetics in Russia. At the end of the 19^th century it was discovered and substantiated by A. N. Veselovsky. He formulated the idea, proposed the original concept of poetics, and introduced new categories of analysis which were the words “sujet”, “motif”, “genre” borrowed from the French language, and which changed their meaning in the Russian language. Their "reverse translation" is almost impossible. The fact that they have become key categories largely determines the originality of historical poetics in Russian literary studies. In the middle of the twentieth century  the study of the history of literature in terms of poetics captivated such outstanding scientists as M. M. Bakhtin, D. S. Likhachev, S. Averintsev. Their example was followed by many others. In the political conditions of the 1950s-1980s, historical poetics allowed avoiding the dogmatism of party criticism, gave an opportunity to study literature and art beyond the politics and restrictions of Soviet ideology. Today, the study of historical poetics is mainly determined by the inertia of the initial acceleration. New ideas, concepts, original researches are in demand.

Keywords: aesthetics, poetics, historical poetics, ethnopoetics, A. N. Veselovsky, comparative historical method, categories of poetics

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The article offers an analysis of the use of the Gospel text in the sermons of Theophan Prokopovich. It became evident that Theophan Prokopovich made much less references to the New Testament in his published works than to the Old Testament, which may result from his greater adherence to the Law than to Grace. The Gospel word by Prokopovich becomes a source of abundant and multidimensional allusions, often distantly related to its original meaning. In his sermons, Prokopovich seemed a skilled orator and cunning politician rather than a theologian. Prokopovich used the Gospel word to glorify the authorities and to justify their deeds manifesting, thus, a true talent of philologist skilful in the art of eloquence.

Keywords: sermon, Gospel, a rhetorical device, citation, allusion, political context

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The article analyzes the genre structure of the novel V. A. Levshin of the glorious Prince Vladimir and Russian epic hero Dobrynya Nikitich. The writer created a work of complex literary composition in which are blended the different traditions of folklore and literary genres: epics, fables, magical tales of chivalry and heroic story. The author finds a high degree of understanding and interpretation of the epic tradition. It saves in a literary narrative poetics of the folk genre, formalnosti speech topic. In his story are the heroes, the events follow the logic of the epic story, the epic becomes the dominant genre of the novel. Like the epic hero Dobrynya Levshina performs his heroic feats: freeing from the spell of the enchanted Kingdom, unites Nations, fights with giants and Polkan wins Tugarin Slavic. V. A. Levshin showed himself an experienced collector and publisher who cared about the epic text. The main form of presentation of folk epics is getting citations, which are issued quotes. Quoting and following the epic poetics, Levshin developed in a literary work the creative potential of the folk genre. This had its consequences: the heroic story of the "Russian fairy tales" Levshina become one of the most significant attempts to make the epic literary genre, a notable episode in the history of this failed genre in Russian literature.

Keywords: V. A. Levshin, genre, bylina (Russian epic songs), fairy tale, romance, heroic story, quote

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The article deals with the circumstances of A. S. Pushkin’s acquaintance with N. V. Gogol, that raises a number of questions. Why did Pushkin let Gogol read first his new poem “The Little House at Kolomna”? Why did Gogol first appreciate its incomprehensible plot and the depiction of “Petersburg nature”? What did the topography of the town mean for Pushkin and Gogol? Why did they place the characters of their works into this district of the capital? The answers to these questions will help to clarify the creative relationships between two classical authors of Russian literature.

Keywords: Kolomna, meeting, poem, tale, short story, topography, reconstruction, fiction

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The article is devoted to the study of the concept of the comedy Gogol "Marriage" in a single creative and biographical context. The play is related to the early Gogol works, the stories of "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka", the comedy "The Inspector General", the "Nevsky Prospekt", the history of the writer's later alleged matchmaking and the long-standing monastic aspirations of Gogol. In the "polyphony" of "Marriage" the hidden author's position, the ascetic attitude of the writer to marriage, as well as the connection between the idea of ​​the play and the hagiographic literature, become clear. Biblical and evangelical reminiscences were noted, which determined the circle of Gogol's reflections on the ways of salvation in monasticism or in a marriage union. The ideological and thematic rolls between the "Marriage" and the surviving chapters of the second volume of "Dead Souls" are planned. Some possible prototypes of Gogol's heroes are established. The unity of the artist's creative path is emphasized.

Keywords: Gogol, biography, art creativity, interpretation, hermeneutics, concept, a spiritual heritage

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The article is dedicated to the study of the impact of the Evangelic parable on the flash fiction of M. N. Makarov in the early 1840s. Since he was young Makarov cared for national history, everyday life and religious faiths of common people. He also envisages the Evangelic parable as a meaningful narration that Jesus used to represent a spirit of his teaching. The writer’s “Moscow tales about the poor”, published under the pen-name of Makariy Bystroretsky, had an instructive character of the Evangelic parable. Following the parabolic type Makarov writes about home and family, richness and poorness, Salvation through Jesus Christ. By their themes his stories are similar to the evangelic parables of the Unjust Judge, of the Lost Sheep, of the Pharisee and the Publican, of the Good Samaritan, of the Rich Man and Lazarus, of the Rich Full. The tales contain the motives of mercy, love for one’s neighbor, humiliation, responsibility to people and God, declared in the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus. A parabolic character of the narration allows the writer to demonstrate “modern miracles” that happen to those who walk with God. Makarov’s tales teach to rely on Divine Providence, to take gratefully the ordeals and the prizes of life. The episodes representing Russian everyday life in the tales serve as a symbolic embodiment of spiritual and physical happiness of Man who made his approach to Jesus Christ. The storylines of Makarov’s tales traces their origins to the texts and motives of the parables in the New Testament. Putting Christian wisdom into a simple narrative the writer’s stories make people’s faith grow.

Keywords: evangelical parable, story, genre, Makariy Bystoretsky, M. N. Makarov, Sermon on the Mount, charity, edification, literature

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A. K. Tolstoy is a poet of the realistic epoch who kept a romantic approach to reality. The poem “John of Damascus” holds a specific place in the poet’s creative body of work representing the writer’s worldview and his aesthetic position. The subjective and objective world of the writing is under investigation in terms of Bakhtin’s theory and modern historical poetics. The article brings to light the specificity of speech organization of the text, narration functioning, dialogue and monologue. While studying the poem the author appeals to the hagiographic texts and funeral canticles by the Reverend that allow precising the ties between the image of John and his prototype. He also points out the meaning of the closing episode of the hagiography of the Holy Man for the poem’s storyline, and the role of the romantic motif of the detachment in the depiction of the hero. The hero’s dialectic image in the poem is defined as the one that traces back to the image of the Reverend John of Damascus and remains under the impact of the image of the author himself. An inner nature of the hero’s image is seen as a juxtaposition of the idea of the superior Divine office, deriving from the historical prototype, and the author’s romantic aspiration for absolute freedom in creative work. The violation of an aesthetic border of the hero’s objectivization is achieved due to the subjectiveness of the writer. The lyric monologues and fragments of the improper and direct speech constituting the poem objectify the hero’s image. Through the expressiveness of the latter the author’s subjectiveness is traced. The author and the hero are thought as the images that possess subjectiveness and objectified at the same time in the world. The study of the nature of subjective and objective relations in the poem gives an access to the value-based level of its content. The poem “John of Damascus” presents parallel ways of searching for truth by two poets — a theologian and an artist. The first one comes to the ideal of a humbled man, whilst the other one to the idea of the assertion of man’s dignity in front of God. The value-based level of the poem’s content going back to orthodox understanding of the historical prototype, the hero’s and author’s images, defines semantic wholeness of the poem.

Keywords: A. K. Tolstoy, “John of Damascus”, worldview position, creative consciousness, literary text and pretext, correspondence of A. Tolstoy and Ya. Polonsky, author, hero, value-based world of the writing

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The article investigates the genre peculiarity and the poetics of the epilogue in Dostoevsky’s novel “A Raw Youth”. Its originality resides specifically in the divergence between “the author’s novel” and “the hero’s notes”. The novel does not contain such a distinctive compositional element as an epilogue. The role of the latter belongs to the critical letter of Nikolai Semyonovich, ex-mentor of the Adolescent, on his “Notes” (“Chapter Thirteen. Conclusion”). The critical letter discloses the characteristics of heroes and the epoch, rethinks the situations and motives of the key part of the writing. In his novel Dostoevsky on the one hand reveals the destruction of the “displaced” life standards of the nobles, the decadence of the noblemen’s concept of honor and duty, on the other hand, he insists that the way of salvation of the country from the “disorder and chaos” consists in reinforcement of the orthodox thinking, implementation of the idea of spiritual commonality, bringing together of the “superior Russian thought” and the popular truth. This is the meaning of the novel’s title: all Russian society and the country in whole is an adolescent.

Keywords: Dostoevsky, genre, novel, epilogue, motif, hero, situation, scene

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The short story “A Gentle Spirit” is the only work by F. M. Dostoevsky, which presents the image of a stenographer. This article contains the first special study on the functions and the internal structure of the image of the stenographer, on the importance of stenography in the creative process of Dostoevsky himself. These observations are supplemented with the materials of notebooks of the writer and his wife, also stenographer. The stenographer is a symbolic, imaginary, "inner" character introduced by the writer in order to write down the confessional monologue of the protagonist. The author of “A Gentle Spirit” reproduces the flow of thought of the Pawner and for the first time in literature carries out an experience of accurate recording of an internal conversation, a “stream of consciousness”. The techniques of the narration are aimed at creating in a reader a feeling of dealing with a verbatim report. Because of the convention of this “shorthand” form of the narration, Dostoevsky defined the genre of “A Gentle Spirit” as a “fantastic story”. Unlike Anna Dostoevskaya, who used to have a dialogue with the writer during the process of dictation, the stenographer in "A Gentle Spirit" gives no assessments of the actions and thoughts of the narrator and his wife, neither does he enter into a dialogue with the Pawner. The Husband of the Gentle Creature conducts an imaginary dialogue with himself, with his wife, as if she were still alive, with the listener-spectator, but he does not need a real interlocutor. The introduction of the image of the stenographer into the story allowed Dostoevsky to describe to a nail the difficult path that makes the Pawner perceiving a tragic meaning of the event — the suicide of his beloved wife, and realizing his absolute catastrophe in life.

Keywords: Dostoevsky, “A Gentle Spirit”, the shorthand image of the stenographer, non-fantastic convention, the form of storytelling

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Presently, the study of local texts (mainly urban ones) is really urgent. One of such local texts that evokes interest of the researches is the text of Staraya Russa by F. M. Dostoevsky. The real space of Staraya Russa town becomes a sort of an artistic model of the World embodied in the writer’s works. Such categories as “the text of Staraya Russa” and “Dostoevsky’s text of Staraya Russa” have been defined. From a structural viewpoint the concept “Dostoevsky’s text of Staraya Russa” comprises the following components: Staraya Russa as viewed by the writer, the repercussions of the realias of Staraya Russa in his works (novels “Demons”, “The Adolescent”, “The Brothers Karamazov”, “A Writer’s Diary”), Dostoevsky remembrance at Staraya Russa. The study of this concept allows us to answer the questions about the role of the countryside in life and works of the writer and about the significance of his name for history and culture of Staraya Russa.

Keywords: F. M. Dostoevsky, Staraya Russa, local text, town, space, structure

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The North appeared in the work of Russian Symbolists and, through a broader lens, modernists as a “different” world, beyond the limits of space. The attraction of the North can be considered as an alternative to the dilemma relevant to Russia at the turn of the 19th—20th centuries, “East or West”. Unlike the horizontal of socio-cultural and political transformations, in modernism the aspiration to the North was associated with the spiritual vertical, and the journey to the North was a spiritual journey, a way out of the crisis, a search for the absolute and freedom of the spirit. In its extreme manifestation, the attraction to the Pole is attraction towards death. Bryusov’s protagonist, a representative of the “elder” Symbolists, sought to surpass the human, to reach the absolute and to become equal to God. A reckless attraction to the Pole is like passion; in such case Eros and Thanatos are inextricably linked. “Younger” symbolists aimed not beyond the real world, but for the transformation of reality and the birth of a new man. The north was the territory of initiation by them, an important part of the dedication, the solar world. Instead of the unattainable “Queen of the night”, the hero is accompanied by Solveig, the bearer of love-caritas. The hero could pass initiation (A. Remizov), but he didn’t always stand the test (A. Bely). Gradually, the “northern” motif shifted from the mythological to the biographical domain, and the name Solveig itself (or other Ibsen’s female characters) became a cultural sign. The modernist myth about the North as a “different” world is initially ambivalent.

Keywords: Russian symbolism, A. Blok, V. Bryusov, B. Poplavsky, A. Remizov, A. Nesmelov, Russian North

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