Volume 22, 2024 year

The article analyses constant epithets in the poetics of the bylina (epic tale) and determines their role in the creation of an epic picture of the world as an ideal, aesthetically transformed version of reality. The study of constant epithets which accumulate folk ideals and values selected and polished by the longtime folklore tradition made it possible to find out what the Russians think about, how they characterise and assess people, objects and phenomena of the surrounding world in terms of their perfection. The identified traditional meanings of statements with constant epithets, displaying the ideal correspondence of an object and its characteristic to the norm in the epic picture of the world, participate in shaping the images of the Motherland, its defenders and the entire representational system of “one’s” epic world. For example, the set phrases “the land of Holy Russia,” “Orthodox/Christian faith,” “God’s/cathedral/the Lord’s churches,” “saved monasteries,” “life-giving crosses” create the image of Holy Rus’; the series of the constant epithets “daring, portly, good youth” and “strong mighty Holy Rus bohatyrs” express the total of physical and moral qualities that the defender of his native land, glorified in the epic, should possess; an “honouring feast” means a feast at which honors are given to heroes for their victories. The constant epithets “glorious,” “great,” “fair” often used to characterise oikonyms, indicating their fame, greatness and beauty, contribute to the celebration and glorification of Russian cities embodying the Russian land. Traditional cultural meanings (concepts), which are part of the folklore, becoming meaningful constants of the epic picture of the world, undergo transformation. For example, a hat/cap of the Greek land —– a wonderworking object functioning as a military weapon with the help of which a bohatyr defeats the enemy. The proposed approach to the study of constant epithets, which considers the mental existence of oral poetic invariablesand the attitude to folklore as a worldview phenomenon, contributes to a better comprehension of the Russian epic.

Keywords: folklore, bylina, genre poetics, constant epithet, types of epithets, formula, concepts, conceptual sphere, bylina worldview

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The authors analyze Shakespearean criticism and translation principles of Pyotr Petrovich Gnedich (1855–1925), prose writer, playwright, art critic, and famous theater figure of the turn of the 20th century. The purpose of the work is to clarify Gnedich’s place in Russian Shakespearean literature and to elucidate the vision of Shakespeare in his criticism. The objectives of the work include an overview of Gnedich’s translation and production contribution to the history of Russian theatrical Shakespeare; a study of Gnedich’s criticism of Shakespearean drama on the Russian stage; consideration of Gnedich’s translation principles as the precursors of the accurate translation school. Results of the work: Gnedich writes about Shakespeare, translates his plays and stages them over the course of his life; he does not deviate from the idea that Shakespearean drama is advanced and challenges the theater, first and foremost, the Russian theater. Gnedich measures the development of theatre according to Shakespeare and notes the sad neglect of his plays in the history of Russian theater: despite all of his efforts, from the dominance of everyday plays, the Russian theater shifts towards a predominance of new drama and symbolism. Gnedich’s translations are also inspired by the idea of updated, more accurate Shakespeare on the Russian stage. Thus, in his appeal to Shakespeare, Gnedich pursues new principles without yet naming them: in production work — he leans towards director’s theater, in translation — towards accurate translation (which will later be called “equirhythmic”.) Gnedich was the first to introduce “Julius Caesar” to the Russian stage in 1897 and the first to stage Shakespeare on a chamber stage (at the St. Petersburg Maly Theater of A. S. Suvorin). In 1922, Gnedich offers an unusual concept of the image of Hamlet as a typically Russian passive character, regarding the play as a kind of warning against the position of an inactive “superfluous man.”

Keywords: Shakespeare, Pyotr Petrovich Gnedich, the image of Hamlet, theater criticism, poetics of translation, accurate translation, poetics of tragedy

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The article examines one of the cardinal features of Gogol’s legacy, which endows the writer’s works with their key feature — a sense of truly “living life.” The maximum realism of Gogol’s fiction is rooted in his capacity for deep figurative, syncretic thinking. Based on numerous testimonies, it is proven that the success among readers and viewers of dozens of “roles” that Gogol recreated and “played” through his stage and literary heroes lies in his exceptional gift for creative reincarnation, as well as in his extreme confessional nature, which together constitute a unique property of his genius. Gogol’s legacy expands the boundaries of traditional ideas about reincarnation, which is often considered exclusively an actors’ skill. In the Gogol context, this concept embraces numerous areas of creativity and even extends to a person’s choice of his calling in life — the definition of the “role” with which he enters the general culture. Gogol’s various self-definitions are manifested in his initial choice of his life path, when in the 1820s — early 1830s he successively “tried on” the professions of a lawyer, artist, historian, geographer, etc. The theater stage seemed to him to be one of the areas of application of his talents at that time. Creative “entries into character” were later required for Gogol’s artistic and teaching activities — literary pursuits and historical studies, the latter of which also imply an “acting” transformation — thinking and acting “for” emperors, kings, caliphs, hetmans and other world history personas. The wide range of application of Gogol’s diverse abilities and his deep rootedness in pan-Christian symbolism, the traditions of which he absorbed in his youth in the family and at school, logically determined the realistic, deeply conscious nature of his work.

Keywords: Nikolai Gogol, imagination, reincarnation, artistic talent, role, literary character, artistry, character, personality, face, poetics of character, cognition in images

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This article examines “The Dead Man’s Mocking” (1834), one of the inserted stories from V. F. Odoevsky’s novel “Russian Nights” (1844). The ethical and aesthetic aspects of this story are analyzed from the viewpoint of the eschatological paradigm. It demonstrates that thanks to this paradigm, driven by the author’s religious worldview, which permeates all his works and predetermines the author’s special attitude to philosophical and social topics, the ethical and aesthetic aspects also acquire a religious meaning. The absence of love in the heroine, named Lisa by the author and “diametrically” compared with Karamzin’s heroine with the same name, is associated with her loss of religious faith, which emphasizes the impossibility of her resurrection within the framework of the eschatological paradigm. The composition of the “Fourth Night” from “Russian Nights,” to which “The Dead Man’s Mocking” belongs, reflects the spiritual crisis of the story’s fictional author and its overcoming, which leads to a rethinking of the role of romantic irony in the context of the eschatological paradigm. Taking into account the historiosophical and religious context, which develops in the novel through the dialogues of four friends led by Faust, the plot of this parable warns the reader against forgetting the humanistic and religious values inherent in the Russian people from time immemorial, against being carried away by European rationality, self-interest and from adherence to the essential and useful. The apocalyptic flood scene described in the short story serves the same purpose. Thus, attention to the eschatological paradigm helps to interpret both the poetics of V. F. Odoevsky’s story and its teleology.

Keywords: V. F. Odoevsky, Novell, Short Story, Karamzin’s Lisa, ethical and aesthetic aspects, poetics, historiosophy, eschatological paradigm

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In the article, the letter of I. S. Turgenev to P. V. Annenkov dated October 14 (old style), 1853, is for the first time considered as a “cryptographic text,” as a kind of response to Annenkov’s completion of preparations for the publication of Pushkin’s biography and writings. Although Pushkin’s name is not mentioned in the letter itself, “Pushkin’s presence” is encoded in different ways: in the initial “prosaic” part of the letter — in the form of associatively concealed hints about Pushkin’s work and the facts of the poet’s biography, and in the second part, in the Easter poem, it receives its explicit designation by an intertextual reference: “The past has opened up before me.” In the article, the Easter poem is analyzed not from the point of view of the problem of its authorship, which has not been completely solved, but as a manifestation of Turgenev’s artistic consciousness. The writer uses cryptographic hints to evaluate Annenkov’s contribution to the salvation of Pushkin’s name, “among other names doomed to oblivion” (as he will recall in a speech about Pushkin in 1880), in the categories of Paschal, “great and joyful news,” in the light of which the event of the Resurrection of Christ becomes an “emblem” of Pushkin’s fate, and the image of the poet is perceived as the image of the Resurrected.

Keywords: I. S. Turgenev, P. V. Annenkov, A. S. Pushkin, letter, cryptopoetics, context, sacralization, poetics of the text

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The fairy tale “Putem-dorogoyu” by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin is traditionally regarded to be an “accident” in the cycle of “Fairy Tales,” and is interpreted as a social story in terms of genre and thematically — as an invariant of the fairy tale “The Voron-Chelobitchik.” The author of the article believes that “Putem-dorogoyu” is an original work with its own problematics, which is not classified as “a story of everyday life” already by virtue of the author’s designation of the genre, namely, “conversation” (dialog). The dialog genre presupposes the fusion of philosophical and literary discourses; “conventionally schematic” type of interlocutor characters who often represent a certain ideological contrast. The heroes of “Putem-dorogoyu” Ivan Bodrov and Fyodor Golubkin personify opposite types of national consciousness, which is manifested in the semantics of their names, which have a stable system of connotations in the Russian anthroponymicon; the names largely determine their mode of behavior. In addition, the heroes’ dialog is projected onto mythological and fairy-tale plots about the dispute between Truth and Lie (Krivda), which allows to consider the problem of the search for Truth in the context of deep national-cultural attitudes and stereotypes; the struggle of the Christian world against the “non-Christian” world; to qualify the readiness of one of the heroes (Fyodor) to fight against the hostile society as readiness for Christian heroism and, hence, martyrdom. The poetics of the fairy tale, formed at the junction of philosophical dialog, magic-tale motifs (serpent-fighting, the way-road) and folk mythological symbolism, leads the reader to a complex of philosophical and historical reflections regarding Russia’s fate. The author’s concept of “Putem-dorogoyu” relates to the problem of violence, “blood” in history: the fairy tale can be regarded as the writer’s forecast of the upcoming historical upheavals.

Keywords: M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, Putem-dorogoyu, poetics of the genre, dialogue, fairy tale, Golubinaya kniga, semantics of the name, mythologem of the way

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The article is devoted to the study of artistic multilingualism in Leo Tolstoy’s short novel “Hadji Murad,” which becomes a means of the author’s poetics. The writer was proficient not only in Western, but also in Eastern languages. He had participated in military operations in Chechnya and was familiar with the customs, traditions and folklore of the Caucasus peoples. All this led to the use of a large number of foreign words of different origins in the creation of characters, material and linguistic reality in “Hadji Murad.” The author employed them to recreate the national, cultural, socio-political and religious features of the Russian Empire and the Caucasus. The analysis of foreign words made it possible to identify the contradistinction of the Eastern and the Western, European worldviews in the work. At the same time, the article examines and assesses the penetration of their components into the Russian worldview. Meanwhile, the differentiation of characters occurs not only on the basis of ethnicity, but also by social class. Besides, artistic multilingualism became one of Tolstoy’s means of conveying his ideas. By using foreign words, the writer showed in “Hadji Murad” the elitist orientation and licentiousness of art, the negative impact of progress on humans and society, the despotism of rulers who don’t care about the well-being of their people, as well as the cruelty and destructiveness of war.

Keywords: Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murad, multilingualism, foreign language, poetics, image of the world, ethnopoetics, character, symbol, idea

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The article is the first part of the study of the features of philosophical and artistic futurology in Russian cosmism of the 1920s — 1930s. The key principles of the approach to the topic of the future in the religious/philosophical and natural/scientific branches of Russian cosmism are revealed: a projective worldview, the unity of futurology and anthropology, the will to idealism, designing the future as a perfect world order, unity of purpose and means, the personal principle of the relationship betweennature and man, the idea of the  need to improve the external world, and human nature. The article demonstrates how these principles manifest themselves in the artistic and philosophical experiments of A. K. Gorsky and V. N. Muravyov in the 1920s and 1930s. It investigates the role of the science fiction element in their texts, in which, on the one hand, an integral image of the future is presented as the basis of mankind’s collective activity, and on the other hand, it offers a critique of “fractional ideals” in history, and flawed versions of the future. It demonstrates how the introduction of science fiction plots and motifs contributes to the test of futurological ideals for strength.

Keywords: Russian cosmism, artistic and philosophical futurology, projectivism, integral and fractional ideal, unity of futurology and anthropology, technical and organic progress, A. K. Gorsky and V. N. Muravyov philosophical heritage, science fiction motifs

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The article is devoted to the analysis of the artistic content and the evolution of the poetic ideal in the works of S. A. Yesenin of the 1910s: the subject of the study is both the poet’s lyrical works and his narrative and philosophical prose (the article “Native Word”), as well as biblical poems. The peculiarity of the literary and philosophical toponym “Rus” in Yesenin’s works as an ethical ideal and a symbol of a special national historical path, which is part of “God’s Providence,” is revealed. The polemical unity of toponym “Rus” with the idyllic image of the indefinitely beautiful “there,” which Yesenin drew from the literature of romanticism, along with the mythologeme of the poet’s fateful path, is demonstrated. A conclusion is made about the influence of Symbolist aesthetics on Yesenin’s understanding of art as a visionary experience that allows him to comprehend supersensual reality. By means of comparative analysis of A. A. Blok’s articles “Gogol’s Child” and Yesenin’s “Native Word,” the hypothesis that N. V. Gogol’s image of Russia was perceived by Yesenin in symbolist transcription is substantiated. The poem “Inonia” is considered as a transformation of Russia’s poetic ideal in the context of Yesenin’s religious and philosophical aspirations.

Keywords: S. A. Yesenin, Rus’, ideal, image, literature, poem, future

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The article is devoted to the concept of the Future as one of the key and comprehensive categories that characterize the work of V. V. Mayakovsky. The importance of this concept was already realized by the poet’s contemporaries M. Gorky, K. Chukovsky, M. Tsvetaeva. However, in the Soviet years, the topic was narrowed down to an ideologically motivated “communist future.” A significant methodological update that took place at the turn of the century allowed to expand the context of research, to compare Mayakovsky’s works about the future with the philosophical views of Russian cosmism, N. F. Fedorov’s ideas of the resurrection, the scientific theories of Lobachevsky, Tsiolkovsky, and Einstein. These achievements of Russian science were successfully integrated into the global cultural space, where the phenomenon of Mayakovsky was actively received. Against the background of various theoretical and methodological approaches to the study and interpretation of the Future, Mayakovsky’s worldview examines the poet’s characteristic desire to create an image of the life of a person and society dynamically, from the present time to several centuries ahead. To systematize the concepts associated with the concept of the Future, we propose a kind of a metaphorical time scale, on which four constants are designated on a vertical axis: today, tomorrow, future, and eternity. Each of the ascending levels is associated with the reflection of ideas about the Future, with its active development, inherent in Mayakovsky throughout his life. The desire to anticipate and bring the Future closer through creativity and the construction of utopian models of life, love, art, and an ideal society is clearly reflected at all the levels under consideration.

Keywords: futurism, Mayakovsky, N. F. Fedorov, poetics, concept, constant, future

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The futurological model presented in “My brother Alexei’s Journey to the Land of Peasant Utopia” by A. V. Chayanov (under the name of Iv. Kremnev) is focused on preserving and reviving the traditions of the times past, which are harmoniously integrated into a new way of life. The utopian worldview is very eclectic: along with manual agricultural labor, there are the latest inventions: meteorophores and aircraft, atmospheric precipitation is controlled. Art as a philosophical imperative defines all aspects of society. The leaders of the state, rely on the achievements of eugenics, striving to maximize the realization of each person’s talent, education is based on the principles of harmonious personal development: utopia’s residents not only master a specialty, but must know the history of art, play sports, which should also serve to reveal their abilities. The ideal is formed by both the ancient culture and manor pastime, where a person works in close contact with nature, spending leisure time in literary or musical pursuits. Knowledge of history and art is considered fundamental here: even cooking and entertainment are focused on preserving the memory of the past. Many of the ideas on which utopia is based are Chayanov’s ideas about the proper structure of education, its cultural and art history components, pedagogical and methodological principles, and the formation of a versatile and multifaceted scientist. But in a way, it is also an answer to the disputes of the late 19th — early 20th centuries about the role of man as a theurgist, the limits of his capabilities and power.

Keywords: A. V. Chayanov, art of the future, My Brother Alexei’s Journey to the Land of Peasant Utopia, Old Western Engraving, Cooperation and Art Culture in Russia, Methods of Higher Education, eugenics

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In pre-revolutionary fiction, the struggle of the worlds was perceived mainly as a clash between earthlings and an extraterrestrial civilization. After the emergence of the Soviet state, the struggle between the Bolshevik and antiBolshevik worlds became one of the key themes in fiction. By the early 1930s, the formula “struggle of the worlds” existed in Russian literature both as fantastic and non-fantastic, reflecting a real social confrontation. However, the idea of a world revolution as the goal and result of the struggle of the worlds is actually eliminated from science fiction. The social struggle, which can transform into an interstate conflict, by the end of the 1930s turns into a war of the worlds, where the military clash between the USSR and a hostile state is the decisive factor. The changes taking place in the international arena led to the fact that in science fiction, too, England and France are replaced by Germany, Italy and Japan as the main opponents. In the war of the future the victory is determined not by heroism and national unity, but also by military and technical superiority. Along with the apparently fantastic weapons possessed by both the USSR and the enemies in the future, the writers described technical achievements, whose fantastic nature is not always noticeable even to a non-specialist contemporary, since some weapons that were fantastic in the late 1930s already became a reality during the Great Patriotic War. One of the distinctive features of the works of 1938–1939 about the future war is the minimal differentiation between the fantastic and non-fantastic. On the one hand, there is no war yet, on the other hand, the distance between the future and the present is practically absent, and the “effect of the future” is leveled due to image of reality that maximally corresponds to the present. This artistic technique helps to convey to the reader the confidence that victory is the logical conclusion of the present, and not a fantasy.

Keywords: science fiction, Soviet literature, literature of the Russian Exile, the Great Patriotic War, N. Shpanov, G. Adamov, N. Toman, futurology

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The article presents an analysis of eschatological motifs in Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s short novel “Definitely Maybe” (“One Billion Years to the End of the World”) (1976), in particular, it describes the development of the motifs of the Last Judgment, the end of the world and the fate of the universe in the original idea of the story as reflected in the author’s sketches and in the final text. The motif of the Last Judgment underwent a strong change in the text of the story and was realized in the form of self-judgment of the scientists, who are the heroes of the story. They condemn themselves to a future in which their scientific potential will not be fully realized. The motif of the end of the world is stated in the title and the main conflict of the story, which entails the heroes’ confrontation with the force that prevents scientific discoveries that could lead to the end of the world. Most scientists try to make sense of what is happening by appealing to folklore, religious experience, or ideas about extraterrestrial civilization. The fate of the universe is closely connected with the phenomenon of the Homeostatic Universe, which influences the lives of the characters in the story not directly, but implicitly, through everyday phenomena, which by the story’s finale add up to an insurmountable obstacle for most scientists. The eschatological motifs of the Strugatsky brothers were formed under the influence of Holy Scripture, folklore, Russian cosmism and the philosophy of N. F. Fyodorov.

Keywords: eschatology, motif, end of the world, Last Judgment, fate of the universe, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, science fiction

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The purpose of the article is to identify and characterize promising vectors of development of the Russian literary estate in the first quarter of the 21st century, in connection with which the works on the “estate” theme of T. N. Tolstaya, Yu. V. Mamleev, V. G. Sorokin, A. P. Potemkin, E. G. Vodolazkin, G. Sh. Yakhina, A. I. Slapovsky, M. L. Stepnova, V. O. Pelevin, etc. are examined in a wide cultural context. The article demonstrates that the new quality of the estate text, in comparison with the classics of the 19th — early 20th century, arises in Soviet literature and continues in the post-Soviet times. The main categories for the development of a modern literary estate are estate heterotopia, estate habitus, dacha myth, crypto-estate mythology and estateness, as well as new modifications of the estate topos: garden-city, a window into transcendent meanings and the Euro-Asian phenomenon. However, the most significant factor in the future of the literary estate in the 21st century is the “civilizational approach,” drawn from historical science. The interdisciplinary phenomenon of the Russian estate is understood within its framework, on the one hand, as one of the manifestations of the universal archetype of world history since the Biblical times, on the other — as an important element of Russia’s national cultural code from antiquity to the present day. It is the “civilizational approach” that connects the futurology of the Russian estate with the “great historical time” and takes its history beyond the imperial period of the 18th — early 20th century, which previously delineated its existence. Thanks to him, the signs of Moscow Russia of the 16th–17th centuries in a number of “estate” texts by modern authors can be perceived as a trend, rather than a curiosity. The relevance of the article lies in the desire to elaborate the paths of Russia’s civilizational identity. Its scientific novelty is in the first comprehensively presented system of categories of poetics for the study of the literary estate of the present and future. The conclusions of the article are obtained with regard to the research context on the issues raised and call for further discussion.

Keywords: literary estate, literary dacha, 21st century, futurology, civilizational approach, development of categorical apparatus, estate as a garden-city, estate as a window into transcendent meanings, estate as a Euro-Asian phenomenon

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