Volume 23, 2025 year

The depiction of conflict in literature is associated with the idea of a violation of harmony and of the existing order, as well as ways to revive it or establish a new order. The classical understanding of conflict that has developed in European scholarship based on Western literature may not always be applicable to the analysis of non-Western, especially non-Indo-European, literature. Discussions of conflict can be found in Aristotle’s “Poetics,” while in Chinese, Indian and Arabic poetics this issue has not been discussed, even though the “Natyashastra” (the doctrine of drama) was created in Ancient India by Bharata Muni. There are three elements required for conflict in European thought: the beginning, the culmination, and the denouement, each of which is clearly indicated in the work. Meanwhile, in the East, especially in China and Japan, the conflict was seen as a complex multifactorial process that is also linked to other processes. There are many options for conflict development, so the concepts of “tie” and “denouement” are not always applicable to non-Western literature, and the “climax” as a turning point is extremely rare to detect. The article attempts to comparatively analyze the comparative aspect of conflict, examines conflicts in the works of Western European (ancient and medieval), Indian and Chinese literature: Homer’s Iliad, Sophocles’ “Antigone,” “Mahabharata,” “Beowulf,” “The Three Kingdoms” by Luo Guanzhong, Guan Hanqing’s “Resentment of Dou E,” “Jin Ping Mei,” and others.

Keywords: poetics, conflict, climax, resolution, ancient literature, medieval literature, Indian literature, Chinese literature

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The article is devoted to the identification of common poetic characteristics of the Persian court poets (10th — 12th centuries) and the Provencal troubadours (12th — 13th centuries). The concepts of ‘poet’ and ‘poetry’, which helped the representatives of two poetic traditions to formulate their views on the essence of literary work and to assert the novelty and originality of their writings were selected for comparison purposes. The article presents the examples of arguments about a poet’s skill as a professional craft, contained in medieval Arabic treatises on poetics, on which the Persian court poets of the 10th — 12th centuries relied in their literary practice. Quotations from the works of Persian panegyrists testify to their high level of creative awareness and to the emergence of a professional environment where the ideas of the poet’s skill as a craft requiring mastery of certain techniques were cultivated. In parallel to the above quotes, similar statements by troubadours about the essence of professional skill are presented. Numerous examples attest to the competitive nature of the entire literary practice during the period of the predominantly traditionalist type of artistic consciousness. Normative poetics created specific conditions for the perception of the concepts of novelty and tradition. The common features of the poetics of the Persian court poets and troubadours are determined by the typological generality of the literary canon laws, on which their work is based.

Keywords: Persian court poetry, Provencal lyrics, troubadour, concept of poet, concept of poetry, poetic mastery, normative poetics, tradition, originality, literary canon, comparative studies

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The article discusses numerous interpretative problems related to the short novel “The Carriage” (1835‒1836) by Nikolai Gogol. It is proposed to solve the problem of an adequate reading of the short novel by identifying the maximum possible number of “end-to-end” and nodal themes and motifs that are constant in all of Gogol’s work. Numerous reminiscences of “The Carriage” are noted with other works of the writer, i.e., the short novels “The Night Before Christmas,” “Ivan Fedorovich Shponka...,” “Old World Landowners,” “Taras Bulba,” “The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich,” the poem “Dead Souls,” the comedies “The Inspector,” “Marriage,” “Players,” etc. Based on the analysis, a special place of the short novel in Gogol’s legacy is established. An important feature of “The Carriage” is its significant “intermediate” position among Gogol’s other works, not only chronologically, but also in terms of genre. In “The Carriage” the writer’s transition from the depiction of Little Russian everyday life to the all-Russian scale takes place: the creation of the short novel was preceded by work on the short novels of two Ukrainian cycles — “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” and “Mirgorod”; after “The Carriage” Gogol turned to the image of the “prefabricated” city in “The Inspector” and a wide panorama of Russian life in “Dead Souls.” “The Carriage” occupies an “intermediate” place in Gogol’s understanding of the problems of the capital and the province in relation to the realities of traditional Russian life and European influence. The writer’s characteristic desire for an encyclopedic coverage of phenomena during the creation of “The Carriage” received the most complete expression at that time. The short novel served as a preliminary step to the creation of Gogol’s main poem, and by many indications, it can be considered as the writer’s full-fledged experience in creating a small poem. The spiritual and moral intent of the short novel is analyzed in detail, the problems of realism of “Dead Souls” and “The Carriage” are touched upon, Pushkin’s influence on Gogol’s work and the autobiographic nature of “The Carriage” are noted.

Keywords: N. V. Gogol, A. S. Pushkin, poem, genre, genre continuity, artistic ethnography, encyclopedism, realism, Petersburg, Little Russia, province, Western influence, unity of creativity, spiritual heritage

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The article addresses the issue of studying the evolution and poetics of literary genres through the lens of such a rarely utilized source as genre subtitles. In this context, genre is understood as a communicative act by the author, who selects a strategy for publishing his or her text and entering the literary field. From this perspective, the genre subtitle serves as an interpretative framework for potential readers. The article demonstrates that genre subtitles can serve as a relevant source for examining the poetics of a genre, as they act as indicators of its formation, popularity, and “automatization.” The focus of the study is the genre of peasant stories (or, as it was termed in the 19th century, ‘stories from peasant life’) over the course of its century-long existence (1772 to 1872). By compiling a dataset of metadata from 382 works about peasants (including author, title, subtitle, year of publication, place of publication, and type of narration), the author traces the key stages in the evolution of the genre and, in particular, trends in the use of various types of subtitles by 120 writers. After a long period of sporadic appearance of genre subtitles in peasant stories, the genre consolidates and flourishes in the 1840s — 1860s, as evidenced by a significant increase in the number of subtitles containing stable formulas with genre names (‘tale’, ‘story’, ‘sketch’) and adjectives like “common folk” or “peasant” (e.g., “a tale from common folk life).” The analysis of individual publication strategies of 120 writers reveals a key pattern: those authors who initially published texts about peasants in periodicals on a regular basis and later compiled them into a cycle that included a genre definition (such as Ivan Turgenev’s “Notes of a Hunter” or Vladimir Dal’s “Pictures from Russian Life”) have been remembered in the history of Russian literature as masters of the genre. In contrast, writers who took the opposite approach and published an entire cycle of “Stories from Folk Life” at once did not achieve the same level of recognition.

Keywords: genre, genre theory, title complex, subtitle, historical poetics, story about peasants, tale, sketch, Russian literature

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The article considers V. I. Dahl’s prose cycles “The First Five Tales” and “True Stories and Tall Stories” as parts of the author’s integral concept that emerged in the years of V. I. Dahl’s studies at the University of Dorpat (present-day Tartu). The works included in these cycles were written and published in the 1830s, when Russian literature was striving for the large epic form. In the process of defining the ideological and artistic concept of Dahl's texts, the author of the study demonstrates the extent to which the prose cycles under consideration fit into the historical and literary context of the 1820s — 1830s and the place they occupy in it. “The First Five Tales” and “True Stories and Tall Stories” are analyzed as a specific genre unity and compared with the works of V. T. Narezhny, Antoni Pogorelsky, A. S. Pushkin, N. V. Gogol, V. F. Odoevsky, and M. N. Zagoskin. The article proves that it is the Russian folk tale, its genre, linguistic, thematic and artistic features that served as the foremost means for the realization of the author’s idea. Particular attention is paid to the skill with which V. I. Dahl combines folklore and literary traditions, using fairy tales in most works as a special type of narration, introducing the image of the narrator in the structure of the narrative. This allows the writer to collide both oral elements of culture with written clichés, and works of different genres with each other, thus presenting a complete picture of the development of Russian literature in the period under consideration. As a result of analyzing the poetics of “The First Five Tales” and “True Stories and Tall Stories,” their comparison with other prose cycles, it is established that the first literary cycles by V. I. Dahl reflect the author's exploration of style and genre and largely predetermine the development of Russian prose of the 19th century.

Keywords: V. I. Dahl, Russian literature, literary cycle, poetics of the cycle, literary context, genre, literary tale

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Creativity is dialogical. It is the accidental and conscious reception of ideas, images, and themes by different authors. Such dialogues and polylogue are often unexpected and diverse. In the mid-1860s, an apparently ordinary event happened in Russia. In 1865, the publication of Leo Tolstoy’s work “One Thousand Eight Hundred and Fifth Year” began in the Russian Bulletin maga- zine, continuing in 1866 and ending in 1869 with a separate edition of the work under a different name — “War and Peace.” At the same time, during 1866, Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment” was published in the journal. Leo Tolstoy was clearly aware that he was writing something other than a novel — a work in an entirely new genre. Dostoevsky always set himself the task of making his next novel original, both among his own works and among European novels. Dostoevsky’s new genre was preceded by the experience with the novels “Poor Folk” and “Humiliated and Insulted,” his discovery of his original genre of St. Petersburg novels and “The House of the Dead.” In the genesis of the novel “Crime and Punishment” there was a transformation of the idea — the synthesis of the story “Drunk” and confessions of a murderer gave rise to the emergence of a new genre — Dostoevsky novel. Dostoevsky and Tolstoy belonged to different poetic traditions. The former was characterized by tragic Shakespeareanism, the latter — by Homeric epic and declarative anti-Shakespeareanism. Despite the external antagonism, the poetics of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy have much in common. Their concept of a new genre is strikingly similar. They are characterized by a free epic form, the discovery of new characters, the analysis of the author’s idea as a principle and the ideas of the characters as the subject of depiction, and moralism in evaluating characters and phenomena. It is no coincidence that Dostoevsky’s novel precedes A. Fet’s sonnet condemning the crimes of the mob and the “evil genius,” and one of the common themes of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky’s works is the demythologization of Bonapartism. It is noteworthy that many cases of reception arose but were not published long before the novel “Crime and Punishment” was conceived and written. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky’s search for and acquisition of the genre opened the new Russian novel in world literature.

Keywords: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Fet, genre, novel, new Russian novel, title, moralism, Shakespeareanism, demythologization, Bonapartism

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The article is devoted to the reinterpretations of the main character of Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot” in the novels of Tolstoy and Pasternak (“Resurrection” and “Doctor Zhivago”) and in Chekhov’s short novel “My Life.” At the same time, Tolstoy’s novel is considered as a kind of hybrid hypertext of Dostoevsky’s works (“The Idiot” and “Notes from the Dead House”). Unlike Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin, Prince Dmitry Ivanovich Nekhludoff is trying to save the victim of his own sin. In Tolstoy’s novel, the plot situation is resolved only through the sacrificial love of the heroine for Nekhludoff. At the same time, his gradual Christian epiphany is accompanied by obvious moments of spiritual deafness, which, apparently, reflected some of the problems of Tolstoy’s personality development in the last decades of his creative career. The inner correlation of the hero of Chekhov’s “My Life” Misail with the image of Myshkin is manifested primarily in the similarity of naming, self-sacrifice, which eventually receives recognition, and in the love of Masha Dolzhikova and Anyuta Blagovo for him. Their relationship with the hero resembles the relationship between Myshkin, Aglaya Epanchina and Vera Lebedeva. Masha and Anyuta’s hatred for each other is more like the relationship between Aglaya and Nastasia Filippovna in the finale of Dostoevsky’s novel. At the same time, Anyuta in the finale of Chekhov’s short novel becomes not a wife, not a lover, but a kind of associate of Misail. In this regard, she also vaguely resembles Vera Lebedeva, who in the last chapters of the novel “The Idiot” is a bit like the “faithful followers” of Christ who “followed him to Jerusalem.” At the same time, like Myshkin, Misail is a largely autobiographical character. We find another reincarnation of Prince Myshkin in Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. At the same time, the plot-motive complex of Dostoevsky’s novel was significantly transformed by Pasternak, who obviously relied on Chekhov. This was manifested in the motive of the hero’s ordinariness of “holiness,” identified by Olga Sedakova, and in the fact that a “Christian” and “democrat” without a profession or occupation turns into a doctor in Doctor Zhivago, who continues to fulfill his professional duty in all, even the most tragic circumstances.

Keywords: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pasternak, Idiot, Resurrection, My Life, Doctor Zhivago, novel, short novel, literary prototype, pretext, intertextual ties

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The article clarifies the text of Dostoevsky’s draft notes for the novel “Demons,” which have not been published in full and have been inaccurately read by researchers. The establishment of the authentic text of these notes makes it possible to reveal new facts about the creative history of “Demons” and analyze the literary and biblical quotations and allusions used by the author in developing the novel’s concept, as well as biographical motifs contained in the printed text of the novel. The draft entry “To tell the moment: stop” refers to the Faustian theme, which occupied an important place in Dostoevsky’s creative process in the 1870s. The article provides a comparative analysis of the Russian translations of Goethe’s “Faust”, which Dostoevsky could have used in his work on “Demons”, and pinpoints the characteristics of the author’s interpretation of the words about a beautiful moment and their significance for the artistic structure of “Demons” and the image of Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky. This image is also considered in the context of the content of the 143rd Psalm about David and Goliath, allusive references to which are found in the draft autograph of “Demons” and have not been previously investigated. The connection of the image of Verkhovensky Sr. with the above-mentioned literary and biblical context determines the specifics of semantic correlations between the draft and the printed text of “Demons,” reflecting at the same time a number of biographical motives, in particular, the writer’s memory of the birth, christening and death of the writer’s daughter Sonya Dostoevskaya.

Keywords: F. M. Dostoevsky, A. G. Dostoevskaya, J.-W. von Goethe, M. V. Lomonosov, Demons, Faust, Psalter, Psalm 143, quotation, allusion, biographical context, The Russian Church in Geneva, Cathedral of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

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The article reveals the fundamental features of the axiological content of F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “Demons” as represented in five of its translations into Chinese. They reflect a controversial interpretation of important aspects of the Russian writer’s work, which is confirmed by the diversity of literary interpretations and translations. Due to the fact that the title of the novel “Demons” is a symbolic metaphor, Chinese translators translate it in different ways, including synonyms: demon, devil, Satan, devil, etc. A comparative analysis of the meanings of these words revealed fundamentally significant semantic nuances. The following Chinese translation options are considered: “Devils,” “Demons,” “Demon-possessed people,” “Cherti,” “Besy.” In general, there is a polyvariance of the translation of the keyword in the novel “Demons.” The analysis shows that the hieroglyph (“魔” devil), borrowed from Buddhism, corresponds to its religious context to the greatest extent, in contrast to the hieroglyph (“鬼” devil), which has a pronounced folklore and mythological character. The choice of the lexeme “魔” (demon) with the addition of the hieroglyph “群” (group), which allows to convey the meaning of plurality, is the most accurate and preserves the symbolic meaning of the word “demons,” which appears not only in the title, but also in the epigraphs and in the text of the novel.

Keywords: Dostoevsky, Demons, axiology, name of the work, novel, translations, Chinese

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The pretext of an early version of O. F. Bergholz’s work entitled “The City of Glory. A Dramatic Poem” (1948) and the final version of this text, which received the nomination “Fidelity. Tragedy” (1954), was the essay “Leningrad — Sevastopol” (1944). The title and the subtitle explicated the author’s new intention, shifting attention from the heroic topos to the value system of the characters. The word ‘loyalty’, correlated with the root lexeme ‘trust’, and the subtitle express the author’s position: Bergholz conceptualized the loss of social trust in an existential manner (“Where a person does not trust a person, / there is no people and there is no fatherland”). The theme of trust is actualized in the images of Anna, who was released from German prisons without betraying anyone to the enemies, but who still fears human condemnation, and the museum curator Khmara (his prototype was the archaeologist A. K. Takhtai, unfairly accused of collaborating with the German invaders). The loss of trust between people leads to the spiritual underground and the destruction of national unity. “Fidelity” is written without resorting to the genre canon, with a rejection of the death of the characters and with a happy ending. The specifics of the dramatic conflict is contingent on the fact that the conflict is “inside” the heroic material of the play. When analyzing Bergholz’s genre rationale, the author’s tragic worldview should be taken into account. Literary criticism of the Soviet era considered the work ambivalently: within the framework of both poetic and tragic genre canons. The conducted study of the poetess’s genre reflexives demonstrate the representativeness of the her extra-textual definition of the work as “the tragedy of our time”.

Keywords: O. F. Bergholz, dramatic poem, City of Glory, tragedy, Fidelity, poetics of the title, character system, conflict, genre

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Keywords: V. P. Astafyev, folklore tradition, myth, fairy tale, Christianity, symbol, allusion, chronotope, paradigm, context

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