Volume 23, 2025 year

The article analyzes the concept of the “path-road” in Russian wed ding speeches. The work uses published and archival materials from the 19th — late 20th centuries, which poetically embody the idea of the road and the movement of wedding participants. The content of the speeches reflects the attitude to the road characteristic of Russian traditional culture as a whole, the perception of the road as a locus of danger, scary and unclean. The path-road of the wedding train is interpreted in the speeches as a journey to another world. As a rule, a description of the road is constructed by combining a formula for movement and a list of spatial objects, which are divided into several semantic and thematic groups (forest, mountain, swamp, water, cosmological, plant and animal element groups, as well as groups of elements with the meaning of ‘vast, endless, boundless space’ and with the meaning of ‘populated areas, developed, inhabited space’). In mythopoetic representations, these landscape elements for the most part mark a foreign, dangerous space; in texts, they are used with epithets that form its qualitative characteristics (frequent: steep, high, dark, dense, swampy, long, clean). The idea of danger is enhanced by including in the description elements of the plant and animal worlds, which give the narrative additional expressiveness and emotionality. Being in the space of the road is associated with danger for travelers and is presented as a test; in poetic texts, this usually means a deterioration in physical condition, suffering material damage (the themes of freezing or hyperthermia, loss of voice, hunger, torn clothes and lost crosses are realized). The analyzed descriptions combine the ideas about the road as a dangerous, unclean, risky locus and the ideas about that part of the life path of the ritual’s participants that is associated with the process of their status transformation.

Keywords: Russian wedding ritual, wedding speech, folk world picture, way, road

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The article attempts to systematize the ideas about the genre of John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” in Russia in the 19th — early 20th centuries. An analysis of the work’s genre designations in books and periodicals is conducted, and categorizing features of the genre that corresponded to the perception of the epic in the period under consideration are noted. It is established that the genre nominations of “Paradise Lost” contained in Russian criticism, journalism and literary studies of the 19th — early 20th centuries, as well as in numerous translated works that appeared in Russian, can be perceived within the framework of three thematic areas. The first direction includes works in which the genre of “Paradise Lost” is designated as “epic poem,” “poem,” “epos,” or “epopee.” Comparisons of Milton’s work with both Homer’s epic and with variants of the genre from the Middle Ages and the New Age (Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” T. Tasso’s “Jerusalem Delivered,” F. G. Klopstock’s “Messiah”) are characteristic; the relevance of “Paradise Lost” to the author’s time, conditioned by the reflection of his religious and socio-political views, is noted. The genre-forming feature is the “high/majestic” category. The second direction is made up of publications that emphasize the sacred nature of the work, its biblical plot and images. The genre of “Paradise Lost” is designated here as a “divine poem,” “Christian poem,” “religious poem,” “poem on a biblical theme,” “great poem about paradise” or “religious epic,” which constitutes evidence of the perception of the work through its Christian imagery. The third direction includes studies whose authors single out the dramatic component as genre-forming. In such cases, the poem is called “a work in epic form,” “whose plan has a dramatic foundation, rather than an epic one” (K. P. Zelenetsky), or a lyrical drama (Alexey N. Veselovsky).

Keywords: John Milton, Paradise Lost, genre-forming feature, epos, epopee, epic poem, poem, religious poem, Christian poem, divine poem, lyrical drama

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The article analyzes a series of travelogues dedicated to the manors of the Moscow region written by A. F. Voeykov (“A Walk Through the Village of Kuskovo,” “Tsaritsyno,” and “Memory of the Village of Savinskoye and Its Virtuous Owner”) and published in the 1820s. They are considered in the context of their connection with the didactic poem of Jacques Delille’s “Les Jardins, en Quatre Chants,” which was translated by Voeykov in 1800–1810. Translation and travelogues, in which a literary dialogue unfolds and a polemic about Russian realities continues, possess artistic and meaningful continuity. Special attention is heeded to the 72-line fragment about the manors (Kolomenskoe, Gatchina, Taurida, Peterhof, Tsarskoe Selo, Arkhangelskoe, Kuskovo, Lyublino, Neskuchnoe, Savinskoe), which Voeykov included in the translation of “Les Jardins,” instead of 12 original lines devoted to Delille’s generalized description of Russian gardens, which Voeykov was dissatisfied with. The article demonstrates that these 72 lines were transformed into travelogues, where on one hand, Voeykov continues to polemize with Delille, emphasizing that the latter had limited knowledge of Russian nature and landscaping arts. On the other hand, since Voeykov was not limited by genre, volume of works, or subject, he was able to describe the manors and Russian gardens and parks in more detail, briefly retell the history of the manors and the biography of their owners, and describe the details of local topography and cultural memory.

Keywords: A. F. Voeykov, Jacques Delille, Russian manor, travelogue, literary dialogue, polemic

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The article analyzes the play, which went almost unnoticed in critical thought contemporary to Gogol. It contains eight dramatic scenes united under the name of “Lackeyskaya.” A whole stream of misunderstandings, from important to curious, that arose during the perceptionandinterpretation of “Lackey”insubsequentliterature is considered. For the first time, a holisticstudy of the author’s idea of the play was proposed. The dramatic scenes are examined as the focus of the socio-political views of the writer, who studies the interrelated psychology of servility and lordship. The author’s views on national life are summarized along with the influence of Christian hagiography on Gogol. An overview of the literary works that influenced the creation of “Lackeyskaya” is provided. The article highlights the constant nature of the socia lproblems raised in the play for all of Gogol’s work; the educational, “parable-like” (in Gogol’s understanding of the word) idea of “Lackeyskaya” and its autobiographical subtext are noted. Special attention is paid to the religious scope of the playand the polemical reflection in it of the ideas of the Scottish economist A. Smith on the industrial division of labor. An article by an unknown author on the position of serfs in Little Russia, preserved in the writer’s papers, was used as a separate source that served as material for Gogol’s creation of images of servants. In an “unexpected” way, the “inconspicuous” “Lackeyskaya” finds itself in the midst of Gogol’s years-long deliberations. The main result of Gogol’s artistic analysis is summarized in the conclusion that a person finds his dignity in the Church and in the service of God, whereas a society without God turns a person into a “lackey.”

Keywords: Nikolai Gogol, Alexander Pushkin, Adam Smith, comedy, satire, artistic ethnography, parable, realism, society, hierarchy, division of labor, socio-political views, Western influence, hagiography, spiritual heritage

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The article analyzes an episode in which Razumikhin suggests that in order to save himself from hunger and poverty Raskolnikov translate from German half of a pamphlet, which he eventually calls “Is a Woman Human?” The researchers found that here Dostoevsky was referring to Eliseev’s “Inner Review” and Agrippa Nettesheim’s book “On the Nobility and the Advantage of the FemaleSex,” but interpreted this reference as the most general indication of the relevance of the subject of women at the time of the novel’s creation and suggested that Dostoevsky must have considered Eliseev’s direct reference to Agrippa’s book a hoax. The article shows that this “funny” and “transient” episode is very important in the ideological structure of the novel and was conceived by the author in an almost unchanged form from the ver ybeginning, that is, it represents one of the key ideological structures of the work. It is also shown that Dostoevsky read and extensively used in “Crime and Punishment” not only Eliseev’s “Review” (i.e., to remove the romantic flair from the theory of “two categories”), but also Agrippa’s book. The latter is confirmed by the discovery of allusions to those parts of the text that were not quoted by Eliseev — allusions present in very significant places of Dostoevsky’s novel that cannot be fully understood without taking this book into account, and vice versa, gaining clarity in its light. Such, for example, is the mention of Abraham before Raskolnikov’s final cordial address to Sonya. The article also suggests that Dostoevsky had read other books by Agrippa as well.

Keywords: Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov, Sonya Marmeladova, the structure of deep text, book within a book, reading of heroes, writings of heroes, Agrippa of Nettesheim, On the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex, Grigory Eliseev, Internal Review, Song of the Virgin Mary, the children of Abraham

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The article examines how L. N. Tolstoy, relying on a folklore source, created an independent work of fiction reflecting the key provisions of his religious, philosophical and aesthetic doctrine of the 1880. Special attention is paid to the mechanisms of poetic processing of the source text, including symbolic reorientation, structural shifts and a change in the genre nature of the short story. The analysis is based on the handwritten history of the work, including autographs and copies, as well as a comparison with the folk legend recorded by A. N. Afanasyev. The article analyzes in detail the artistic techniques, using which Leo Tolstoy reworked the folk legend in the short story “A seed as big as a hen’s egg:” he intensified the symbolic meaning of key images (in particular, grain), shifted the focus of the narrative from royal power to folk wisdom, introduced additional characters such as sages, and changed the structure, endowing it with the features of a philosophical parable, in which his socio-moral and religious beliefs are expressed. Special attention is paid to the title of the story and its role in the interpretative framework of the text. In the context of Tolstoy’s aesthetic views (“What is art?”, “So what should we do?”). The work is interpreted as a philosophical parable expressing utopian ideas about the “golden age,” the moral superiority of the people and criticism of social inequality. In the folk stories by Leo Tolstoy, artistic simplicity is combined with a deep philosophical content and an educational mission, which makes it possible to consider the short story “A seed as big as a hen’s egg” not only as a revision of folklore material, but also as an independent work with a pronounced author’s position. Despite its conceptual richness and important place in Tolstoy’s religious and philosophical system of views of the 1880s, the short story “A seed as big as a hen’s egg” still remains poorly understood in Russian literary criticism and requires a comprehensive poetic and textual analysis, taking into account its handwritten history, folklore sources and the aesthetic context of the epoch. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the comprehensive analysis of a short story, including textual and poetic aspects, as well as its connection with Tolstoy’s philosophical and economic ideas.

Keywords: Leo Tolstoy, short story, folklore, poetics, aesthetics, textual criticism, philosophical parable, spiritual crisis, poetics of the title

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The article demonstrates how exactly the “funny” is transformed into the “sad” in Chekhov’s prose. The fragmentation of Chekhov’s character is manifested in the story “Fat and Thin.” The intonation, syntactic and semantic textual traces of such division are demonstrated. They foreshadow the transfor mations that occur later in the literature of the Silver Age. The changes in the text from the first edition to the second are traced. The receptive mechanisms of the laughter-related aesthetic effect are studied. The traditional algorithm of sociological reading of the story, which is based on the concept of the “little man” (which brings out the Gogol tradition to the forefront in Chekhov’s work), is revised. This algorithm does not take into account the cardinal shifts in Chekhov’s poetics, which were continued in 20th-centuryliterature. However, along with the transformation, Chekhov still inherits a certain line in the his tory of Russian literature. It is incorrect to call this line “Gogolian,” localizing it exclusively to the 19th century, because in the great period of Russian culture this “line” can be designated as the author’s inheritance of the Christian tra dition in the understanding of man.

Keywords: Chekhov, “little man”, Silver Age, sociality, Christian tradition, text, intonation, subtext, reception, reader

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The article examines the use of untransliterated lexemes, idioms and phraseological combinations, quotations from monuments of classical literature, and reminiscences of ancient literature in the works of various genres written by the poet in different years; the expression of the Greek-Latin language culture in Kuzmin’s poetics is clarified. The Greek and Latin inclusions perform not only structural and intertextual functions, but also enrich the content, filling the central images of the works with “eternal” semantics. Each of the considered expressions (Sine sole sileo, Victori Duci, et coetera, Θάλασσα, Ἄβραξας, Pax Romana, Fides Apostolica…, Orbis pictus, Natura naturans…, Ultima Thule) has a unique meaning: from metaphors of creativity and the image of a spiritual mentor to an erotic allusion, a symbol of secret knowledge, imperial myth, confessional motif and cultural memory. Kuzmin’s sources of Greek and Latin phraseology included epic poems and lyrical texts written by ancient authors (Virgil, Horace), Greek historiography (Herodotus, Xenophon), idiomatic expressions assimilated from Latin in Russian poetic works (A. Fet, K. Balmont), as well as the Philosophical thesaurus of European thought of the New Age (B. Spinoza) based on the Latin lexis. Kuzmin’s interest in antiquity was preserved throughout his creative path, as manifested in various forms and under various circumstances, and the Greek and Latin languages, along with the languages of modern Romanesque cultures, are the foundation of hislanguage skills.

Keywords: Greco-Latin phraseology, Latin, Ancient Greek, linguapoetics, idiostyle, intertextuality, allusion, plot, motif, Horace, Virgil

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Nikolai Erdman’s friend Mikhail Bulgakov once called him “the Sukhovo-Kobylin of the 20th century.” There are certainly sufficient grounds for this comparison. However, he could equally well be called “the Gogol of the 20th century.” Erdman’s dramatic legacy has already revealed many corrobo rations of this idea of him. Particularly indicative in this regard is his famous play “The Suicide” (1928), which was never staged during the playwright’s lifetime. The nature of the creative dialogue between Nikolai Erdman and Nikolai Gogol in this play is the subject of the first section of this article. Howe ver, Erdman owes the central conflict of his play not to Gogol, but to Dostoev sky. This idea is expressed in the article through numerous textual comparisons. On the one hand, they confirm and illustrate the significant intertextual connections of Erdman’s famous play with one of the most famous novels of Dostoevsky’s “Great Pentateuch.” On the other hand, they are intended to reveal the nature of Erdman’s creative refraction of this “Dostoevsky” theme within the framework of his dramatic work. Apparently, this refraction has a multi faceted and multi-aspect nature. It includes the stylization of one character (Fedya Pitunin) as Kirillov (and partly, apparently, as Smerdyakov), and the travesty of Kirillov in the image of Podsekalnikov. At the same time, it seems that the internal affirmation by Dostoevsky himself of the ideal of “living life” latent in “Demons” is reproduced in the image of Podsekalnikov through his comically played-up love of life. When juxtaposed with Kirillov, Semyon Se myonovich does not in any way contradict the artistic logic of the creator of this image. So, despite all of Podsekalnikov’s parody of Kirillov, Erdman only seems to negate Dostoevsky, but in essence, internally identifies with him.

Keywords: Nikolai Erdman, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Gogol, The Suicide, play, novel, pretext

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The research aims to reveal the philosophical and religious founda tions of V. Dudintsev’s novel “White Garments,” which manifests the Easter archetype of Russian literature. The triad “Law — Iniquity — Grace” is imple mented in the text of the novel. Its characters, primarily the scientist Fyodor Ivanovich Dezhkin, advance from the Old Testament Adam to a man redeemed by the sufferings and resurrection of Christ. The novel shows how the submis sive and thorough execution of legalistic attitudes, correlated with both Old Testament images and the image of the grand Inquisitor, which clearly indicates the connection of V. Dudintsev’s work with F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov,” can lead to a descent into Lawlessness, forcing a person to abandon even blood ties. As a result, a person who enforces the Law begins to imagine himself as a god who knows good and evil and has the right to control the destinies of others. To demonstrate the development of the human soul from a legalistic state to a state of grace, V. Dudintsev uses numerous biblical images (the first man Adam, Abraham, King David, Judith, striking Holofernes), quotations from the New Testament, allusions to the words of Christ about the meaning of His Easter sacrifice for people. The true knowledge of goodness occurs only through a humble willingness to sacrifice oneself, since, according to V. Dudintsev, good is suffering, the fruit of which is true happiness, inaccessible to those who strive only for their own good. In the epilogue of the novel, the Easter worldview is embodied: sacrifice for others allows you to achieve Grace and, ultimately, overcome death.

Keywords: V. Dudintsev, White Garments, poetics, Paschal’nost’, Easter archetype, Law, Lawlessness, Grace, good, evil, biblical images, sacrifice, death, resurrection

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The article reveals the connection between modern Russian literature and its Christian cultural foundation, which is mediated by the experience of Russian classics, particularly the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky. This tradition sets the direction for the transformation and actualization of key biblical stories, particularly the Book of Job, in contemporary Russian literature. A representative example is the novel “The Candle” by Valery Zalotukha (2015). The article explores its place in the tradition of artistic and philosophical interpretation of the Christian worldview. In this regard, the Book of Job appears to be the most active element of the intertext of the modern novel and a universal key to its semantic structure. The fate of the main character in V. Zalotukha’s work fits entirely into the plot scheme of the biblical book: the testing of a righteous man by undeserved suffering. At the same time, the righteousness of the main character is presented in a comic manner, which refers to a range of typologically similar characters (from Don Quixote to Prince Myshkin). The novel also features the author’s search for a hero, which is in line with the tradition of the Küns- tlerroman. The overall meaning of the novel “The Candle” as a story about a man’s journey to God is structured as a combination of these two narrative structures. In accordance with the Russian literary tradition, particularly the tradition of Dostoevsky, this journey involves the symbolic death and spiritual resurrection of the protagonist.

Keywords: historical poetics, biblical pretext, plot, Book of Job, Dostoevsky, Valery Zalotukha, Svechka, The Candle

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In this study, the authors examine the emergence of new genres in early 20th century Iranian prose, which had no analogues in the past and still determine the vector of literary development. The works of the founder of Iranian historical novel San‘ati-zadeh Kermani form the source base of the study and clearly illustrate this process. The absence of special works on both the problem of Iranian historical novel genesis and its specific creative embodiments define the scientific novelty of the research. The socio-cultural impulses that gave rise to a radical restructuring of the entire literary system in the Persian language during this period has also remained unnoticed by specialists. The study reveals a correlation between the political renewal of Iranian society and the emergence of a new historical narrative that meets the public demand. The combination of two components in the genesis of Iranian historical novel — national medieval tradition of narrative prose (dastan) and adopted European tradition (historical novels of adventure) is a regional variant of modern formation of Eastern literatures.

Keywords: new Iranian prose, genre system, historical novel, San’ati-zadeh Kermani, problematics, genre poetics, dastan, European influence, modernization, ideology, Reza Shah Pahlavi

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