No 1 (2023)

Preface to the block of articles.

The article is a publication of spells. The texts were discovered in Verkhnyaya Zolotitsa, Primorsky District, Arkhangelsk Region, in 2018 by the Pushkinskij Dom expedition. The spells were written on separate sheets of notebook paper in the middle of the 20^th century. The records contain 30 healing spells, love spells and spells for livestock.

The article analyzes the discussions concerning the prospects of publishing the Persian epic Shahnameh at the meetings of the Eastern Department of Vsemirnaya Literatura Publishing House in 1919. Based on the data from A. M. Gorky Archives, Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the chronology of the consideration of proposals for the translation of Firdousi’s epos, as well as of the discussions between the two reviewers, two employees of the Vsemirnaya Literatura Publishing House, N. S. Gumilyov and F. A. Rosenberg, have been reconstructed. As the result of this debate, N. S. Gumilyov came up with a suggestion to re-translate Shahnameh.

Publication of a previously unknown letter to Gorky, informing him about the arrest of M. L. Lozinsky, translator and editor of Vsemirnaya Literatura Publishing House, is a reconstruction of the events of August 1921, that are relevant to the fate of N. S. Gumilyov. The article traces the fate of the persons involved, as well as elucidates certain details.

Joseph de Maistre, who found himself in the diplomatic service in Russia after the events of the French Revolution, used the high-society salons of St. Petersburg to established connections at court, and corresponded with the key figures of the time. The Savoy envoy earned a reputation of an advocate of Catholicism, and numerous conversions in the highest circles of the Russian society are attributed to his influence. His correspondence with Roxana Sturdza differs, however, from the messages addressed to other members of the Russian aristocracy of that time, and deserves separate consideration due to the variety of communication strategies of the Savoyard diplomat. Letters to Roxana cover almost the entire period of Joseph de Maistre’s stay in Russia, with the first one dating back to 1805 and the last one referring to 1817; apart from the personal relations of the correspondents, the letters let us trace the impact that the historical events of Alexander I’s reign made on the patterns of communication between the diplomat and the Emperor’s lady-in-waiting.

The article studies the correspondence within the circle of friends of the young I. V. Kireevsky in the literary context of the 1820s-1830s. The data are primarily considered against the background of the correspondence between A. S. Pushkin and the members of the Arzamas circle. It is suggested that, on the one hand, the epistolary communication of the Kireevsky circle features the general trends of the development of the genre of friendly writing (literary game, «buffoonery», the principle of chatter, etc.), and on the other hand, it is somewhat original. «Buffoonery» tends to combine with intimacy. Since the epistolary communication was centered around the inner worlds and relationships of the correspondents, rather than around literary issues, it became more personal and multidirectional, opening up new prospects for the development of the epistolary genre.

The article examines the organization of the conflict in Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka and in Mirgorod, which is based on the historically determined «self-sufficiency» of the middle generation of the Cossacks. Prolonging their «zenith», the «fathers» hinder dynastic evolution as they neglect the heroic past, deny women the joys of motherhood and disenfranchise their sons. In order to break his father’s resistance and to marry, Gogol’s protagonist appeals to his forebears and passes a test, in which the distinction between filial affection and sensuality plays a crucial role.

The focal point of the article is the recording of the artists’ experiences in their socially- and politically-charged works, that have certain traits of publicism and are supposed to make a direct impact on the reader and the viewer (and, eventually, on the public opinion as well). The article demonstrates the stark difference in conveying the social and political issues between Tolstoy’s wartime prose and Vereshchagin’s battle paintings and wartime essays, and shows that Vereshchagin, a newtype artist, a man of the new age of science, business and politics, does not as much follow Tolstoy’s traditions, but breaks them.

The article analyzes a poem by O. Mandelstam Today We Can Remove Dekalkomani... (1931) in connection with I. Ilf’s story The Prodigal Son is Returning Home (1930). The image of a motorcycle serves as a symbol of the new era both in the poem and in the story. Ilf’s short story provides a prolific background for the in-depth understanding of Mandelstam’s poem, it makes «religious» motif in the poem more prominent.

The article, which has as its subject the collection Kolyma Stories by V. T. Shalamov, analyzes the physical space motifs of Kolyma. Using the concepts of Culture 1 and Culture 2, introduced by V. Paperny, the author shows how the concentration camp, which belongs to Culture 2, distorts the nature of the prisoner belonging to Culture 1.

The article deals with the history of the industrial novel in Russia, from the emergence of the genre in the beginning of the 20^th century to the decay of the Soviet age, and focuses on the rise of a new interest in the topic of labor in the contemporary Russian literature. The author of the article comments both on the novels about nowadays and novels about the history of the industrial works. The author believes that what we are witnessing is not the Cultural recycling of the Soviet experience as such but a form of Cultural recycling that routinely occurrs at the next stage of development of any genre.

The paper shows that the plot of Ivan Chemnitzer’s fable The Letters is based on an anecdote that went into wide circulation in 1779-1781, after its first publication in Annales Politiques, Civiles et Littéraires... Chemnitzer probably read it in the German translation, published in the Chronologen magazine. New facts suggests that the fable dates back to 1780 — the first half of 1782. Chemnitzer’s fable is rather different from its source in terms of plot as well as idea. While the anecdote is about a simple inscription that highbrow scholars find too difficult to interpret, the fable features a king who deliberately propounds a riddle to the scholars, so as to deride their pointless sophistication.

[Review]: The Palgrave Handbook of Russian Thought / Ed. by M. F. Bykova, M. N. Forster, L. Steiner. London; New York: Palgrave Macmillan; Springer Verlag, 2021. XXVII, 814 р.

[Review]: MakeevM. S.AfanasiiFet. M.: Molodaiagvardia, 2020. 443 s. (ser. «Zhizn’ zamechatel’nykh liudei»).

Meeting Abstract

Meeting Abstract

Meeting Abstract