Volume 83, Nº 6 (2024)

The article, which continues the problems of our 2021 paper of the same name, analyzes examples that testify to the unreliability and even danger of old non-linguistic editions of monuments of Old Russian writing, primarily due to arbitrary emendations and conjectures of the text, often introduced by publishers without any reservations. Among such conjectures, the author analyzes the imaginary ancient fixation of the word kondakar in the record to a Stiherarium of the 12^th century, which hides a unique use of the previously unknown conjunction ponda ‘however’, allegedly the oldest examples of the nom. pl. masc. on -a in the Chronicle of Avraamka of the 15^th century, which entered scientific circulation due to the incorrect disclosure of superimposed letters by the first publishers, as well as three cases of the hypercorrect “restoration” of the preposition vъ in primordial constructions with locative and accusative without prepositions in the canonical edition of the Laurentian Chronicle of 1377. The article ends with a conclusion about the need for new linguistic editions of the main written monuments and the importance of turning to the manuscript tradition.

The “Dictionary of the language of Russian Poetry (the 20^th century)”, which is being created as an explanatory concordance, not only (unlike earlier concordances) contains full contexts from selected sources, but also provides a large amount of linguistic and historical and cultural information included in the commenting areas of the dictionary entry. The dictionary has a consolidated character, describes the language of ten major poets of the Silver Age: I. Annensky, A. Akhmatova, A. Blok, S. Yesenin, M. Kuzmin, O. Mandelstam, V. Mayakovsky, B. Pasternak, V. Khlebnikov, M. Tsvetaeva. The article analyzes the types of comments in the dictionary of poetic language, their place in the dictionary entry and their role in understanding the poetic text.

The article is devoted to a particular issue within the framework of the voluminous theme “Turgenev and Flaubert”. This issue is based on a well-known fact, namely: the Russian writer’s refusal to translate Flaubert’s story “Simple Soul”, which was part of cycle called “Three Tales” and was combined with two others (“Legend of St. Julian” and “Herodias”) the problem of holiness. Turgenev was also interested in the phenomenon of holiness, especially the question of its representation in modern life. At the legendary level, which is presented in “Legend of St. Julian” and “Herodias”, Turgenev found Faubert’s position close. Turgenevʼs interest in translating these two texts was primarily determined by their stylistic novelty, which was a difficult task for him, but was an extremely useful school. Within the framework of the aesthetics of the simple and everyday narrative, in which Flaubert’s “Simple Soul” was executed, telling about the unexpected transformations of an ordinary person into a saint, Turgenev did not consider it productive to reflect. Nevertheless, in the early 1850s, long before he undertook to translate Flaubert and, in principle, before meeting the French writer, Turgenev was developing the theme of “Sancta Simplisitas”. The article presents a brief overview of the unrealized plot by Turgenev about the poet-painter, who, being a completely simple person who had not read a single book, suddenly composed highly spiritual Easter poems. The unconvincing nature of this character, which gradually acquired comic features, was the reason for Turgenev’s refusal to develop the plot. But the writer returned to the plot about Lukerya, also conceived in the early 1850s, shortly before starting work on the translations of Flaubert. The heroine of “Living Relics” is somewhat reminiscent of Philicite, but her holiness is due to her real, unquestioned closeness to Christ. Nevertheless, she represents an “unrecognized saint”, just like Flaubert’s heroine. The article proves, by updating Turgenev’s early plans addressed to the problem of Sancta Simplicitas, that he perfectly understood the complexity of this artistic task, therefore the high assessments from George Sand and I. Taine of his Lukerya did not open his eyes on what he wrote, but confirmed the correctness of the path. As a writer, he did not agree with Flaubert’s artistic tactics in terms of depicting a modern “unrecognized saint”, since this could be fraught with unacceptable comedy in this case, which is what happened with Chekhov in “Darling”, which researchers consider as a cryptoparody of Flaubert’s “A Simple Soul”.

The article examines allusions and textual borrowings in V.V. Nabokov’s prose, the source of which is the poetry of V.F. Khodasevich. Attention is focused on those borrowings that are associated with the design of the idea of otherworldliness. Since both writers did not explicitly declare their philosophical views, it is difficult to identify the ontological nature of the second reality in their works. But it is obvious that both make the subject of the image the possibility of a different, more harmonious dimension of being. In general, for Khodasevich, its achievement is possible when going beyond the visible world, and for Nabokov, when subjectively transforming reality. It is shown that the “textile” metaphor of otherworldliness as a hidden pattern or the underside of life could have been suggested to Nabokov by Khodasevich’s poem “Without Words”. We have traced the roll calls in the implementation of the motives of death-flight, transforming reflection in a mirror surface, transcendence, etc. Special attention is paid to the refraction of the cross-cutting plot about the soul from Khodasevich’s book “Heavy Lyre” in V.V. Nabokov’s novel “Invitation to a Beheading”.

In this article the author examines the reception of J.-L. Borgesʼ concept of “forking paths” in P. Austerʼs contemporary novel “The Night of the Oracle”. The “forking paths” become the main principle by which the readerʼs interaction with the text is modeled in the novel. “Night of the Oracle” problematizes linear reading which is more familiar to the reader and includes elements that stimulate the reader to move through the text non-linearly, disrupting the usual course. Such elements in the novel are footnotes included in its paratext. The paratext in the novel is problematized: it not only switches the readerʼs attention from the main text to its “threshold” (in terms of G. Genette), not only stimulates him to move forward, then back, not only puts an emphasis on choice as a kind of experience offered to the reader. The paratext (in the form of footnotes) turns out to be included in the diegetic world of the novel, it now creates those forks, those “forking paths” along which the reader is invited to walk, discovering variations of the events already presented in the novel. However, the functions of footnotes in the novel are not limited to this: they either vary the events of the novel, or, on the contrary, “throw” the reader out of the diegetic world, preventing him from immersing (in M.L. Ryanʼs terms) in the events presented in the narrative. Footnotes, in addition, include comments on the events already described, are designed to expand the context of what is happening in the novel, are (in some cases) an “optional” addition that is offered to the reader to vary his own “path through the text”. Due to this involvement of paratextual elements in the novel, the reader is always in the process of choosing, in captivity of variations that cover both his own movement through the text, but also the events taking place directly in the novel. The experimental use of paratext in a novel thus problematizes the readerʼs experience, making it more heterogeneous, but also complicates the representation of narrative events.