«Существо дотоле невиданное» (расс каз «уля» и оптическая тема в творчестве андрея платонова)1

Author(s): Evgeniy Yablokov / Language(s): Russian Issue: 6/2019

This article offers a comprehensive analysis of vision-related motifs in more than 30 works (both fictional and non-fictional) by Andrei Platonov. Its primary focus is aimed at a “children’s” short story Ulya (1939), which contains a whole series of vision-related motives representative of the writer’s artistic thinking. The analysis shows that the theme of vision combines “electromagnetic” and “ophtalmologic” discourses: the former refers, for instance, to the subject of the wholeness of the matter, while the latter consists of such motifs as “true” and “false” vision, etc. The article also explores some mythopoetic allusions in theshort story’s structure, and the relation of Ulya to literary tradition.

«Я БЕРЕЖЛИВ… ОТ НЕПРИВЫЧКИ К ДЕНЬГАМ»: ФИНАНСОВЫЙ АСПЕКТ КОМАНДИРОВКИ И. А. ГОНЧАРОВА НА ФРЕГАТЕ «ПАЛЛАДА»

Author(s): Alexey Balakin / Language(s): Russian Issue: 6/2019

This article tells the story of Ivan Goncharov’s participation in a failed voyage around the world led by vice admiral Yevfimiy Putyatin, with an emphasis on the question of how the future author of The Frigate “Pallada” (1858) profited from his position of Yevfimiy Putyatin’s secretary. Based on a whole set of previously unpublished documents found in the Russian State Navy Archive, the article shows that Goncharov’s assignment was a very lucrative one: not only did he receive a doubled remuneration and generous daily allowances while on board the “Pallada”, but also managed to charge the Russian state for his untimely return from the Eastern coast of Eurasia to Russia proper. All of those documents are published for the first time.

Одно письмо П. А. Вяземского

Author(s): Lev I. Sobolev / Language(s): Russian Issue: 6/2019

This is a prefaced and annotated preprint of a much larger corpus of Prince Pyotr Vyazemsky’s letters to the editor of the journal “Russkii arkhiv” (“Russian Archive”) Pyotr Bartenev. In this particular letter of the 6th (18th) of February, 1877, Pyotr Vyazemsky discusses some editorial matters, and reveals his caution towards his correspondent’s sentiment triggered by the Serbo-Turkish war: “Kruppovskie pushki i molitva ne ladiat mezhdu soboi” (“Krupp guns and prayers do not get along with each other”).

Вечер мерцаний

Author(s): Alexander L. Sobolev / Language(s): Russian Issue: 6/2019

This is an extensively documented record of the aftermath of a failed poetic performance called “Vecher Mertsanii” (“The Night of Glimmers”). The performance took place in Moscow on December 19th, 1907, and its failure led to the shift in the policy of “Obshchestvo svobodnoi estetiki” (“The Society of Free Aesthetics”) from something that initially encouraged all forms of artistic experiment to something entirely subordinate to the vigilant leadership of one person exercising (if not exceeding) his authority –Valery Bryusov.

Сохранить свое, не пренебрегая чужим: Культурные коды детской литературы Русской эмиграции

Author(s): Olga R. Demidova / Language(s): Russian Issue: 6/2019

The article treats the problem of the “own” and the “foreign” in culture, applying it to the history of Russian first-wave emigration in general and its children’s literature, in particular. Relying on the comparative analysis of various émigré cultural discourses and their hermeneutic reading as the methodology, as well as the vast number of sources (émigré periodicals of various ideological, aesthetic, and artistic orientation, émigré writers’ and prominent cultural figures’ memoirs), the author reconstructs the history and formal / functional paradigms of children’s literature (also understood as literature for children’s and / or family reading) during the emigration of the 1920s–1930s. Two major theoretical issues discussed in the article are the formation of the mechanisms of the cultural / literary canon amid the changed existential circumstances, and the functional shift of children’s’ literature during the diaspora towards the pedagogical rather than the aesthetic or the artistic. The undertaken analysis makes it possible to argue that the children’s’ literature canon during emigration a) preserved the traditional Russian classical literary canon, b) enriched it by means of including quite a few names and titles formerly considered “trivial”, c) included a number of “texts for children” written in exile as well as memoirs of the “good olden times” in the lost / abandoned motherland, d) made use of children’s books by foreign authors translated into Russian both before and during the exile period.

Chronograf biografii jednostkowych. O Ludmile Ulickiej

Author(s): Elżbieta Żak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 779/2020

Egy remény valóra váltása

Author(s): Zsuzsanna Kalafatics / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 01/2020

Hetényi Zsuzsa: Nabokov regényösvényein. Kalligram, Budapest, 2015., 926 oldal, 3990 Ft

Preklady ruskej detskej literatúry do slovenčiny včera, dnes – a zajtra?

Author(s): Ivana Kupková / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 1/2015

The paper deals with the development of translating Russian children’s books into Slovak in the 20th century regarding the representativeness of the translated books in the source culture. In the majority of the translated books an ideological element, more or less present in the children’s literature of the Soviet period, did not impair their artistic value. Several have even become the classics of children’s reading for Slovak children. After the year 1989 the situation has radically changed and translating of Russian children’s books almost does not exist. The lack of translators from Russian is one of the reasons.

Компјутерска игра у киберфантастици: „Лавиринт смрти“ у два романа Сергеја Лукјaненка

Author(s): Dejan Ajdačić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 169/2019

The introductory part of the text points to the characteristics of popular literature. Computer games and literary works have a two-way relationship – some literary works are inspired by computer RPG, and vice versa, RPG can be made after literary works. Games and literature bind together ludic elements and narratives, which are shaped differently in literary texts and the multi-media space of computer role-playing games. The paper points to the peculiarities of the cyberpunk novel in the Russian literature of the 1990s (Vladimir Vasilyev, Sergei Lukyanenko, Victor Pelevin, Aleksei Andreyev, Vasily Mahanenko). The multiplayer shooter game “Labyrinth of Death” in the cyberpunk novels of Sergei Lukyanenko Labyrinth of Reflections (1997, Labirint otraženij) and False mirrors (1999, Faljšivye zerkala) is the part of the virtual world Deeptown. The author analyzes the relationship between the non-virtual world, the secondary virtual world’s city Deeptown, and the game “Labyrinth of Death,” the ideas of the diver Leonid (freedom for everyone in the virtual world), the narrative strategy of presenting the scenarios and the Masters of the game, as well as the intermedia aspects of the reception of two analyzed novels by Sergey Lukyanenko.

Ivan Karamazov, Pavel Smerdiakov și paricidul metafizic

Author(s): Ion-Luca Mangiulea / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 4/2017

Ivan Karamazov is the only culprit of the murder around which the story of the Brothers Karamazov is organized. This is how the author thinks to prove the danger inherent in the ideas of his most complex character. But how can one affirm that while knowing that Smerdyakov is the one who commits the parricide? In this paper, we propose an interpretation of crime as the product of the master - slave dialectic that takes place between Ivan Karamazov and Pavel Smerdyakov, a dialectic whose fulfillment represents the annihilation of the two characters. By showing that the narrative includes a metaphysical dimension that structures the the characters’ actions, as well as their encounters, we point out that Ivan's nihilism directs the crime comitted by Smerdyakov, the latter being guilty only by mediation.

Estetica urâtului în proza lui Iuri Mamleev

Author(s): Florentina Marin / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2/2019

The objective of the present article is to decipher the main stylistic procedures used by Yuri Mamleev in his prose to generate the aesthetics of the ugly, and also to pinpoint the social, cultural and spiritual references which trigger the use of this type of aesthetics in the second half of the twentieth century. In one of Mamleev’s best known novels, The Idlers, the ugliness can be easily observed at the narrative as well as the linguistic levels. Having the murderer at the centre of his creation just like Dostoyevsky a century before him, Mamleev reveals the darkest side of the human nature – narcissism, monstrous corporality, the obscene, lunacy, proving that he gathered a rich bouquet of fleurs du mal, as Viktor Erofeev noticed later. Fuelled by the continuous search for the mysterious Unknown which comes after death, the homicides committed by the main hero and the endless discussions about the religion of “I” reveal the loss of spiritual values during the age of complete atheism in Russia. The importance of Mamleev’s works for posterity resides in the fact that they managed to successfully encapsulate the human condition of that time.

БАЛЛАДЫ И. И. ДМИТРИЕВА: ЖАНРОВЫЕ СТРАТЕГИИ И ТАКТИКИ

Author(s): Aleksey Vladimirovich Petrov,Olga Yurievna Kolesnikova / Language(s): Russian Issue: 1/2021

Using the comparative historical and retrospective methods the authors of the article investigate six poetic texts written between 1790 and 1805 by I. I. Dmitriev. All these works display the traits of the ballad and can be considered the ultimate texts for the Russian ballad genre at the preromantic stage of its development. The purpose of the article is to define the general concept of the ballad genre, in a way that it could be perceived by Dmitriev, and to reveal specific ways of its implementation. One of these ways was the creation of a “hybrid”, for example, of a narrative poem and a ballad. Dmitriev’s poem “Ermak” is one of such “hybrids”, with some characteristics of the ode as well. In three Dmitriev’s “true-story ballads” it is possible to see the signs of the parable, the melodrama, and the novella. The“novelistic true story” based on social material without addressing the “miraculous” or the fantastic attracted Dmitriev’s particular interest. Gradual shift from the attributes of other genres resulted in the birth of the unique Russian ballad based on national (both historical and modern) material, with Dmitriev’s “Ancient love” (1805) being one of the examples of such “genuine” ballad. Surprisingly, Dmitriev very quickly realized that the evolving ballad genre had rich potential for parody (“Retired sergeant”). In all his ballads, Dmitriev consistently used the suggestive technique, in particular suspense – the creation of an anxious, tense atmosphere or fear with the help of both verbal and extralinguistic means. All Dmitriev’s balladoids are connected by the subject of death, the interest in which became a cultural phenomenon of the era of sentimentalism and preromanticism. The signs of the early Russian ballad and ballad “techniques”established in the article will allow to include into the “ballad context” of the turn of the XIX century more works than is now accepted by scholars.

СЮРРЕАЛИСТИЧЕСКИЙ ТЕЗАУРУС В ПОЭЗИИ В. КОНДРАТЬЕВА: ЛОГИКА И СПОСОБЫ ОБЪЕКТИВАЦИИ СЮРРЕАЛИСТИЧЕСКОГО ВЫСКАЗЫВАНИЯ

Author(s): Oleg Sergeevich Gorelov / Language(s): Russian Issue: 1/2021

The article analyzes the principles of thesaurus building for surrealist concepts in the poetry of V. Kondratiev.The history of the main concepts of surrealism – dream, imagination, objective case (anticipation), dream, rêve,eye, mirror, flâneuring journey, memory and oblivion, childhood, love – is taken into account by the poet on an intentional level, but does not unfold in the texts, therefore such concepts are included in the composition of the statement both as foreign elements with altered motivation and as natural, regular words of the artistic discourse. Kondratiev uses them to fill the poetic thesaurus not only of his poetry, but of Russian poetry in general. In Kondratiev’s surrealist thesaurus,the polyvalent concept of desert attracts particular attention. On the one hand, the poet actualizes the very meaning of emptiness, building dialogic connections in the field of world and Russian poetry. On the other hand, the concept of desert is developed into the surrealistically processed and arranged image of sand and motif of wind, coupled with the motif of human breath (birth), which creates a subjective trigger – children’s images. Due to the the saurusbuilding process, Kondratiev’s verses reveal an example of mimetic surrealism, rare for Russian poetry. Elements traditionally associated with prose penetrate and shape the poetic text. The point here is not just about the prosaization of poetry, but about the objectification and mimetization of surrealist and, more broadly, shift statements in the field ofpoetry.

«Свет Без Пламени»: Лестница Якова Л. Улицкой И Доктор Живаго Б. Пастернака

Author(s): Tünde Szabó / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2019

In her interviews and essays, Ulitskaya has often alluded to the great effect that Pasternak’s poetry, and especially Doctor Zhivago, has had on her. In one of the episodes of her novel The Big Green Tent, she describes a first encounter with Pasternak’s novel; the teacher of literature who plays a decisive role in the lives of the main characters reads a manuscript copy of the novel and describes it as a worthy continuation of 19th-century Russian prose. The parallels between the novels The Big Green Tent and Doctor Zhivago have al- ready been the subject of scholarly attention but the connection between Jacob’s Ladder and the Pasternak novel has not been studied so far. In this study, I examine this connec- tion: on the one hand, at the level of macrostructures, the chronotope, the patterns of the heroes’ fates and the principal thematic elements, and on the other hand, at the level of cer- tain microstructures. The latter are linked to the present-day plot of Ulitskaya’s novel and, more specifi- cally, Nora’s life. Nora reads the correspondence and notes that her grandfather left for her as well as the KGB documents about Yakov Osetsky towards the end of her life (and the plot itself). As a result of this, she wishes to write the novel that her grandfather Yakov could not due to the historical situation. The process of Nora’s confrontation with the past and her becoming a writer are coded in Ulitskaya’s text by two of the poems of the Zhivago cycle Winter Night and August and also in the related episodes of Pasternak’s novel. All of these have biographical relevance and present creation as a fundamental element of life, which is closely linked to love and death as well as metaphysical experience. The symbolic parallel of this in Zhivago’s August is the transfiguration of Jesus and “the light without a flame” that blinds the disciples. This symbolism appears in Jacob’s Ladder on two levels: first, in the stage set that Nora creates for King Lear, and second, as a concomitant of her confrontation with the past and her becoming a writer. It is in this way that the fundamental elements of Pasternak’s life and poetry play a crucial role at the level of microstructures: they provide the context and symbolism of the central question of Ulitskaya’s novel, the nature of “the essence” of the human.

Hősök és antihősök kapcsolatrendszere a klasszikus orosz irodalomban

Author(s): Ágnes Dukkon / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 1/2019

This study deals with the main characters of the works of Karamzin, Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Goncharov, Turgeniev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoi and Chekhov. First, it attempts to define the meaning of the concepts of ‘hero’ and ‘anti-hero’, drawing from the Poetics of Aristotle and the ideas of Goethe and Bakhtin. After that the paper examines the figures of the above mentioned authors. The objective of the inquiry is not to create a typology of literary heroes, or to elaborate theoretical conceptions. It focuses on the question of how these heroes are connected with their cultural environment, and what kind of meanings they communicate to the recipients. The main conclusion of this study is that at the beginning (from Karamzin up to Chekhov) the theme of the ‘hero’ and ‘anti-hero’ in the Russian literature is in close connection with the problem of moral, which step by step will combine with the sociological, psychological and metaphysical meanings. At the end of the 19th century, in Chekhov’ works we can detect the influence of existential philosophy. The specificity of these great Russian literary characters is that they point beyond their own (historical) time, giving eternal lessons for humankind.

Soviet Atlantis: Between Science Fiction and Esoteric Communities

Author(s): Stanislav Panin / Language(s): English Issue: 171/2020

Pentru o istorie a P.E.N. Club-ului Român: 3

Author(s): Dan Horaţiu Popescu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2021

The article, actually a would-be 3rd chapter of an intended piece of literary history, aims at retrieving, based on novel documents and on our own individual research, other defining moments in the history of the Romanian PEN Club, i.e. the activity with a view to consolidation in the years right after WWI. The recuperated sequences are integrated within the enlarged historical, political, social and cultural context of the time. The figure of Marcu Beza, the Romanian Anglicist and diplomat in London in the 1920s, is in close-up, together with that of Emanoil Bucuţa, the Secretary of the Romanian P.E.N in its first decade of activity, due to their determination in engaging Romanian writers in the emergent circuit of democratic values specific to western societies.

Mihail Kuzmin: Szárnyak

Author(s): Katalin Szőke / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 2/2015

In its time, the Wings became famous as the first Russian homoerotic novel and at the same time a notorious one. However, the Soviet reading public was not able to get acquainted with it. Kuzmin belonged to the category of the prohibited authors; consequently the re-discovery of his novel in his homeland could not happen before the 1990s. On the one hand, I regard Mihail Kuzmin’s novelette as an educational novel (Erziehungsroman), on the other hand, an initiation novel. On this point Kuzmin’s work is also attached to the tradition of the Russian novel of the 19th century, on the other, as novel-initiation, it is an initiation-novel to the Russian symbolist novels. This dual linkage marches through all of the elements of the prose-structure, including the relating- and quotation systems. In Kuzmin’s novel it is not attached rite that may be led back to the mythological and other traditions, “initiation” is a process, in which, beside the characters, likewise the works of art, operas, literature and particularly fine arts play important role, since the cultural content required for the initiation mediates through them. The main character of the novelette, Vanya, understands “nature” with the help of “dual reflexion” provided by the works of art, and consequently her own nature, and accepts the homoerotic relationship itself.

„Azon a boldog napon...”

Author(s): Gyöngyi Mikola / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 2/2015

The study deals with one of the most determining poetic categories of Nabokov’ s early period, with happiness. With the analysis of Nabokov’s short story, entitled Sounds, it examines how the topic motive of happiness emerges in the first place in Nabokov’s prose. Besides close reading of the text, it touches upon those narratological procedures that will also be determining later in Nabokov’s prose. In the course of the analysis the complicated correlation between the state of happiness, the increased perception and the creation is revealed, not regardless of the young Nabokov’s psychological studies, above all of William James’s works. Beside all these, the analysis mentions the most important Russian literary references and allusions, makes an attempt at interpreting the further writing of Tolstoy’s, Chekhov’s, Tyutchev’s and Mandelstam’s works in the Sounds.

Irodalmi határátlépések Ljudmila Ulickaja életművében

Author(s): Edit V. Gilbert / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 2/2015

I start to undo the inter-text mains of today’s indisputable star of the Russian literature, Ljudmila Ulickaja’s, slightly touching the questions of her popularity, her lecture and belletristic character, her recipient groups and the framework aspects of her oeuvre. I try to explore the structure, registers, border crossings, and borders of the oeuvre by starting from Tolstoy’s allusions, through the Chekhov-reminiscences, by mentioning the contemporary parallels − by making the existential manifestations of the spiritual experience transposed into literary as the main subject.