The Problems of Historical Poetics

7-70

Authors: Tatyana G. Malchukova

The article analyzes the plot of husband’s return to his wife’s wedding embodied both in the millenary Ancient epic literature represented by the “Odyssey” of Homer, and in the Russian and Slavic epic. The study of Homer’s epic heritage, conducted over the years, includes a huge number of works of scientists around the world. Comparative-historical, comparativegenetic and comparative-typological studies found a link between oral folk tradition and epic poetry written by an author. The current international science is developing the hypothesis that professionally individual Homeric poems, which are at least 850 years old, were created in the ancient, oral poetry improvisation in a precise format of hexameter. The study of the Russian epic has less history, but the researches in this field have revealed the presence of Late Antiquity elements in the Slavic environment. These elements along with paganism and Christianity became the source of the people’s spiritual culture. The plot “the return of her husband”, which is analyzed in the article, is widely-spread in folklore of many nations, and appeared rudimentarily in “The Odyssey”. The western and eastern variants of this theme are diverse in genre structure and stylistic features. In Russian tradition the plot is presented in a large thematic variety “Dobrynya and Alyosha”, which evolves into the epic genre due to contamination, small inserts in the epic genre. As a result, the great volume brings together the olden time and the ancient epic, creating intermediate forms comparable with the author’s imitations.

87-97

Authors: Olga V. Zakharova

In the 18th century, Russian literature was actively exploring folklore genres and characters. The bylina was one of the forms of interaction between folklore and literary genres. Some bogatyrs became literary characters. The 18th century epic tradition is known due to  the collection of Kirsha Danilov (1804) and the publication of “Byliny v  zapisiakh i pereskazakh XVII–XVIII vekov” (Bylinas in the Records and Retellings of the 17th–18th centuries) edited by A. M. Astakhova (1960). This fact gives an opportunity for raising the issue of the correlation of written and printed texts with the oral tradition recorded by collectors and folklorists. The article presents a comparative analysis of oral and written prosaic adaptations of the “Chernigov” version of the plot “Ilya Muromets and Nightingale the Robber” that remained similar to the oral tradition. Handwritten and printed publications of the records of the 18th century bylinas show that there was an active appropriation of epic plots, characters, themes, topics, formulas and concepts in Russian literature. This became apparent in the genre transformations of the bylina, development of its genre content in short novels, folk tales, fairy tales, operas and poems as well as in written and oral prosaic retellings and adaptations.

108-121

Authors: Yulia A. Rostovtseva

The article studies the utopia of Prince M. M. Shcherbatov “Journey to the land of Ophir” (1784) in a new literary-historical way. The author explores the pedagogical ideal, represented by Ophir schools. In the centre of the study there are the “small books” containing moral and civil “catechisms”, which are taught in school along with other subjects and illustrate the essence of the Ophirian educational system. There are no special works on “catechisms” despite the fact that they often have been mentioned in academic literature. “Catechisms” are of a particular interest to the history of literature. They reflect not only the fragments of the writer’s biography, his view of modern pedagogical theories, but also describe the image of a man and citizen, the true “Son of the Motherland”. The author analyzes literary sources of “catechisms”, among which there are the works of S. Pufendorf, an Augustinian monk I. Felbiger, “Instruction” of Catherine the Great and writer’s own pedagogical texts. As a result, the author concludes that for Shcherbatov the ideal of school education was strongly connected with the truth of the Christian law.

146-160

Authors: Olga V. Zakharova

The bylina is a Russian epic song about the bogatyrs. Different genre transformations of bylinas are known in folklore: prosaic narrations [pobyval’shchiny], bogatyr tales, legends about the bogatyrs, lubok tales about the feats of the bogatyrs and knights. In the early 19th century, Russian literature was actively absorbing epic images and motives: the bogatyrs were turning into characters of novellas, literary tales, poems, novels, operas. Some poets and writers were attempting to develop the bylina as a literary genre. Their genre search was a creative imitation of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign [“Slovo o polku Igoreve”] published in 1800 and in some cases of the Collection of Kirsha Danilov (1804). One of the first attempts was Gavrila R. Derzhavin’s work Dobrynya, Dramatic Musical Performance in Five Acts [“Dobrynya, teatral’noe predstavlenie s muzykoyu, v pyati deystviyakh”, 1804]. Glorifying the idea of the state, the poet composes a work where epic and literary characters act and the plot is derived not only from bylinas and tales, but also from chivalric novels. In Stepan S. Andreev’s poem Levsil, a Russian Bogatyr [“Levsil, russkiy bogatyr’”, 1807] the hero is not only a folkloric (epic and fabulous) character, but also a literary one. Alexander F. Veltman’s novel Koshchei the Immortal. A Bylina of the Old Times [“Koshchey bessmertnyy. Bylina starogo vremeni”, 1833] was an ingenious genre experiment. The word ‘bylina’ was used in its title in the literary genre meaning for the first time ever. The genre of Easter novella Ilya Muromets. A Tale from the Rus’ of the Bogatyrs [“Il’ya Muromets. Skazka Rusi bogatyrskyi”, 1836] by Vladimir I. Dahl emerged from a complicated interaction of the tale, the bylina, the Old Russian novella and the hagiography. The literary transformations of folkloric genre stemmed from the authors’ imaginative need to create a national and historical myth, conjecture the ‘fabulous’ history and imagine what happened in the old preliterate times.

174-197

Authors: Sergey V. Syzranov

The article seeks to elaborate a methodological approach to the creative work of Fyodor Dostoevsky, corresponding to dialectical nature of the writer’s artistic world perception. Dostoevsky’s formula “the whole emerges as a hero” is regarded as an architectonic model of his poetics. The author reveals the dialectical and mythological content of various aspects of this model, discovers the moments of community of Dostoevsky’s “realism in the best sense of the term” and Losev’s absolute dialectics. In the light of Losev’s teaching Dostoevsky’s formula is modified according to the dialectical model of a tragic myth. In the structure of the formula there are consistently explicated cosmological, anthropological, Christological, ecclesiological, and pneumatological aspects. These aspects trace back to a number of works of the writer (the novel “Poor People”, the tale “A Faint Heart”, the story “A Little Hero”, the novel “The Idiot”). There is demonstrated the dialectical unity of the intuitions of faith and knowledge in Dostoevsky’s artistic experience.

234-252

Authors: Valentina I. Gabdullina

The article analyzes Dostoevsky’s novel “The Insulted and Humiliated” in terms of functioning of the prodigal daughter motif in its narrative structure, dating back to the Gospel text and Pushkin’s pretext. The author finds several interpretative variants of the prodigal daughter motif, each one represented by different narrators in various genre models: from a sentimental melodrama (Ivan Petrovich) and a romantic story with a tragic ending (Nelly) to “a charming anecdote” (duke Valkovsky) and an adventure story, stylized of “skomoroshina” (Masloboev). In addition, the text of the novel contains a lyrical story “Bell” by Ya. P. Polonsky, which presents a poetic (romance) version of the traditional motif. In the novel, opening a new period of his works, Dostoevsky appraises the possibilities of a polyphonic art system, using the “eternal story” of the prodigal daughter for that purpose. Analysis of the narrative structure of the novel makes it possible to observe how the author matches different narrative strategies, making the text of the work a kind of “a test area” for creating a new novelistic form.

271-286

Authors: Olga V. Zakharova

Dostoevsky’s role in Russian folklore studies has been a research subject both for folklorists and literary scholars for a long time: in criticism, they have determined the range of folklore sources, ideas, genres, plots, motives, topics the writer conveyed in his works. Among his creative inventions we should mention his original conception of the bylina as a folklore and literary genre. In his assimilation of folklore, Dostoevsky exceeded the bounds of the traditional interpretation of folklorism. He was the only one who pointed out such a characteristic of the bylina as contiguity “with the supreme beauty, with the beauty of the ideal”. The bylina expresses “the whole world view of the nation”, “its ideals of heroes, tsars, people’s defenders and patrons, images of valour, humility, love and sacrifice”. Relying on the folklore conception, Dostoevsky developed his conception of the bylina as a literary genre that could express the meaning of Russian history, the Russian outlook on life, the Russian idea. There are no bogatyrs in his bylinas, but there are feats of ordinary people. They comprise the pivotal moments and landmark events of Russian and world history when Christianity was changing and the Russian futurity was emerging. In his opinion, such bylinas from Russian history “could be a great national book”, “could favour the revival of the Russian man’s self-consciousness”. Dostoevsky did not attain his aim; he only developed the conception of the genre and gave its literary example having enunciated the content of one of the bylinas in details. He passed his conception onto poet Maykov who could not implement their general creative idea. Despite the fact that there was no creative result, critics and poets should pay attention to the Dostoevsky’s conception of the bylina as a genre invention of the writer.

304-316

Authors: Elena A. Fedorova

The article identifies the reasons for Fyodor Dostoevsky’s appeal to the traditions of Old Russian literature in “A Writer’s Diary” during the Russian-Turkish war. One of the main reasons is seeking for national foundations of Russian spirituality. The writer learned the world of medieval literacy getting acquainted with hagiography, walking, spiritual eloquence. Later Dostoevsky reverted to the Old Russian monuments in the course of his work on the novel “The Brothers Karamazov” (in particular on the chapter “The Russian Monk”). As follows from the comparison of the texts the dominant qualities of the ideal image of a Russian saint are repentance, humility and suffering, desire for purification, spiritual ability to resist the evil. The ideal form of existence of Russian people becomes conciliarism. The type of historicism is the movement to the Last Judgment. Gospel allusions and metaphors reinforce the author’s interpretation. Thus, Dostoevsky carries on the dialogue with the evangelical word at an ideological, imaginative, genre, motive and narrative level of the text. The hallmark of the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky who followed the evangelical tradition, becomes a dialogical word.

331-350

Authors: Klavdiya V. Sizyukhina

Documentary texts describe not only the facts, but also favour their creative interpretation. It is the main stylistic feature of the so-called “documental”, non-fiction literature. Diaries and memoirs can be called one of the popular genres of non-fictional literature. Despite the artistic diversity of the memoirs, diaries are also stylistically intertextual. They contain examples of different genres: letters, chronicles, biographical portraits, fragments of recollections, writing experiences, some quotations from other literary texts and soon. The “Memoirs” and the diaries of Andrew Dostoevsky are original literary texts and they correspond to each other. Firstly, they correlate with one another chronologically. The diaries contain lots of textual references that imply the author’s work on the “Memoirs”. Secondly, both literary sources expand the narrative characteristics of the documentary genre and reveal A. M. Dostoevsky’s love to family traditions and values. “Family”, “home” are the key images both of the “Memoirs” and of the diaries. In the “Memoirs” the artistic chronotope develops from the public life towards the author’s private life (life as the change of apartments). In another way the diaries bring together family’s everyday narrations with the social life of the epoch.

368-386

Authors: Vyacheslav M. Golovko

The article studies the functional role of biblical reminiscence in Ivan S. Turgenev’s short novel “A Strange Story” (1870). A pretextual function of the Bible and interpretations of certain biblical theses, sayings and maxims are revealed through the artistic analysis of moral choice of Sophie and the embodiment of the existential motif. In the ethics of selfexpression the main character of the short novel relies on the Old Testament dogmas and evangelical preaching as well as asserts her own understanding of the necessity of self-renunciation in the name of implementation of the moral ideal. Sophie’s moral views despite being formed under the influence of religious ethics are not limited by the very ethics. Her faith in Christ is accompanied with the consciousness of her duty to people. The biblical ethics of self-dedication is based on antinomy of self-obsession and renunciation of one’s own self. The personal is sacrificed for the sake of the public. This unites Sophie with the selfless girls, participants of the populist movement, and describes the world perception of a new person of the watershed times in the “national history”.

401-420

Authors: Inna N. Mineeva

Thе article, for the first time, provides a detailed textual commentary on N. S. Leskov’s notebook with extracts from “Prologue”. The extant literary materials include extracts and abstracts from the early printed Prologue, fiction and historical literature of the 19th century, letters of European and Russian scholars and authors (Pushkin A., Tolstoy L., Pigault-Lebrun, Sher I.), devoted to doctrine matters and religious aspects, description and analysis of anthropologic categories. The autograph is the evidence of spiritual search and creative experiments of the writer. In the books the writer found endorsement of both his own ideas, and those ones that require further inner understanding, questioning and emotional upheaval. Meanwhile, studying the history, structure and contents of Prologue in the 1880s, Leskov found an exceptional existential and creative experience. The most part of the notebook shows the writer’s learning process of various examples of repentance, atonement, a sudden rebirth of a sinner, active love, the benefits of obedience, the miracle of movement of a saint in space, the phenomenon of manifestation of supernatural power and its intervention in life of a man (God, the Holy Spirit, Angels), etc. While working with Prologue texts Leskov enunciated some principles of their artistic processing (quoting “crisis”, “turning”, unusual fragments in the Church Slavonic language, emphasizing key situations by changing the name, specifying the narration, acronyms, graphic intonation). General trends in understanding of the Prologue source (ideological, imaginative, plot-compositional, stylistic), identified in the notebook, are subsequently transformed by the author in a series of “Byzantine Legends” where they receive additional semantic and functional load.

436-450

Authors: Oksana A. Sosnovskaya

The development of belles-lettres at the turn of the 19th—20th centuries is characterized by a persistent search for new spiritual and moral foundations and artistic images required for revealing the world perception typical of the epoch. One of those was the image of a scientist, that appeared in literature of that period as an artistic whole. The present work is an attempt to explore this image based on the writings of two authors — the story “Toward a new life” by I. S. Shmelev and the story “On both sides” by V. Korolenko. The works selected for analysis call to one another at different artistic levels. What they have in common is a real prototype of the image of the scientist, that was a famous botanist Timiryazev. In both works the main character is a scientist and mentor of young heroes, helping them to find their path of life. The heroes-scientists of Shmelev and Korolenko represent a new vision of the image of a man of science in literature.

477-491

Authors: Oksana A. Sosnovskaya

I. S. Shmelev began his literary career as a children’s writer, his works were published in such publications for young people as “Spring” and “Young Russia”. The article deals with Shmelev’s short novel “Toward a new life”, one of his earliest works. Scene motives of early writer’s prose are often repeated, aligned with each other. The motif of a “cherished meeting” of the a child with an adult, who becomes a mentor and assistant of the latter in choosing his way of life, is one of those recurring motifs. The article is devoted to comparative analysis of one of the central images of the story “Toward a new life” — Professor V. V. Fryazin, who became a mentor of the main character, and his real prototype K. A. Timiryazev. Comparative analysis is conducted both at the level of biographical data, and at the level of textual echoes with the writings and ideas of Timiryazev. The analytical material for the article was the short novel “Toward a new life” published in 1907. The study of its manuscripts kept in the Research Department of Manuscripts of the Russian State Library allows us to show better the relationship between the artistic image and its prototype.

507-526

Authors: Tatyana N. Kovalyova

Ivan Bunin created his “Travel Poems” — “The Bird’s Shadow” — based on the impressions of his wanderings, between 1903 and 1909, across the Middle East countries including Turkey, Judaea, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and Greece. Modern researchers present the East of Bunin’s “Travel Poems” as a certain generalized image of a “culturological aspect” which comprises the historical and cultures features of different countries of the Levant. Meanwhile, Bunin emphasized that he took his journeys to Judaea and Palestine as a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, not as mere leisure travels. The importance of the Bible East in the “Travel Poems” is also determined by the fact that the largest part of his routes and most of his essays (7 essays of 11) are related to the Holy Land. This article examines the artistic space-time of the Palestinian Essays by Bunin and reveals and characterizes the biblical chronotope and the role of the key topos of the Old Testament and the New Testament. However, the author emphasizes a special meaning of some biblical topos. These are the places associated with the key biblical events and with intentionality of author’s consciousness, which generate a broad range of the keynotes of the cycle of stories: the Valley of Josaphat as the place of the upcoming Last Judgement; the Dead Sea as the symbol of visitation of God for the people’s sins; the Judean Desert where Jesus was tempted by devil; Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Gennisaret as the cities of ancient Palestine related to the events of the Terrestrial Life of Jesus Christ. The hero’s perception of the holy places, domination of the biblical space-time in the “Travel Poems” devoted to the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, aspiration for being projected to the biblical times, unity of the hero’s chronotope with the biblical chronotope — all this indicates the extreme importance of the biblical events for the author and for the storyteller. The research of the artistic space-time continuum in the “Travel Poems” by Bunin — “The Bird’s Shadow” — helps to determine the biblical chronotope as the main space-time structure of the Palestinian Essays and of the whole cycle of stories.

537-553

Authors: Anton V. Khramykh

The first literary experiments of A. Platonov, like among many novelists of the twenties, are connected with poems, which occupy a significant place in his early works. Poems are the texts where was formed a unique style of the writer. This article analyzes the musical images and motifs from Platonov`s two books of poetry: “Blue Depth” (1922) and “The Singing Thoughts” (1926—1927). The leitmotif of the first part of the book of poems “Blue depth” is music of machines. The presence of this motive is caused by the influence of Proletkult poetry. In a number of poems in this section the music of machines is a part of the characteristics of the utopian New Town, which is being built by the proletarians. At the end of the first part of “Blue depth” appears the image of unsung songs. This image indicates to the ways of knowing of the world, which are rational-technocratic alternative ways. In the plot of the second part of this book of poetry the motif of music machines is transformed into the image of music of thought. Analysis of the cycle of poems “The Singing Thoughts” has shown that in comparison with the “Blue depth” this book has a plot where a new interaction between musical motifs and themes takes place. The development of this plot is based on the principle of a counterpoint.

570-588

Authors: Marina V. Zavarkina

A. Platonov’s artistic creation of the 1930s is called the “ordeal of utopia”. During this period, Platonov writes the short novels “The Foundation Pit” [“Kotlovan”], “For future use” [“Vprok”], “Bread and reading” [“Hleb i chtenie”], “Juvenile sea” [“Uvenil’noe more”], “Dzhan”. “The second nature” of the genre of these works in research interpretations has different names: utopia, anti-utopia, metautopia, dystopia. The article is devoted to the analysis of the genre of Andrey Platonov’s short novel “Juvenile sea” defined as quazi-utopia. Quazi-utopia is implemented through the transformation of the genre of the production novel; through struggle and conciliation of two kinds of utopia used as the guiding principle for the conflict and system of characters: utopia of “escape” and utopia of “reconstruction” (L. Mumford). This goal is achieved with the help of using traditional for Platonov’s poetics principle of conjunction (the contradistinction and comparison). It allows us to study “Juvenile sea” within the context of the novel “Bread and reading”. Moreover, both writings were conceived by the author as part of the so-called trilogy “Technical novel”. The principle of conjunction has become leading in the dialogue utopia/dystopia: in this regard Platonov’s short novels complement each other.

613-628

Authors: Anna A. Skoropadskaya

The article studies the image of the garden in the novel “Doctor Zhivago” that demonstrates the influence of the Ancient and Christian cultures on Boris Pasternak’s artistic and philosophical views. In classical literary tradition the garden served as a mythological and idyllic locus of happy life. In Christianity the most significant milestones of the biblical history are associated with the garden — the Garden of Eden and the Garden of Gethsemane. In Russian literature the garden plays an important role too, beginning from the era of baroque and classicism and ending with symbolism. Pasternak undoubtedly considers all these earlier traditions, and in his novel “Doctor Zhivago” the garden, comprising the natural and cultural meanings, becomes a symbolic embodiment of history, creativity and faith.

647-661

Authors: Marina V. Zavarkina, Anton V. Khramykh

B. Zaytsev is one of the most significant figures of Russian emigration, the emigrant of the first wave, whose prose has left a noticeable trace in Russian literature. One of the favorite genres of the writer was the genre of the story. The subject of this article is the story “Autumn Light”, which was first published in 1919. The story belongs to the transitional period in the writer’s creative process, when his style changed significantly. Light symbolism occupies an important place in B. Zaytsev’s works. So does it in the story “Autumn Light”, that is stated in the title of the story. The article concludes that in the story the motif of light is semantically close to the image of the Moon, which is genetically traced both to romantic aesthetics, and to Russian religious and philosophical traditions. In this story this motive is a symbol of the perfect world, passing into the past. This motif is also included in the structure of the hero’s image. Sunlight in the artistic space of the text does not reach the ground, it is surrounded by damp haze. The hero’s thoughts are hazed too and he is full of doubts. The fragility of life and temporality of existence are emphasized in the story by the moonlight, ghostly and lifeless.