The Problems of Historical Poetics

27-41

Authors: Alexander Valerievich Pigin

This article is devoted to a classic of the 16th-century north Russian hagiography — The Life of Alexander Oshevensky, which is preserved as a large number of various copies and editions. The 19th-century materials recently found in the Russian archives enabled researchers to raise a question of the late period in the literary history of this Life. Three editions of this piece of writing created in the 1820’s and 1830’s by Tikhvin Monastery’s Archimandrite Hilarion (Kirillov), Alexander Svirsky Monastery’s Archimandrite Barsanuphius (Morev) and Archbishop of Olonets Ignatius (Semyonov) are in the focus of this paper. The new editions were written with the intention to be published to glorify St. Alexander across Russia, though respective petitions to the Most Holy Synod were not approved. This article detects sources of these editions and shows the pattern of processing of the initial texts. As the text analysis has shown, the 19th-century editions primarily developed the topoi of book learning and relationships between St. Alexander and his family. The Life used to be revised stylistically and compositionally, as well as supplemented with historical information. The published material is of interest for the research in poetics and topics of the Liеves of the Saints and their perception by the church writers of the 19th century.

56-67

Authors: Elena Alexandrovna Kuchina

Prayer in Alexander Pushkin’s lyric poetry appears in its natural ecclesiological context. In his prayerful poems devoted to a woman the motif of turning Love into Divinity in the light of Christian understanding of Beauty plays the most important role. Pushkin’s personal prayers are very close to the patristic idea. In his poem Akathist to Ekaterina Nikolaevna Karamzina Pushkin embodied the prayer-praising; in his poem I loved you — and love it may yet be Deep in my soul… he embodied the prayer-blessing; in his sonnet Madonna the reader can find benediction and in the poem To the Beauty (1832) one can feel the state of religious reverence. The heroine of these poems is considered to be a divine creature, a sacral image. In Pushkin’s lyric poetry these profound evangelical ideas are being renewed. The hymnologic genre and Christian divine service in his poems become obvious. The artistic embodiment of a prayer becomes possible with the help of an iconic word and image. A prayerful word in Pushkin’s poems contributes to idealization of the form that evolves from emotional and sensual state to spiritual and ascetical world-view, from the artistic and figurative word to the iconic clarity.

82-92

Authors: Natalya Gennadievna Komar

This article raises the question of the Old Russian sources of Alexander Pushkin’s novel The Captain’s Daughter and presents an attempt to identify the traditions of Ermolay-Erazmus’s The Tale of Peter and Fevronia in it. The main purpose of the research was to identify the parallelism between Pushkin’s novel and The Tale at the imaginative, narrative and thematic levels. Therefore, it was based on application of the comparative method. The main characters of both the books are compared in succession: Prince Peter and Peter Grinyov first, and then Fevronia and Masha Mironova. The results of the analysis lead to the conclusion that the male images reflect the spiritual evolution from being self-willed to obtaining Christian humility, and the key moment of the characters’ spiritual evolution is the meeting with wise virgins, etc. As far as the female images are concerned, the key parallel between them is the praise of their wisdom at the end of both stories. Thus, the material of the research enables us to speak about the traditions of The Tale of Peter and Fevronia being preserved in Pushkin’s last novel.

108-120

Authors: Vladimir Alekseevich Voropaev

The article studies the function of Russian folk speech and its evangelical implication in Nikolai Gogol's poetics. Folk proverbs and parables is the key source of national identity in Gogol’s aesthetics, which should inspire all Russian poets. The paper asserts that the proverbial method of generalization is one of the most significant principles of typification in Gogol's novel Dead Souls. The author expresses the essence of this or that phenomenon, a situation or a human type using imaginative pictures and traits of characters. The more generalized form they take, the more they resemble the traditional folk and poetic formulas. The article also reveals the hidden message of a Russian proverb Russians are good at thinking in hindsight (“Russkiy chelovek zadnim umom krepok”). This characteristic of the Russian mind is the one with which Gogol connects the great destiny of Russia. At the end of his first volume the author resorts to the allegorical form of a parable that plays a key role in the perception of the novel. Transforming into the generalized symbols, its characters accumulate the most significant generic features and qualities of Dead Souls' characters. The grotesque images of Kifa Mokiyevich and Mokiy Kifovich help to look at the characters of the novel from every possible side, not from one side only that shows them as small-minded and worthles people. Gogol’s characters do not possess definitely disgusting and ugly qualities which should be eliminated for the sake of people's improvement. Sobakevich's powerful physique and pragmatism, Plushkin's thrift, Manilov's meditativeness and cordiality, as well as Nozdryov's valor and energy are not bad qualities at all and do not deserve condemnation. However, all of them as Gogol used to say are carried to extremes and take the perverse and exaggerated forms.

135-149

Authors: Valentina Ivanovna Gabdullina

The author questions the perception of Ivan Turgenev as a “non- Christian writer” and studies the problem of the prodigal son motif functioning in a series of his novels. In his novels, Turgenev pictured different phases of the archetypal story, originating from the Gospel parable of the prodigal son. In the novel Rudin he depicted the phase of spiritual wanderings of the hero who had lost touch with his native land — Russia. In his next novels (Home of the Gentry, Fathers and Sons and Smoke), after leading his hero in circles and sending him back to his paternal home, Turgenev reconstructs the model of human behavior, represented in the parable, thereby recognizing the immutability of the idea formalized in the Gospel. The motif of the return to Russian land gets its completion in Turgenev’s last novel Virgin Soil, in which the author paradoxically connects the Westernist idea with the Gospel imperative. Solomin, the son of a deacon, sent by his wise father out to Europe “to get education”, studies in England, masters the European knowledge and returns back “to his native land” to establish his own business in inland Russia. Thus, a series of Turgenev’s novels, in which he portrayed different phases of social life, are interlinked with the motif of the prodigal son, who is represented by novels’ main characters.

165-179

Authors: Rita Osipovna Mazel

This article presents Dostoevsky to readers as an author praising happiness and felicity. Having lived through deep sorrows he acquired insight into another dimension of life. Like a longing pathfinder he states the unfeigned grace of life. “Life is a gift, life is mercy, and any minute may be the age of happiness”, — this is the essence of his great novels. People are not lonesome on Earth; they are bound by invisible threads. A loner may not succeed. One heart or one consciousness attracts another one like a magnet, as if claiming: thou art… Christ, with his Love and his Sacrifice, is the greatest miracle on Earth. It is impossible to be aware of Christ’s existence and not to be joyful. Dostoevsky reveals one of the main principles of life: when you love someone and sacrifice yourself to this person, you satisfy your aspiration for a beau ideal and feel like in heavens. In this article the author analyzes selected scenes of happiness in Dostoevsky’s novels: Arkady and his sister Liza’s admiration for the sacrifice of their father Versilov; Alyosha and Grushenka, saving each other instead of committing sins and transgressing moral standards; Alyosha’s dream about the Christ’s first miracle in Cana of Galilee; Stavrogin’s dream of the Golden Age of the blessed mankind… In Dostoevsky’s tragic novel The Possessed (The Devils, or Demons) a reader faces an image of love — mutual, sacrificial, fulfilling, and blithe. There is probably nothing similar in the history of the world literature. One can eminently feel the interconnectedness of Dostoevsky’s heroes with another, higher world that penetrates into every aspect of their lives. All of his creatures are illumed by the light of other worlds. It is clear that there cannot be darkness, despair or hopelessness in Dostoevsky’s work because even in the hell full of demons there is a place for righteous people, luminous (as Nikolai Berdyaev called them) and capable of love and personal sacrifice that means that the light is still shining in the darkness, and the evil darkness did not envelop it.

202-218

Authors: Sergei Leonidovich Sharakov

The article raises a question of Christian symbolism in the Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Possessed (Demons). The introductory part identifies the purpose of a symbol in Christian poetics through the parallel with ancient symbolism. The author makes a conclusion that the functional role of symbol in the ancient world and Christian tradition is different. Therefore, the ancient symbol involves a number of interrelated categories, such as fate, intuition or conjecture, inspiration, and predictions; Christian symbolism is based on the idea of redemption and moral innocence. Methodologically, the article is based on a cultural and historical approach, as well as on the comparative academic tradition. The overview of Dostoevsky’s pre-materials for The Possessed (Demons) enables us to suggest the use of Christian symbolism in this novel. Hence, the objective of the study is to investigate a composition of images and symbols in this piece of writing, with a special focus on the image of a chronicler, since the storyline of the novel is developed through his perception. We make a supposition that there are several levels of the Gospel perception in the artistic vision or consciousness of the chronicler, that form the basis of the symbolical composition of the novel. The article sequentially examines the examples of Christian symbolism, including the connection of ideas, characters and storylines of the novel with the Gospel. Then it gives evidence and reasons for the thesis that the Gospel gives the characters of the novel the grounds for shaping their destiny.

230-241

Authors: Natalia Alexandrovna Tarasova

The article examines the intertextual relations in the manuscript and in the printed text of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Raw Youth, using an example of the allusion to the Vasily Zhukovsky’s elegy A Country Churchyard and analyzing the specifics of its functioning in the context of the novel’s narration. The main objective of the work was to establish the internal trends of the author's ideas' development in the novel. The task was to investigate the problem of studying intertextual relations in the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky (since the theoretical aspects of the problem were not specifically addressed in previous studies) and to analyze the literary material using the textual approach. The source text, which is important for the formation of intertextual relations, is examined not as an individual piece of writing but in the context of the The Raw Youth manuscripts that helps to clarify the nature of its artistic interpretation and the conjunction of folkloristic and biblical concepts in the novel.

256-267

Authors: Daria Sergeevna Kunil'skaya

The article deals with Byzantine quotes in Konstantin Leontyev’s novel Odysseus of Polihroniades. The author regarded this novel to be the best of all his works. The Byzantine influence was discovered through analyzing the Athos regular readings including the typicon of the St. Panteleimon Monastery, where Konstantin Leontyev spent 18 months. It is emphasized that the text of the novel contains some of the Athos. The paper analyzes the topic of time recurrence, developed in the novel, which is different from the Christian conception of linear time. The article examines both the sacred text of regular readings and the quotes and reminiscences connected with the names of St. John Chrysostom and St. Isaac the Syrian. The article concludes that some elements of Leontyev’s future Doctrine of a New Eastern Culture are presented in his novel Odysseus of Polihroniades. The Byzantine quotes, therefore, help to understand the mechanism of the authors’ ideas implementation in the novel.

280-296

Authors: Irina Aleksandrovna Spiridonova

The article examines the genre clash of a prayer and stanzas in Alexander Blok’s poem A girl was singing in the church choir… (1905). Prayer is the main ecclesiastical source, shaping the poem’s lyric model. The genre canon of stanzas with the strophes detached substantially and compositionally transforms the central musical theme into four scene-developments linked by dissonance. Each of the strophes in A girl was singing in the church choir… stanza has its own semantic point (prayer — singings — illusion — enlightenment) and reveals a different content of the event, intensifies and develops the tragic theme of two worlds, intended and unintended substitutions, spiritual quest and time losses. Blok’s stanzas are poetic evidence of a modern man’s withdrawal from a prayerful concentration. The model of conflicting synthesis of ecclesiastical and literary genres reflects the religious — mystical opposition in symbolism aesthetics and strengthens the tragic pathos of Blok’s lyric poetry.

311-322

Authors: Olga Alekseyevna Kolokolova

The article examines Christian images in war-themed poems of Nikolai Gumilyov’s poems collection The Quiver (Kolchan). The author analyzes some peculiarities of chronotope, determines Christian categories, which are significant for the interpretation of the war topic. The title of the book defines the subject and the role of the war-themed poems in the system of the entire collection. Connection between the title and the Old Testament images adds new meanings to the interpretation of the war topic. Chronotope images play an important role in the comprehension of the war theme. The present is related to the historical past and eternity: the man at war, implementing his destiny and mission, builds life in the context of history, God's will, becomes a part of the Creator's conception, finds a connection with eternity. Thus, the theme of the unity of the divine plan, purpose, man's connection with history is one of the key themes of the poems collection. Gumilyov presents the loss of destiny as a transitional state or illness. Healing is given by divine powers. Salvation is associated with the search for faith and the attainment of spiritual power, the knowledge of the destination. According to Christian tradition, any war is a misfortune, a terrible, painful phenomenon, but it can bring the atonement through suffering and strengthening of the soul. Nikolai Gumilyov praises heroic deeds, courage, honor, and self-sacrifice. War is a way to find faith and a right way for a Christian warrior poet.

338-356

Authors: Evgeniya Alexandrovna Korshunova

The attempts to build the typology of Shmelev`s female images have been repeatedly made by researchers. However, we think that the author in his works and correspondence, relying on classic literature and questioning it at the same time, shapes his own whole unity, and his own unique female character — the ‘Shmelev`s girl’. So, the analysis of the poetics of several Shmelev`s works (The Inexhaustible Cup, Mirage, A Foreigner, Nanny from Moscow and Heaven’s Ways) using comparative, historical and inter-textual methods reveals their close interrelationship. The gallery of women`s characters — from Anastasia to Darinka — represents the unique type of a woman — the so-called ‘Shmelev`s girl’, who, is on the one hand a pure and enlightened princess, a baby and a maiden, pure, enlightened, with iconic world perception, extraordinary charming and feminine (sophistic), but, on the other hand, very powerful, totally devoted to her high spiritual ideals and capable of overcoming tragedies and trials of her own destiny.

376-392

Authors: Nikolay Ivanovich Sobolev

The article analyzes the lexemes with the root rad in the short novel The Inexhaustible Cup by I. S. Shmelev. Lexemes are systematized on the basis of functional thesaurus. In the process of analysis there is detected of the concept of «Joy». The study of the Joy's concept enables us to make important observations in the field of Church liturgical tradition, a literary form, poetics images in the investigated text. The concept generalizes the values contained in the lexicon of the eleven ideological and thematic groups (the good force, prayer, icon, space, freedom/will, pleasure, fun, boredom, sadness, love, art), which are grouped into two main correlated topics: the sacred and the secular. The intention of the concept of joy defines the ideological perspective of the tale as the text of the spiritual life of the heroes.

405-426

Authors: Ivan Andreevich Esaulov

In the research on Shmelev, the second thesis in Pushkin speech is usually commented on — the one about "Puschkin's mystery". The famous Dostoevsky's speech is concluded with words about "a mystery" and "revealing" this mystery. Shmelev's reply is that "we seem to have revealed this mystery". However, the first thesis of this speech — containing a complete agreement between Shmelev and Dostoevsky — is usually ignored. In this paper, the author polemizes with his predecessors who studied Shmelev's publicistic writings and interprets this agreement between Shmelev and Dostoevsky. "The Truth of God" is brought up, which is not only an individual peculiarity of Pushkin but the high road of Russian literature in general. Applicable as well to Russian culture in general. "The Truth of Russian people", also known as "the Truth of God", is the truth "accepted by us from the font" of Orthodoxy — and this is the central idea of Pushkin, which became clear to Russian exiles. In particular, it became clear because an almost thousandyear- long Russian history was forcedly interrupted in the homeland they left; this is something that, naturally, Dostoevsky could not even think of.

442-452

Authors: Svetlana Alexeyevna Martyanova

The author identifies, describes and interprets the biblical allusions in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novel The First Circle (V Kruge Pervom). It is assumed that many of the biblical characters and stories, mentioned (Moses, Jesus Christ, Holy Mary, Mother of God, or Judas) or implied in the novel, are prototypical to its heroes and storylines. Biblical allusions form the overarching storyline (metaplot), and create the religious and philosophical perspective of understanding the value orientations and behavior of the characters. The article reveals the significance of the biblical context for understanding the moral and philosophical search of its heroes, their reflections on happiness, well-being, soul, conscience, friendship, creativity, truth, genuineness and authenticity of marxism as "leading-edge thinking". Special attention is given to the subject of Christmas: the article explains what it means for the formation of artistic time or images of individual characters (Volodin and Rubin), and draws a parallel betweem Stalin and Herod. It is emphasized that Solzhenitsyn as a writer did not copy reality, but portrayed it in light of the Bible and the Gospel ideal, creating the original concept of man's destiny in a totalitarian society and reintroducing to readers religious values, which were excluded from a human being by Soviet ideology.

14-24

Authors: Vladimir Nikolaevich Zakharov

Original as it was, the phenomenon of pochvennichestvo (roughly translated as «native soil») in Russian thought and literature is often accompanied by a number of myths, misperceptions and erroneous commonplaces. It is not infrequent that those who never shared the ideas of pochvennichestvo are described as its adepts, and those who did, are often misquoted, with some notions, ideas and phrases misattributed to them. The ideological and literary agenda of pochvennichestvo was formed by the Vremya (1861—1863) and Epokha (1864—1865) magazines published by the brothers Dostoevsky — Fedor and Mikhail. Their outlook and vigorous action, discussions of submitted articles at board meetings, polemics with other periodicals — all of these factors contributed to the general trend of pochvennichestvo with its typical mutual influence of all its members. Fedor Dostoevsky's role on its development was decisive, as he kept consistently substantiating ideas which were new for Russian literature. Our article analyses the pochva (soil) metaphor in the ideology of new school of literature and political movements which Dostoevsky helped set up in 1860s—1870s. According to him, pochva includes everything that gives birth and unites: people, homeland, native language and mother earth. They are all linked together by the mystery of Russia as the keeper of Orthodox faith and Christ as the «ideal of the people». One has to reunite with the pochva by becoming one with the people and strive to see all estates united. To be a pochvennik meant to love Russia and its people, to be a Russian and identify as one, to follow the faith of the fathers and honour the native land. In the 20th century, pochvennichestvo resolved the old argument between the Westernizers and Slavophiles. The word pochvennik was applied to the authors who stayed loyal to Russian traditional values, rural communities and traditions of Russian literature. Various authors and critics have been included in this circle, but it definitely includes D. S. Likhachev and A. I. Solzhenitsyn, V. G. Rasputin and V. P. Astafiev, V. I. Belov and V. M. Shukshin.

31-40

Authors: Vyacheslav Anatolyevich Koshelev

Natasha was P. A. Katenin's first work to be published, famous for its lyricism which made it the author's greatest success with both critics and readers. Traditionally Natasha was classified as a ballad, with G. A. Burger's Lenora named as its source. We claim to have discovered a more obvious source of this text — The Martyrdom of Sts. Adrian and Natalia in St. Dimitry of Rostov's version of the Menaion. It was included in the Menaion entry for August 26 — the day of the Battle of Borodino. This hagiographic source sheds light on numerous episodes in Katenin's lyrical tale — a text which started the “Natalia text” tradition in Russian literature. The symbol of birth (the name Natalia is derived from the Latin word for birth) is thus linked to death (via the day of one of the bloodiest battles of the 19th century). Katenin introduces the idea of death as a chance for a happy future, as his protagonist dies to keep on living with her beloved. Katenin's tale opens the new type of poetic expression of patriotic consciousness. Natasha was the first war text in Russian literature to glorify peaceful life of common people, rather than war.

49-58

Authors: Vladimir Dmitrievich Denisov

The article analyses several notes made by Nikolai Gogol shortly before his death in the light of their links to his other works and the Gospel text. The author seems to have understood that he was dying and was preparing to meet his death as a Christian should, to an extent matching the events around him with those in the Gospel. His artistic eye and hand did not fail him. His dying notes feature a brief sketch of a man in a cab and a profile of a man being shut by a closing book. Calligraphic handwriting Gogol had developed by mid-1840s differs from both the large scribble of the draft text of Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka in the 1830s and the small hand of his historical notes, articles and novellas of the mid-1830s. His new hand was that of a man who knew the value of words, and not of a copyist working with government papers. Overall, the notes are permeated with the mood of contrition and humility. Gogol writes that Satan has already entered the world and the last days are approaching when man is abandoned by God and considers solitude the highest good. He sees his actions as the only true way and takes pride in his sins and ignorance as if they were virtues. The decay of “the temple of his soul” leaves no chance for love and harmony, disconnecting people and ruining the world. Gogol wants to prevent this by uniting people in the Gospel. The longest of his dying notes is addressed to his friends. Every true Christian can be viewed as such.

67-76

Authors: Sofiya Viktorovna Melnikova

The initial thesis of my article is the unity between ecclesiastic and secular literature which Russian culture has preserved in the Modern period. The interrelation of ecclesiastic and secular traditions is shown here on the example of the Siberian regional literary process in the 19th century. We primarily focus on nonfiction written by the Orthodox clergy: memoirs, autobiographies, travel notes. Memoirs were a new phenomenon in church literature of late 18th — early 19th centuries. These compositions were of special significance for the literature of Siberia: half of all memoirs of Siberians at that time were written by priests and missionaries. We argue that memoirs of the clergy can be considered not only as sources on the history of the Russian church, but also as cultural texts and literary monuments. All major features of the 19th century Siberian regional literature are conspicuous here: a focus on Siberia proper, a combination of art and non-fiction, a special importance of prevalence of a genre of travel notes, etc. In their genre poetics and language, memoirs of the clergy also followed the practices of secular literature, which made them an integral part of the regional historical and literary process. At the same time, literary works of the clergy preserved the specific features of religious consciousness and the link with traditional church literature, primarily hagiography and pilgrim travelogues. It can be seen, for example, in the sacralization of the Siberian space and the strong emphasis on apostolic service.

86-113

Authors: Viktor Viktorovich Dudkin

The article looks at the 'eternal' problem of the inexpressible in the cultural and historic forms and motives it took in the works of Dante, Goethe and Dostoevsky. We view the inexpressible as a product of subject-object type of relations. In the case of Dante, the issue of the 'inexpressible' stemmed from strict subordination of subject-object relations in the Middle Ages, where the object was universal and sacred (with God as its highest form) and the subject was something 'under' (cf. the meaning of Latin prefix 'sub'), something incomplete and not self-sufficient, with their cognitive capacity limited. The integrity of the world according to Goethe is achieved through the dynamic unity of its constituent parts rather than through their vertical hierarchy. In this unity, the external (objective) mingles with the internal (subjective) and vice versa. In the vision of earthly paradise in Dostoevsky's The Dream of Ridiculous Man the visual dominant is set up by the protagonists's cosmic guide: “To see everything...” Dostoevsky adds a new twist to the issue of the inexpressible, which takes the shape of a certain metalanguage the paradise dwellers use to communicate. The issue of the inexpressible has remained urgent since the days of Dostoevsky, as indeed it had been long before Dante. Multifaceted as the problem may be, it can be defined as a translation issue, if we view translation itself as a cultural rather than simply a linguistic phenomenon. Analysed this way, translation includes: 1) the translation of creative process into its outcomes; 2) translating the visual into the verbal; etc.

125-132

Authors: Natalya Nikolaevna Romanova

The article looks at the parallels with the Gospel text that arise in F. M. Dostoevsky's novel Netochka Nezvanova. We analyse and compare the parables of the New Testament that implicitly appear in the text of the novel, as well as their artistic transformation. The main focus of our comparative analysis is on God's judgement of the fallen man and human judgement (that of the Pharisee). Among the parables woven into the fabric of the novel we find that of the Pharisee and Publican, of the prodigal son, the lost sheep, the called and the chosen, of the talents and the narrow gate. The comparative analysis is run on both lexical and semantic levels. Biblical allusions are important signals which allow us to reach the deep layer of the text's original meaning. Both the characters and their possessions have an allusive level of meaning. The article also deals with the issue of sacralization of the female protagonist.

143-162

Authors: Olga Vladimirovna Zakharova

The criticism that Dostoevsky's Demons attracted in his lifetime is relatively unpopular with modern scholars. The reason for this is clear: the critics did not understand Dostoevsky's novel. Our article provides an analysis of the reviews of both the journal and the book versions of Demons (1871—1873). The earliest responses to the novel appeared immediately after the publication had begun in 1871. For two years, the author had been reading the critics' opinions which in this or that way could have influenced his creative process. Dostoevsky could have accepted or rejected these contributions, but the criticism definitely did leave a mark on his writing. Among those who took part in the critical discussion of Demons were the reviewers from the Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti, Golos and Iskra newspapers, as well as the magazines Otechestvennye Zapiski and Delo: V. Burenin, L. Paniutin, A. G. Kovner, M. G. Vil'de, A. M. Skabichevsky, D. Minayev, N. Mikhailovsky, N. Demetr, P. Tkachev, etc. Common for all of them was the claim that the novel is a phantasmagory and thus has little artistic merit. On the whole, critics did not react positively to Demons, attacking their author as a reactionary, a renegade, obscurantist, or deranged epileptoid. Dostoevsky was accused of slandering the youth. We make a special focus on the Christian aspects of the novel and the earliest critics' discussion of these aspects, including negative responses.

173-187

Authors: Rima Hanifovna Yakubova

The article discusses the issue of dialogic convergence of biblical and literary fabulas in The Adolescent by Fedor Dostoevsky. We also examine the issue of the author's creative dialogue with the previous traditions, and the synthesis of biblical and literary sources in the novel's fabula. A special emphasis is made on the author's attention to biblical fabula tradition and the role of biblical subtext in the plot of the novel. We have outlined a set of images and motifs which link The Adolescent with its source in the Old Testament and provide a comparative analysis of the fabulas in Pushkin's The Station Master and Dostoevsky's Humiliated and Insulted and The Adolescent within the general context of the Old Testament tradition. The article examines the transformations of classical fabulas, their convergence and resurgence in The Adolescent thanks to the open, convergence-oriented type of artistic consciousness that we find in Dostoevsky.

196-202

Authors: Elena Anatolyevna Osokina

The article draws a parallel between divine service and art, using Dostoevsky's last grand masterpiece as an example. We begin by defining the canon as a genre and as a liturgical order. The order of songs in the canon and the liturgical order resemble the sequence of Dostoevsky's novel and make it ordered and recognizable. The form chosen by the author was more organic for Russian consequence than the novel in its Western version and more expressive for a piece of art. By shaping his novel into a canon as a hymnographic piece, Dostoevsky created a special form which helped his novel attain perfection. The form of canon as a hymnographic text is found in the novel's structure (“a form of a plan”) which is made clear by the positioning of the life of Zosima. The novel's hidden meaning was thus expressed in its form. The structure of a canon reproduced in a piece of fiction allowed Dostoevsky to link the contemporary and the all-embracing, bring up eternally important issues of losing faith in God and provide true answers in the discovery of new faith in Jesus.

216-223

Authors: Sergey Sergeevich Shaulov

Soviet literary criticism, especially in the first decades after the 1917 Revolution, was quite biased in its treatment of Dostoevsky and his works. The reasons for this bias lie both inside and outside the sphere of political ideology. We suggest that there exists a genetic link between some Soviet readings of Dostoevsky and a number of interpretations made in the author's lifetime. Also analysed are the attempts to 'domesticate' Dostoevsky and adapt his works to drastically different cultural conditions and political norms. It is indicative that this adaptation has always passed the stage of mythologizing the writer and his works. This mythologization paradoxically became a convergence point for Soviet (Lunacharsky), anti-Soviet (Berdyayev) and purely philosophical (Bakhtin) readings of Dostoevsky. Ultimately, the central Dostoevsky myth in post-revolutionary Russia was a version of Romantic mythology often directly expressed in comparing Dostoevsky with Prometheus. We also look at the negative readings of Dostoevsky, which construed the author as a certain mythological antagonist of the proletariat as the collective messiah. Such readings (exemplified in our article by Pereverzev's and Livshits') point at the ultimate limit of ethical assessment of Dostoevsky from the standpoint of rational secular humanism and the Soviet humanitarian thought as its version. Dostoevsky's artistic practice incorporates this tradition within the intranovel dialogue as just one of the voices and demonstrates its ethical insufficiency, which in its turn provokes the mixed reaction of 'appropriation' and 'rejection' from both Soviet thinkers and their contemporary heirs.

241-251

Authors: Nataliya Petrovna Vidmarovich

The issue of frequent confusion of the notions of impudence and boldness in patristic texts is explained through the problem of confusing vice and virtue. In the context of virtuousness and sinfulness, these two notions became the focus of two stories from N.S. Leskov’s cycle on the righteous: — Odnodum (The Singlethought) and The Pygmy, where they are crucial for understanding and interpreting the notion of official duty. Leskov's characters both show Christian mercy and prove a wonderful example of a Christian view of official duty, when every dutiful act turns into a higher service that requires true boldness. The choice between an act of justice and an act of mercy, therefore, turns into a choice between the word and spirit of law stemming from Evangelical lawfulness and legalism. In the context of the two approaches to justice, we also touch upon the question of royal service under Emperor Nicholas I.

259-266

Authors: Marta Lukashevich

There are a lot of facts to prove that Nikolai Leskov placed great emphasis on the Bible in his career as a writer. His earlies contributions to newspapers were devoted to the issue of the Bible's accessibility. As a publisher and editor, he did a lot to improve the knowledge of the Bible among the Russian people, viewing this process as a basis for moral education. Leskov's works of fiction often feature biblical quotes, reminiscences and imagery. The objective of our article is to assess the importance of the Bible for the structure of Odnodum (The Singlethought) — a short story Leskov wrote in 1879. Set against other texts of the same author, The Singlethought stands out as a text where the link to the Bible is more accentuated both in form and content. We provide an analysis of how the Bible influenced the personality growth of the protagonist, Alexander Ryzhov, and his behavior models, as well as how the society views him. It is also important to provide the historical context of the discussions of the role of the Bible in the life of the Orthodox community, namely the debates on the Russian Bible Society and the Russian translation of the Bible. Ryzhov's reputation of “an eccentric” and “of doubtful faith” put him in the same class with Leskov's other righteous characters, making this protagonist timeless and important.

276-286

Authors: Nina Borisovna Cherepanova

The article examines the poetry of a relatively unknown poet of the Russian Silver Age, V. V. Gofman (The Book of Introductions, 1904; Iskus (Temptation), 1910) in the light of its links with the Gospel. As early as in Gofman's first collection of poems motifs from the Gospel come together with flower imagery. Flowers in Gofman's poems act as markers of the Paradise, the locus of eternity, truth and harmony. Flower imagery is also an important element of the image of the Faraway Lady — one of the centerpieces of Gofman's poems. Gofman's second collection, Iskus (Temptation) (1910) reveals more conscious and clear allusions to the Gospel: the title refers to the Christian tradition, and the most important flower in the poetic 'flowerbed' is the lily with its clear biblical symbolism. We conclude by reaffirming the conceptual importance of the biblical plane in the poetry of V. V. Gofman.

301-314

Authors: Nataliya Gennadyevna Sharapenkova

The aim of our article is to discover biblical allusions, motifs and plots in Andrey Bely's last and least studied novel, Moscow (1925—1930). Besides the biblical plane (both Old and New Testaments), the novel features a lot of eschatological imagery. We have analysed the key scenes of the novel where biblical motifs and imagery acquire the status of a sign. Our analysis allowed us to conclude that the Gospel plane of the text helps the reader comprehend the overall idea of the novel, i. e. the protagonist's initiation, his departure from the Old Testament regulations to the Christian idea of mercy and compassion, as well his discovery of the spiritual laws of nature and the universe. The image of the eccentric in the novel helps us more profoundly understand the continuity and transformation of the biblical, eschatological and anthroposophic motifs throughout the whole creative heritage of Andrey Bely.

328-342

Authors: Nikolay Ivanovich Sobolev

The article deals with the history of I. S. Shmelev's novella The Inexhaustible Cup. By analysing the draft manuscripts of the novella we have retraced the chronology of the text. Numerous rounds of correction found in the draft copies reveals the high intensity of the author's work on the text. We have outlined 7 draft versions which can be grouped in 2 stages of working on the novella. Stage 1 comprising the first three draft versions shows the author's intention to create the images of physically and spiritually perfect people and express the transforming power of beauty understood in the spirit of Vladimir Solovyev's philosophy. Stage 2 (draft versions 4 to 7) witnesses the author's change of the idea of his work. The structure of the characters evolves, with the protagonists developing new features echoing the types of Old Russian literature.

351-359

Authors: Evgeniy Mikhaylovich Neyolov

The article looks at the various aspects of appropriating the Christian traditions by Russian fantasy writing. We show that the Christian tradition has most significantly revealed itself in the genre of fantasy writing which is in high demand among early 21st century readers. Both the content and the formal poetics of this tradition have been taken into account here. One of the typical fantasy protagonists is a hero yearning for God, which is a familiar staple of Russian literature. By default fantasy deals with demonolog, thus becoming closely linked to Christian tradition of the struggle against evil. Demon (or devil) being a popular character in fantasy writing, the forgotten traditions of Old Russian literature get re-actualized in 20th and early 21st century and the demonological image includes both the demonic and the human. We conclude that contemporary fantasy authors develop their own versions of the Christian tradition, removing the conflict between the “faith” and “invention” typical for fantasy writing.

24-37

Authors: Zakharov V. N.

The present article studies the status of chronotope as a new category of historical poetics (M. Bakhtin). The author sets up the problems of the analysis of imaginative space and time in the works of Russian classical writers. The Christian symbolism in Dostoevsky's and Turgenev's novels is unfolded; the occurrence of the Gospel and the phenomenon of Christ in Russian literature are emphasized.

48-59

Authors: Pavlyak O. N.

In this article the author analyses a little-known poem by Mikhail Kheraskov and comes to the conclusion that the Gospel text is a structural and semantic center of Kheraskov's lyrical utterance that determines its religious, philosophical and artistic value.

66-78

Authors: Zhilina N. P.

Analysing the artistic structure and semantics of this Pushkin’s story, the author reveals its very core that is a somehow transformed version of the well-known evangelic parable – of the prodigal children going along an arduous road from one axiological extreme to another, from 'self-will' to 'humbleness' which determines a deep psychological basis of its plot development.

86-96

Authors: Kulakova I. I.

The article analyzes the issues of Pisemskiy’s world outlook in reference to his personal distinctiveness and manifested in his specific artistic method – realism of views. While defining the genre of Pisemskiy’s work as a light variant of an anti-nihilistic novel, the author of the article addresses to the central personages in order to find out WHAT exactly Pisemskiy sets against the vortex of Russian post-reform life.

112-119

Authors: Cheryukina G. L.

The materials of this article are part of the research of poetic texts of different authors with the purpose of identifying the typical phenomena in Russian classical literature in their genesis and typological relation. Apart from the mentioned literary works, in the context of the given problem the novel of F. M. Dostoevsky The Humiliated and Insulted is considered as one of the transitory variants of the transformed traditional biblical story.

132-148

Authors: Fedoseeva T. V.

The article attempts to evaluate the concept of the historical development of literature by F. I. Buslaev who is traditionally perceived as the founder of the mythological school in Russian science. The scholar identifies two basic phases of language and literature development, i. e. mythological and Christian ones. Buslaev analyzes complex interactions between pagan and Christian, religious and artistic features at different stages of the development of Russian literature up to Romanticism and Realism, as well as of the novel in the 19th-century art.

160-168

Authors: Seropyan A. S.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the action time in Dostoevsky's creative work. The motives of painful and ecstatic love to the world and universe, suffering and cruel voluptuousness are especially important in the plots of his works. An antipositivism dialogue is revealed, i. e. disillusionment of "semi scientific" credo which is suicidal for the humankind from the view point of the author. The time in F. M. Dostoevsky's poetics is a form and measure for the movement of the eternity in the space of the created world.

180-190

Authors: Kunilskiy D. A.

The article is dedicated to the comparative study of religious and aethical ideas of Dostoevsky and K. Aksakov. The principal works in this connection are The Tale of Brazhnik by Aksakov and the character of Marmeladov in the novel Crime and Punishment. The polemic role of this character, as contrasted to the Slavophile theory, is mentioned. The evolution of Dostoevsky views to Slavophilism is traced in the chapter Cana of Galilee of the novel The Brothers Karamazov. The appeal of Dostoevsky to the works of Slavophiles, that was not observed before, is recorded.

201-215

Authors: Garicheva E. A.

The author considers Dostoyevsky's work The Adolescent as a text that translates Church Fathers' doctrines and the Transfiguration dogma. The article brings to light the key role of a prayer for Dostoyevsky's characters. Genre, chronotope, narrative structure and imagery of his novel are determined by the Transfiguration dogma.

232-242

Authors: Yarysheva I. S.

The article touches upon the theme of religious beliefs of F. M. Dostoevsky which has been widely discussed since the late 19th century till now. Religious life of the family of Dostoevsky is revealed through the memoirs (Diary and Memoirs) of the person F. M. Dostoevsky was closest to during the period from 1867 to 1881, i. e. his wife A. G. Dostoevsky.

259-270

Authors: Zakharchenko S. O.

This article discusses the eldership of the Optina Elders (spiritual masters) St. Macarius (Ivanov) and St. Ambrose (Grenkov). This research is made on the grounds of epistolary manuscripts of the 19th century.

279-292

Authors: Neda Andritch

The article elaborates on the concept of the protagonist in the novel The Death of the Gods, Julian the Abjurer by D. S. Merezhkovsky in the light of his attitude to Christian thought and Christians. The analysis accounts for the key religious and philosophic searches by Julian the Abjurer. Special attention is paid to the instances of "unwise wisdom" of Julian the Abjurer and reasons for his "patronizing violence" in relation to Christians.

302-315

Authors: Rozanov U. V.

The article is dedicated by the first book by a famous Russian writer of the 20th century A. M. Remizov, Posolon (1906) based on Slavic folklore material. Analyzing independent miniatures of the book (Young Monk, Korochun, Midsummer Lights, Prayer) the author identifies the layer of Christian images: demons, angels, korocun, legends of the Midsummer night, child as an innocent sacrifice etc. Autobiographical motives and historical prototypes are identified for some characters: clergyman G. S. Petrov, priest Gapon. The Christian layer is implemented in Posolon on a wide scale from "people's Orthodoxy" to secret allusions to the most important events in the history of the Russian church and the State.

330-341

Authors: Mikhailuchenko O. S.

The article studies the concept of the heart in the Wartime Stories by A. Platonov. It represents an attempt to analyze the form of expression of this concept and its semantics in the context of the author's philosophy of war in Christian traditions of culture.

355-366

Authors: Dorofeeva L. G.

The author aspires to reveal Milyentievna's spiritual nature designating her as a type of the national character. Making axiological analysis of the protagonist’s character, the author comes to a conclusion that humility is her main trait and he sees genesis of the dominant qualities of this image in the New Testament and its tradition.

379-388

Authors: Neyolov E. M.

The article analyzes different aspects of assimilation of Christian tradition in Russian science fiction (genre of fantasy). Contents and formal aspects of the tradition are taken into consideration.