Chinese Poetry Studio of World Literature Publishing House: V. M. Alekseev and N. S. Gumilev

The article is yet another contribution to studying the activities of the World Literature Studio, founded in the 1970s by the Russian Literature journal. The authors turn to the ephemeral chronological framework (June–August 1919), that plays, however, a crucial part in the philological scholarship, the history of Russian sinology and the creative biographies of Vasily Mikhailovich Alekseev (1881–1951), a key figure in the history of the emergence of the Russian classical Chinese studies, and N. S. Gumilev (1886–1921), one of the prominent employees of the Gorky’s publishing house, the period of the Studio of Chinese Poetry. The article examines the stages of emergence of the World Literature Studio, the place of the Chinese Poetry Studio in it, V. M. Alekseev’s approaches to teaching and its essence. The Appendix features documents that are important for at least three reasons: they reproduce the voice of the greatest Russian sinologist of the 20 th century; the subject matter itself, especially the translations by the Studio participants, reflects the contemporary approaches to the translation of classical Chinese poetry and narrow down the circle of probable poetic sources of Chinese imagery in the poetic culture of the Art Nouveau era.

V. M. Alekseev, N. S. Gumilev, World Literature, Chinese Poetry Studio, literary studio, Chinese poetry, Tang period