No 3 (2024)

The article explores the evolution of Proust’s perception of the Russian writer’s work, that begins with a drift towards Tolstoy and culminates at the end of the Search for Lost Time with a kind of renunciation of his self-imposed Tolstoyism.

The article examines V. Briusov’s cooperation with the «popular scholarly herald of antiquity», the Hermes. The cooperation continued for five years (1911–1916). Details of this cooperation are reflected in Briusov’s correspondence with A. I. Malein, an outstanding expert in classical languages, one of the editors of the Hermes. Their correspondence is published in full for the first time. The letters highlight Briusov’s research priorities in classical studies, and offer an insight into his work on his historical novel The Alter of Victory and on his translations of Aeneid by Virgil.

The article introduces the academic community to D. P. Iakubovich’s surviving unpublished review of Anna Akhmatova’s collection of verse The Rosary (4^th ed., Petrograd, 1916). The authors substantiate the dating of the review and suggest the reasons for its non-publication. Data from the personal archives of D. P. Iakubovich (Manuscript Department, Institute of Russian Literature) and A. G. Gornfeld (Manuscripts Department, National Library of Russia), as well as the testimonies of their contemporaries, help to reconstruct the changes of Iakubovich’s attitude to the poetry of Anna Akhmatova.

The article analyzes some of the previously unpublished letters to A. A. Akhmatova, preserved in her personal archives at the Manuscripts Department, National Library of Russia, as well as several letters from L. N. Gumilev and letters to him. The first part of the article offers a brief overview of some of the readers’ letters to Akhmatova, citing some of them. The second part includes all of the letters that offer evidence concerning L. N. Gumilev, covering the period between his confinement in the pre-trial detention cell and his release from the prison camp. These are letters from those who knew Akhmatova and from Gumilev’s prison acquaintances. In the third part of the article, an attempt is made to attribute the letters of Lev Gumilev’s correspondents, whose identities, for almost sixty years, were hidden under the names «Grisha» and «Derushka». The publication is supplemented by the data from the collections of Anna Akhmatova Museum in the Fountain House.

The subject of the article are two texts by A. Akhmatova, namely a stanza from Poem without a Hero and a poem of 1963. The author analyzes the content and formal uniqueness of the oppositions represented by Akhmatova — Shakespeare vs Sophocles and Shakespeare vs Horace. The value of the Antiquity and Shakespearean «cultural layers» of her work is taken into account. The analysis shows that the relations between the «characters» of the poetic diptychs are interdependent, rather than mutually exclusive.

The article examines the points of intersection between two epic poems: La Pucelle ou La France délivrée (The Maiden, or Liberated France) by J. Chapelain and Rossiada by M. M. Kheraskov. The quantity and quality of these points, that go beyond «banalities», lead to the following assertion: Kheraskov used Chapelain as a source of significant, albeit localized, structural elements. Among the most important borrowings is the designation of enemies as rebelles, the word that is grounded in both French and Russian history.

The article examines an episode that has to do with Turgenev’s involvement in the publication of I. Ya. Pavlovsky’s autobiographical work En Cellule (Impressions of a Nihilist), published in translation, in three installments, by the French newspaper Le Temps in 1879. The letter of Charles Edmond (Chojecki) that was previously misattributed, makes it clear that, apart from writing the preface and afterword to Pavlovsky’s work, Turgenev was involved in editing it.

The article analyzes one of the earliest poems by N. Zabolotsky, «The Duel». It shows that the semantic center of the text is gradually shifting from the plotline towards verbal experiments. Any attempt to establish prototypes is checked by the fundamental polysemy that refers to an entire cultural and literary layer, rather than a specific person or event. This poetics shows multiple influences of Daniil Kharms’ play The Comedy of the City of Petersburg.

The original text of the preface and comments by A. M. Remizov to the short story by F. M. Dostoevsky, that Remizov had intended to publish in the French edition: Dostoievsky Th. M. Scandaleuse histoire / Traduction originale d’A. Remizoff et J. Chuzeville. Illustrations de G. Annenkoff. Preface de L. Durtain. Paris: Éditions des Quatre Vents, 1945 is reproduced here from the author’s autograph. Remizov’s text is accompanied by an introductory note and commentaries.

[Review:] Khlybova T. V. Kaliki Sviatoi Rusi: opyt imagologii. M.; SPb.: Tsentr gumanitarnykh initsiativ, 2023. 491 s. (ser. «Humanitas»).

[Review:] Kiseleva L. N. Karamzinisty i arkhaisty. Stat’i raznykh let. Tartu: University of Tartu Press, 2023. 875 s.

[Review:] Tvorcheskoe nasledie M. A. Sholokhova v nachale XXI veka / Pod red. Iu. A. Dvoriashina. M.: IMLI RAN, 2022. 544 s.