No 3 (2024)
Articles



Centenary of V. Ya. Briusov’s death
Valery Briusov in the Hermes journal (letters to A. I. Malein)
Abstract
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.



Following up on Pushkin: Valery Briusov and the Egyptian nights
Abstract
This is an attempt to compile, as completely as possible, the corpus of Briusov’s reactions to Pushkin’s unfinished works published under the title Egyptian Nights. The corpus includes the writer’s extramarital romance with Nina Petrovskaia as a life-as-art imitation of Cleopatra’s relationship with Mark Antony (and their double suicide); Briusov’s poetry and prose, featuring, in one form or another, Pushkin’s Cleopatra; and, finally, his improvisations at the poetry readings on a number of themes, including Cleopatra. Briusov’s cult of Pushkin is interpreted in terms of «the anxiety of influence», «mimetic desire», and «literary field».



Honoring the 135th anniversary of A. A. Akhmatova
D. P. Iakubovich’s unpublished review of A. A. Akhmatova’s collection The rosary
Abstract
The article introduces the academic community to D. P. Iakubovich’s surviving unpublished review of Anna Akhmatova’s collection of verse The Rosary (4th ed., Petrograd, 1916).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.



A. A. Akhmatova’s notebooks: the characters
Abstract
The article provides commentaries on the people mentioned by A. A. Akhmatova in her notebooks. These notes are based on written testimonies, memoirs, etc., and should be taken into account in the forthcoming Complete Works, chronicles of the poet’s life and career, etc.



Three story lines from A. A. Akhmatova’s correspondence
Abstract
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.



Poem without a hero by A. A. Akhmatova: towards the mechanisms of hypertext creation
Abstract
The article discusses the mechanisms of hypertext creation in the Poem without a Hero by A. A. Akhmatova. The mechanisms of embedding topoi in the text — collapsed meanings that include multiple references to the world literature, organized according to the principle of semiotic interference, are revealed. Three ways of implementing intertextual references (citation, allusion and attractors) are identified and it is argued that they all form a complex system of mutual reflections, tending to several plot-compositional frames. It is shown how the author makes explicit references to certain semantic clusters in the text, linking them into a single categorical network, organized, among other things, by implication and subtext.



Semantics and poetics of two antiquity diptychs by A. A. Akhmatova: Shakespeare and Sophocles, Shakespeare and Horace
Abstract
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.



Публикации и сообщения
M. M. Kheraskov’s Rossiada and J. Chapelain’s poem La Pucelle ou La France délivrée
Abstract
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.



V. A. and E. E. Zhukovsky: new iconographic materials
Abstract
The article deals with the attribution of the two early photographic portraits of V. A. and E. E. Zhukovsky from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum. Researching the work of the photographers S. Gerothwohl and E. Tanner, who took the photographs, and juxtapositioning them with the iconographic materials of the poet and his wife, we confirm the hypothesis that the portraits of unknown personae are the earliest photographs of the Zhukovskys, made in Frankfurt in 1845.



To the history of a Turgenev preface (An unknown letter by Charles Edmond to I. S. Turgenev)
Abstract
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.



«Culture of cliches» in Chekhov’s early prose
Abstract
The article deals with the reassessment of some well-established literary cliches in A. P. Chekhov’s work, with the writer,s early stories («Elements Most Often Found in Novels, Short Stories, Etc.», «Words, Words and Words», «A Thousand and One Passions, or a Scary Night») taken as the case studies. Using literary images, techniques, plot moves, colocations and phrases that were common for his time, Chekhov reinterprets them in parody vein.



Enigmatic text poetics in the poem «The duel» by N. A. ZabolotskJ
Abstract
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.



A. P. Platonov and censorship (a repressed 1939 publication in the Oktyabr)
Abstract
The article analyzes a previously unknown episode in the history of censorship, highlighting the literary historic value of a very rare and hard-to-access source, Summary of the Most Important Seizures, Detentions and Confiscations Made by Glavlit of the USSR, printed in the 1930s in six copies for the top leadership of the country, that is now known only in single issues. The newly discovered issue, deposited in one of the files of A. Y. Vyshinsky, as Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Commissars, in the State Archive of the Russian Federation, contains the censorship records pertaining to the failed publication of A. P. Platonov’s short story «Life in the Family (Among Animals and Plants)» in the Oktyabr magazine in 1939. The records not only offer a new narrative concerning the fate of this long-suffering work by A. P. Platonov, but also help to restore the lost fragments of the original text.



A. M. Remizov. Dostoevsky’s secret thought from his reminiscences of a convict. A bad predicament
Abstract
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.



Обзоры и рецензии















Хроника
A. N. Ostrovsky — texts and cultural contexts: to the 200th anniversary of the birth of the playwright Research conference



In memory of Yuri Konstantinovich Gerasimov, doctor of art history (1923–2003). Honoring the centenary of his birth Research conference



Home readings: Trajectories of (non-)classical knowledge about Russian literature First international youth conference



Critics and writers: shaping a literary reputation in the late 19th — early 20th century Fifth international research conference



Literary reputations in the process of intercultural interaction International research conference



Fifth young researchers’ readings on the Russian literature of the 18th century



Second Bogomolov readings International research conference


