№ 1(1) (2019)

The article addresses the issue of seriousness as it is represented in the texts of M. Bakhtin. The author shows that laughter and seriousness can be regarded as two cultural poles, where the first represents motion and variability, and the second represents completeness and immutability. The differences of laughter and seriousness are considered in several aspects. First, laughter is directed at the world as a whole, and seriousness deals with a certain picture of the world, which it is trying to claim as the only possible reality. Secondly, seriousness and laughter are contrasted as part and whole. Seriousness is only one of the moments of reality, while laughter is commensurate with "the whole unity of the world." Thirdly, laughter does not hide anything, but seriousness can act as a form of concealment. As a result, emptiness and lies often prefer to hide under the guise of seriousness. Finally, laughter is fundamentally non-hierarchical, wthile seriousness tends to divide, build hierarchies. Ideas about serious can be considered as one of the tools to maintain subordination in society. Forms of culture, oriented to seriousness, are dogmatic, authoritarian, characterized by the impenetrability of boundaries and the inadmissibility of any transformations and profanations. Violence, lies and moralism are regarded as the instruments of asserting a seriousness in a culture. However, in addition to one-sided, false seriousness that pervades an authoritarian culture, there are also forms of seriousness which do not oppose to laughter and realize that they are only moments of the “incomplete whole world”: critical philosophy, science, “serio-comical” literature, a new European romance. In all these forms, a serious attitude towards the world, mixing with the laughter, gives rise to a special kind of synthesis that allows the culture to develop, while retaining its specificity. In conclusion, the author writes about the excessive seriousness of Russian culture and the need for a “laughter” impulse for its development.

The article analyzes a fragment of the lectures, given by M.M. Bakhtin at the Mordovia State Pedagogical Institute (later named after A.I. Polezhayev; now Ogarev Mordovia State University) in the second semester of the 1936/37 academic year and recorded by M.A. Beban (1913–1986) – a Moksha-Mordovian writer, one of the founders of the professional Mordovian literature, at hat time – a student of the literary faculty. The fragment focuses on the consideration of the personality and literary creativity of William Shakespeare. The dating of May 1937 gives the document its particular historical value. At that moment, at the institute, as well as throughout Mordovia, truly “Shakespearean” conflicts and passions flared up, both the teacher and the student faced a real threat of political repression. Bakhtin managed to leave Saransk, Beban was arrested, accused of “complicity in counter-revolutionary agitation and propaganda” (without giving any indicative testimony, in 1939 he was released “for lack of evidence”). As an attachment, the text of the reviewed records (decoding and photocopies) with the comments of the author of the article is published. An unknown photograph of Bakhtin of the 1930s is first published.

A manuscript found in the personal archive of I.D. Voronin – professor of the Mordovia State University – is introduced into scientific parlance for the first time. It is a record of M.M. Bakhtin’s oral comments to the manuscript «Essays and Articles», made by I.D. Voronin at the department meeting of the Chair of Russian and Foreign Literature of the Mordovia State University in the fall of 1961. The text was finalized by I.D. Voronin (taking into account all comments) and the same year was published by the Mordovian Publishing House.

The scientific project of the M.M. Bakhtin Center «M.M. Bakhtin’s Ideas in the Process of Harmonizing of Social Relations in the Republic of Mordovia» received the regional support from the Government of the Republic of Mordovia and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. Within the framework of the project the unique materials from the funds of the M.M. Bakhtin Center, whose accessibility for specialists and the general public is objectively limited, will be processed, structured and commented for the first time. There appears to be a possibility of introducing them into scientific circulation.

The article is an overview of the latest international academic conference devoted to the interdisciplinary study of Mikhail Bakhtin's scholarly heritage. The conference was attended by more than a hundred speakers from different countries (Russia, UK, Canada, USA, Mexico, India, Brazil, Poland, Japan, etc.). The conference was held in Shanghai and was organised by Fudan University with the support of the All-China Bakhtin Society and the All-China Society for Foreign Critique, Literary Studies and Comparative Poetics, the Chinese Association for Foreign Literature.