Re-Visioning the Past: Russian Literary Classics in Film

2011 ◽  
Vol 85 (6) ◽  
pp. 55-58
Author(s):  
Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy

The late 1990s – early 2000s was a time of numerous projects dedicated to the Victorian age and the Victorian novel as a specific phenomenon that inspires the modern novel development. The English postmodern novel with its typical narrative, time transferal to Victorian England, weaving of time layers, invokes current research interest. The relevance of this study is caused by considerable interest of researchers in the Victorian era heritage and by need of a comprehensive study of Victorian linguoculture and its implementation in the modern English novel. The Victorian text influences a new genre of the novel that reflects the gravity of modern English prose to the traditional literature of Victorian era, assumed to be particularly important in this context. The analysis of A. S. Byatt’s “Possession” in the Russian literary criticism was made only by O. A. Tolstykh; in the Ukrainian science, this work was investigated by O. Boynitska in the context of searching the past, so this subject is not investigated enough, and in our opinion is new and relevant, especially from the perspective of the “Victorian era” concept embodied in the novel. The aim of the paper is to analyze the “Victorian era” concept peculiarities in the intercultural context, on the basis of A. S. Byatt’s “Possession” as a Victorian novel. The paper takes into account the reproduction of concepts of Marriage, Home, Family, Freedom, Life, as components of “Victorian era.” The Victorian family is often represented through the place of their dwelling; therefore, the great Victorians’ works are overwhelmed by interior descriptions (Dombey’s house, Miss Havisham’s home, Mr. Rochester’s Castle). However, in “Possession,” there is an obvious contrast of Victorian buildings to the same structures in the XX century: the past prime – the modern decline. All the secrets and delusions hidden behind the facades of supposedly respectable buildings result in distorting facts and, to some extent, to violating the rights of ownership to the memories of the past. This gives another meaning to the title of the novel – “possession,” that is ownership, possession of letters, memory, truth.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 74-86
Author(s):  
Ekaterina V. Kargapolova ◽  
Uliia A. Davydova ◽  
Ekaterina M. Osina

The problem of studying the structure of reading preferences of the population is interdisciplinary, as it belongs to the fields of literary studies, teaching, and social studies. There is a need for the research matching the current situation, which a number of authors quite rightfully name the “reading crisis”. At the same time, specific empirical studies of the recent years in Russia show an increase in reader interest (especially among young people). This actualizes the need to diagnose the structure of reader preferences in the vanguard of young people, the future scientific, technical, and managerial elite — the university students. In the world, one may see a reception of the national classical literary heritage as a reaction to globalist projects in the form of Americanization (or rather, McDonaldization). This study aims to analyze the place of Russian literary classics in the structure of reading preferences among the university students based on the results of a specific sociological questionnaire of the student audience in Astrakhan, Volgograd, and Moscow, implemented under the guidance and direct participation of the authors in 2016 and in 2019. As an indicator of familiarity of respondents with the works of Russian and Soviet writers of the 19th and 20th centuries, the authors counted the reading of a full text. The level of familiarity with the texts of the Golden Age of the Russian culture has increased, same goes for the readers’ interest in Soviet authors. Students pay more attention to the works of N. V. Gogol and M. A. Bulgakov nowadays. There is also a growing audience of authors, who write about the Great Patriotic War. The authors of this article associate this phenomenon with the activation of the historical memory of Russians. At the same time, the results show that students prefer the Soviet period of literary classics to a much lesser extent than the works of the Golden Age. The tendency to increase the importance of Russian literary classics in the structure of reader preferences of contemporary students can be associated with the processes of revival of interest in Russian culture, with the strengthening of civil position, and ultimately — the national identity. The prospects for further research are considered by the authors based on qualitative methods involving the theoretical and methodological potential of social and literary studies, which can show the possible transformation of the understanding of the meaning of works of Russian literary classics by modern students.


Author(s):  
G.G. Ramazanova ◽  
Z.A. Zaripova

The Little Match Girl by H.Ch. Andersen is a fairy tale that tells a tragic story about a child's death at Christmas night. Famous Russian authors Yu. Buida and D. Bykov have written stories with the same names (The Little Match Girl and The Little Match Girl Gives a Light). The authors deliberately used these names to show the relation with the famous work. In both stories, the action is set within the timeline defined by the canons of religious calendarial prose. There are miracles in the stories; the Christmas characters are archetypes, as they are kind, merciful and compassionate. The stories written by the contemporary authors are examples of a kind of a palimpsest. They show the socio-historical collisions and moral problems of the post-Soviet time. The article uses the comparative method which allows us to consider the types of characters, to find literary traditions and innovations in the prose of the writers. It is important to take an intertextual approach during (when) examining the stories. It helps identify and analyze how certain motifs and images relate in the 19th century literature and fiction texts of modern writers. This approach reveals the deep connection between the works and the texts of world and Russian literary classics.


2021 ◽  
pp. 164-170
Author(s):  
Natalia Ye. Nikonova ◽  

The review notes Olga Kafanova’s great contribution to the study of the history of Russian literature, and especially works by Nikolai Karamzin, and productivity of her research as evidenced by the presented monograph. The book excels in its fundamental nature, novelty and reliability of the source base (more than 500 items of the bibliography of translations by Karamzin (1783-1800) and originals discovered while studying foreign works and periodicals). The review indicates the novelty and prospects of a number of Kafanova’s observations. In 2016, the public celebrated the 250th anniversary of Karamzin’s birth. The jubilee events were held in several countries and brought together dozens of scholars. One of the particular results of these events is an observation on the need for a comprehensive understanding of the work of Karamzin as a translator at a new level. The reviewed monograph promptly fills the noted gap and, using unique material, solves the problem of popularizing and preserving the Russian literary classics. The bibliography presented in the form of an appendix contains names of more than 50 authors of English, German, and French literature, whose texts Karamzin referred to. Based on the compiled corpus, Kafanova chooses an analytical approach that consistently reflects the evolution of Karamzin’s own system of views, on the one hand, and is based on the classic examples of Russian literary criticism and translation studies, on the other. Kafanova’s genre-generic approach easily synthesizes the several dimensions of the literary, editorial and institutional activities of Karamzin as a translator; there is no criticism of the clear definitions that classify Karamzin’s work on mastering the texts of foreign authors to one type or another. Another idea in the book is connected with a fundamental approach in the science of literature, according to which the history of literary processes is considered as a series of successive trends and directions of humanitarian thought. The reviewed book tells about the nuances of the era of pre-Romanticism, about the intricacies of interpreting Stem’s “sentimental stories of a sensitive heroine”, about the “portrait” project associated with “sensitive authors” (Wieland, Gesner, Klopstock, and others), and about the peculiarities of the Enlightenment and European Antiquity in the pantheon of literature by Karamzin and his contemporaries.


2020 ◽  
pp. 13-32
Author(s):  
S. V. Perevalova

The article states that the heroic-patriotic traditions of Russian classics (M. Lermontov, L. Tolstoy, A. Blok) live on in the works by participants in the Battle of Stalingrad: the founder of the ‘lieutenant prose’ Viktor Nekrasov and poets Mikhail Kulchitsky and Aleksandr Korenev. M. Lermontov’s ‘Borodino’ sounds with a new vigour in the lyric poetry by the fighters at Stalingrad. Works dedicated to the Battle of Stalingrad follow and modernize the traditions of Russian realism exemplified by the first-hand accounts of L. Tolstoy, an officer during the Siege of Sevastopol. Military and engineering learnings of the Russian army garnered during the Crimean War were adopted by the characters of Front-Line Stalingrad [V okopakh Stalingrada] by V. Nekrasov, who received an architect’s degree in pre-war Kyiv and was in command of a sapper battalion on the Stalingrad front. This officer writer also follows the narrative approach of the 19th-c. classic, so that the ferocity of the battle does not obscure the ‘dialectics of the soul’ of his fellow soldiers, whom he portrays as part and parcel of the centuries-long national culture.


Author(s):  
Evgeniya N. Baturina

The processes of desacralization and secularization, taking placein the Russian literary language over the three preceding centuries and nowadays, have caused significant changes in its lexical system. However, the language preserves lexical units with internal spiritual potential. They carry the genetic memory of the meanings of the past. One of these words, in our opinion, is the lexeme man . The article presents the results of analysing the semantic structure of the word man in the diachronic aspect. The analysis is based on the explanatory dictionaries of the Russian language, which include the vocabulary of different centuries, as well as etymological dictionaries. This study is carried out in order to reveal hidden sacral meanings in the semantics of the word. The method of generalization (unification) of dictionary definitions was used as the main research method. The lexical meanings of the word man were examined in different periods of its functioning, primarily in the language of the XIX-XX centuries. In our research, we based on the works of Russian linguists studying this problem. Sacred meanings in the semantic structure of the word man were revealed by comparing etymological and word-formation features of the lexemes man and people drawn upon minimal contexts from the texts of the Holy Scriptures. Despite the secularization of the semantic structure of the studied lexical unit, namely the actualization of the meaning of ‘personality as an exemplar of high moral and intellectual qualities’ and the loss of the meaning of ‘creature worthy of this name’, taking into account the degrees of humanity according to V.I. Dal such as‘a fleshy, deadman’, ‘aman of feelings and nature’, ‘a spiritual man’, ‘a blessed man’, it retained its spiritual potentialat the etymological level.


10.34690/189 ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 198-210
Author(s):  
Ольга Яковлевна Каталикова

Статья посвящена особым случаям использования фортепиано в советской киномузыке: не только в составе партитуры, но и как непосредственного «участника» экранного действия. Обычно это происходит в фильмах революционной и исторической тематики, а также в экранизациях русской классики. Среди множества картин, где рояль появляется на экране, нужно выделить ряд шедевров, в которых введение его отмечено уникальными решениями. В статье рассмотрены примеры из фильмов «Новый Вавилон» (музыка Д. Шостаковича), «Строгий юноша» (музыка Г. Попова), «Веселые ребята» (музыка И. Дунаевского). The article is devoted to special cases of the use of the piano in Soviet film music: not only as part of the score, but also as a direct “participant” of the screen action. This usually happens in films with revolutionary and historical themes, as well as in film adaptations of Russian literary classics in scenes of home music. However, among the many films where the instrument appears on the screen, it is necessary to note a number of absolute masterpieces in which the use of the piano is marked by unique solutions. The article considers examples of this kind from the films “New Babylon” (music by D. Shostakovich) “A Strict Young Man” (music by G. Popov), “Funny Guys” (music by I. Dunaevsky).


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 424-433
Author(s):  
Polina V. Romenskikh ◽  
Vladimir A. Meskin

The purpose of the article is to answer the question: why did the uncompromising condemnation of the traitor disciple become a thing of the past, and why did writers begin to understand and then justify the actions of Judas in their own manner in the second half of the 19th century? To solve the problems, caused by this goal, the authors refer to the ideas of philosophers of the new time, who significantly influenced the worldview of artists of the word, especially G. Hegel, A. Schopenhauer, S. Kierkegaard, and in more detail - F. Nietzsche. Special attention was paid to the writers, who lived at the end of the new time and at the beginning of the modern time and who created the most striking works on this biblical theme. The philosophy and poetics of the Swede - T. Gedberg and the Russian - L. Andreev are analyzed in detail. This is the first such a detailed appeal to the famous Swede in a detailed comparison of his story about Judas with Andreevs story about this character from the New Testament in Russian literary studies. It is proved that both writers reacted to the crisis of consciousness that was revealed at that time and that Nietzsche had the strongest attention on both prose writers, while in Andreevs case Judas appears as a type of the superman.


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