scholarly journals Mikhail Bulgakov and Aleksandr Sukhovo-Kobylin. Textology of a Theater Album

2020 ◽  
pp. 219-245
Author(s):  
Elena N. Penskaya ◽  

Personal collections of documents related to the performances of SukhovoKobylin’s and Bulgakov’s own plays have never been compared. Bulgakov practically never mentions Sukhovo-Kobylin in his texts. However, the “meeting” of the two playwrights took place in the space of the theatrical album. Unlike the literary album that has been studied many times, there are no special studies about the typology of the theatrical album and its cultural semantics. The textological study of album “autocollections” as drama companions contributes to the acquisition of semantic “keys” not only to certain texts, but also to those meta-links that they form as well as to the compilation of mobile text transcriptions. The album laboratories of the two playwrights make this similarity clear. The theatrical albums by Sukhovo-Kobylin (a blue blotter with envelopes of versions of plays that are part of the “Pictures of the Past” trilogy, held in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts) and Bulgakov (eight albums in the Handwritten Section of the IRLI) reveal two layers. One is an “encyclopedia” of theatrical history of plays, posters, reviews, accompanied by the author’s notes, and a detailed “dossier of censorship ordeals”. The other layer is newspaper clippings with author’s marginalities, marks that simulate a vocabulary universe and the library of plots reflecting newspaper reality and later turned into works. Thus, it is known that Sukhovo-Kobylin was one of the characters in V. Chernoyarov’s feuilleton “The National Team”, published in the magazine “Novyy Zritel” in 1926 and pasted into Bulgakov’s album related to the play The Days of the Turbins at the Moscow Art Theater in 1926. The specified album is an auto-documentary source of Theatrical Novel. The metamorphoses of the texts in the album, accompanied by the author’s notes, marginalities, typologically bring together the theatrical albums of Sukhovo-Kobylin and Bulgakov. They are related semiotically and visually to the scenario of a conventional play, the director’s staged copy, or the exhibition plan of the exposition. The playwrights quite obviously collect the dossier, the “data bank”, fixing the junctions, the path from the manuscript to the publication and the scene (especially in Bulgakov’s case), as if they were making up a biography of their own text. Bulgakov appreciates the author’s recipes and technical guidelines for making an author, formulated in feuilletons of the 1920s. By coincidence, Sukhovo-Kobylin got into this feuilleton environment.

Author(s):  
Liubov’ V. Khachaturian ◽  
◽  

The article examines the problem of access to archival sources, many of which are currently closed for research due to a number of reasons, including epidemiological ones. The author sees the solution to the problem in creating special unified electronic archives, in which all information about manuscripts is placed on the Internet site or portal, regardless of where they are located geographically. In the author’s opinion, electronic resources of the “second generation” meet the most complete tasks of scientific research: digital archives that allow not only quickly selecting sources, but also working with an electronic copy of the document identical to the original. Regardless of the scientific qualification of the researcher and the state of the original, any Internet user gets direct access to the electronic copy: they can study it, clarify it, quote it in their works and distribute links to the source. On the material of the “Autograph. The 20th-Century. Digital Archive of Russian Literature” portal, the author describes the process of creating a digital archive as a research work that is located at the junction of two Humanities disciplines: source studies and textual studies. In the course of the research, the author turns to the new materials of the portal – the digital archive of Mikhail Bulgakov. The author gives a detailed description of the history of the writer’s archival collections in various organizations (Institute of World Literature, RAS; Russian State Library; Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts), as well as a description of research works of the past decade on Bulgakov’s artistic heritage. During the writer’s lifetime, the archive was kept by Bulgakov himself, then by his widow, Elena Bulgakova, with a full understanding of the value that the collection as a whole represents. As a result, a huge, interconnected and actually commented complex of manuscripts, albums, correspondence, and visual materials was created. Then the archive was divided into two unequal parts (the Bulgakov-prose writer archive and the Bulgakov-playwright archive) and transferred to two different repositories: the Pushkin House (Fund 369) and the Lenin State library (Fund 562). The Bulgakov collection of the Pushkin House is “adjacent” to the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts funds, which reflect the history of the text based on the materials of organizations (Glavrepertkom, archival funds of theaters, magazines and publishing houses). The author further describes the materials from the Mikhail Bulgakov Fund at the Institute of World Literature, RAS, presented on the “ Autograph. The 20th-Century” portal. The author cites unpublished (or published with notes) sources from the least studied part of the archive – the collection of theater albums. Comparing the theater album devoted to the stage history of the play The Days of the Turbins (The White Guard, The Brothers Turbins) and the text of Theatrical Novel (A Dead Man’s Memoir), the author infers that the album is a kind of a autodocumentary source of the novel, clarifying many controversial points in its interpretation. The genre nature of this type of album requires a separate study. In conclusion, the author emphasizes that the ideal material for such research can be the digital archive of Mikhail Bulgakov.


Author(s):  
Stefania Zini ◽  
Nikita V. Khokhlov

The article is dedicated to the history of the Italians of Crimea. The history of the group is still little studied and rich in myths and legends. Our complex historical-anthropological and genetic study of the community allowed us to dispel some myths, which are widespread among the members of the community and far beyond it, and to recreate the history, geography and causes of migrations that took place in the XIX century. The historical part of the research was mainly based on sources and documents found in the Russian and Italian archives. We used documents from the State Archive of the Saratov Region, the State Archive of the Republic of Crimea, the Russian State Military Archive of Moscow, the state archives of Genova, Napoli, Bari, Turin, and the Vatican Secret Archive. Extensive and equally useful information was found in newspapers and other periodicals of the XIX–XX centuries from Russian and Italian library collections. Family archives of descendants of Italian migrants also provided valuable information. The article presents some of the materials found in the course of the study. The article also deals with the problem of the size of the community, which is difficult to define both today and in the past.


2018 ◽  
pp. 76-102
Author(s):  
T P. Lonngren

After a short summary of the story behind K. Hamsun’s play In the Grip of Life [Livet i Vold], its plot and stage history in Russia, the article proceeds to tell about an unknown film script. Cinematic adaptations of Hamsun’s books have always dominated Norwegian literature, while none of his dramatic pieces have made it to the screen. However, a film script was uncovered, an adaptation of In the Grip of Life: a play specially written for a Russian theatre. The script was found in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts, among the documents of Evgeny Sergeevich Khokhlov. Based on the history of filmmaking and relevant filmography, Khokhlov’s film script is not just the only attempt at film adaptation of a Hamsun play, but the first ever project based on a theatrical play in Russian cinematic history. Written almost 100 years ago, the script is far from perfect in the modern understanding of filmmaking; nonetheless, it has certain merits in the eyes of contemporaries. The very attempt to interpret the play by means of a nascent artistic genre may be considered a proof of its relevance to Russian audiences at the time.


PMLA ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-27
Author(s):  
Leon F. Seltzer

In recent years, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, a difficult work and for long an unjustly neglected one, has begun to command increasingly greater critical attention and esteem. As more than one contemporary writer has noted, the verdict of the late Richard Chase in 1949, that the novel represents Melville's “second best achievement,” has served to prompt many to undertake a second reading (or at least a first) of the book. Before this time, the novel had traditionally been the one Melville readers have shied away from—as overly discursive, too rambling altogether, on the one hand, or as an unfortunate outgrowth of the author's morbidity on the other. Elizabeth Foster, in the admirably comprehensive introduction to her valuable edition of The Confidence-Man (1954), systematically traces the history of the book's reputation and observes that even with the Melville renaissance of the twenties, the work stands as the last piece of the author's fiction to be redeemed. Only lately, she comments, has it ceased to be regarded as “the ugly duckling” of Melville's creations. But recognition does not imply agreement, and it should not be thought that in the past fifteen years critics have reached any sort of unanimity on the novel's content. Since Mr. Chase's study, which approached the puzzling work as a satire on the American spirit—or, more specifically, as an attack on the liberalism of the day—and which speculated upon the novel's controlling folk and mythic figures, other critics, by now ready to assume that the book repaid careful analysis, have read the work in a variety of ways. It has been treated, among other things, as a religious allegory, as a philosophic satire on optimism, and as a Shandian comedy. One critic has conveniently summarized the prevailing situation by remarking that “the literary, philosophical, and cultural materials in this book are fused in so enigmatic a fashion that its interpreters have differed as to what the book is really about.”


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-102
Author(s):  
V. A. Aleksandrova ◽  

The article is devoted to the history of an unrealized performance of M. P. Mussorgsky’s opera "Khovanshchina" orchestrated by B. V. Asafyev. On the basis of archival documents, stored in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts, the Russian National Museum of Music, Central State Archive of Literature and Art of Saint Petersburg, the Bolshoi Theatre Museum, most of which are introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, studied the circumstances under which the opera was planned to be staged in the State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet (nowadays — the Mariinsky Theatre). Fragments from the reports of the Artistic Council of Opera at the State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet meetings, the correspondence between B. V. Asafyev and P. A. Lamm, the manuscript "P. A. Lamm. A Biography" by O. P. Lamm and other unpublished archival documents are cited. The author comes to the conclusion that most attempts to perform "Khovanshchina" were hindered by the difficult socio-political circumstances of the 1930s, while the existing assumptions about the creative failure of the Asafyev’s orchestration don’t find clear affirmation, neither in historical documents, nor in the existing manuscript of the orchestral score.


1875 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 31-31
Author(s):  
Blackie

The Author showed by a historical review of the fortunes of Greece, through the Middle Ages, and under the successive influences of Turkish conquest and Turkish oppression, how the Greek language had escaped corruption to the degree that would have caused the birth of a new language in the way that Italian and the other Roman languages grew out of Latin. He then analysed the modern language, as it existed in current popular literature before the time of Coraes, that is, from the time of Theodore Ptochoprodromus to nearly the end of the last century, and showed that the losses and curtailments which it had unquestionably suffered in the course of so many centuries, were not such as materially to impair the strength and beauty of the language, which in its present state was partly to be regarded as a living bridge betwixt the present and the past, and as an altogether unique phenomenon in the history of human speech.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 160-165
Author(s):  
Kuanysh Gazizovich Akanov

The paper considers the history of approval of Orenburg city as the capital of Kirgiz (Kazakh) Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic (KASSR) which was formed by the decree from 26 of August, 1920, as well as the history accession of the city and some district of province to Kazakhstan. The reasons of choice of Orenburg as administrative center of Kirgiz Republic and possible proposed alternatives are researched. The author analyses publications of Kazakhstan and Russian scientists on the indicated theme. Among the objective reasons of choice of Orenburg as the capital, the author names the following ones: the importance of Orenburg for Kirgiz Republic of that time, as a city with developed infrastructure and industry, as well as cultural and economic potential; the presence of sufficiently strong stratum workers,; attempt to make the city a central core of politics and become closer to Asian and Turkic people; regulation of territorial disputes about question of accessory of Orenburg; temporariness of the capital status of Orenburg to Kyrgyzia, in view of geographical distance of the city from the other regions of Autonomy and little representatives of title Kazakh ethnos. The author introduces for scientific use some documents of the State archive of the Orenburg Region in the process of research.


Author(s):  
D. V. Repnikov

The article is devoted to such an important aspect of the activities of the plenipotentiaries of the State Defensive Committee during the Great Patriotic War, as conflicts of authority. Contradictions between the plenipotentiaries of the State Defensive Committee and the leaders of party, state, economic bodies at various levels, as well as between the plenipotentiaries themselves, that were expressed in the emergence of various disputes and often resulted in conflicts of authority, became commonplace in the functioning of the state power system of the USSR in the war period. Based on documents from federal (State Archive of the Russian Federation, Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, Russian State Archive of Economics) and regional (Central State Archive of the Udmurt Republic, Center for Documentation of the Recent History of the Udmurt Republic) archives, the author considers a conflict of authority situation that developed during the Great Patriotic War in the Udmurt Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, which shows that historical reality is more complicated than the stereotypical manifestations of it.


Literary Fact ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 115-130
Author(s):  
Veronika B. Zuseva-Özkan

The article considers the unpublished play by Maria Levberg, a little known female writer of the Silver Age. Aleksandr Blok praised this drama entitled Danton; thanks to his efforts, it was performed in the Bolshoi Drama Theater in 1919. Danton is discussed in several articles by Blok (Bolshoi Drama Theater in the Next Season, of 19 May 1919, Tribune (Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus)) and in his correspondence; it is also mentioned in Blok’s notebooks. The author of the article analyzes all these mentions, reconstructs the history of interactions between Blok and Levberg. Some of her letters to the poet are published here for the first time. Blok’s notes on the typed copy of Danton, preserved at the Manuscript Department of the Institute of Russian Literature in Saint Petersburg, are described. The relationship between this version of the play and the version, preserved at the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts in Moscow, is revealed. The author analyzes the plot and the system of characters, characterizes the concept of history expressed in Danton, and proposes the hypothesis why this play turned out to be so dear to Blok. Blok’s reviews on Danton are compared to those written by A.M. Remizov (who also welcomed the play, as well as other dramas by Levberg — Stones of Death and The Chevalier’s Epee) and by M.A. Kuzmin who displayed a more critical attitude. Finally, the place of this drama among Levberg’s works and her main themes and ideas are considered.


2021 ◽  
pp. 803-815
Author(s):  
Tatiana A. Ornatskaya ◽  

The article highlights the process of formation of the Korean Department of the Eastern section of the ICCA under the conditions of existence of the buffer state — the Far Eastern Republic. It was to strive for geopolitical compromise in face of the Civil War and the Allied Intervention. The paper discusses conditions for establishment and reasons for further expansion of the Korean section. On the basis of documents from central and regional archives that are being thus introduced into the first scientific use, the contradictions of the national section formation are shown, the positions of the warring parties and the role of Soviet Russia representatives in the settlement of conflicts are highlighted. The conclusion is made about further directions of work with Korean communists. The past provides an opportunity to take a critical look at the events of a century ago, while the opening of the Comintern archives allows the open press to saturate its content with new data. The main body of unpublished documents on the activities of the Communist International is contained in the fond 495 of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, however, information on some aspects may be found in other federal and regional archives. It is no secret that foreign communists played their role in the foreign policy of Soviet Russia, and their help was big. However, the process of bringing them to work in the interests of the RSFSR has not yet been fully studied. Expediency, cost, and consequences of their work may be arguable, but only one conclusion is allowed: this page of national history should not be forgotten, it has to find its researchers. Recently, the study of the activities of departments and sections of the Communist international has not been popular among researchers either. The notions of ideological work have fallen by the wayside, pushed away by the Soviet past of the Comintern departments and sections. However, in our view, some aspects of the activities of divisions and sections of the Comintern remain relevant.


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