Return to the estate as a recurring motifin the works of I.A. Bunin and B.A. Pilnyak

Author(s):  
Ornella Discacciati ◽  

This paper investigates the novel “The Life of Arseniev” and the novella “Mahogany” by contemporaries-authors Ivan Bunin and Boris Pilnyak, respectively. Although written in the same period, these two multi-faceted literary works were produced in different historical and cultural contexts. The purpose is to identify the underlying characteristics that they share in order to define an invariant model of the “topos of the country estate” in Russian literature on the cusp of the 1920s and 1930s. The conclusion that can be drawn is that, despite the diametrically opposed political milieus in which the two authors operated — Bunin was an émigré writer of the first wave; Pilnyak was a Soviet writer — in both works the country estate posits itself not only as the cultural space encompassing the history of the Russian state as a whole, but also as the chronicle of the private lives of the people who lived in it, the very quintessence of their being and a covenant for future generations.

Author(s):  
L.V. Dmitrieva

The proposed scenario of the interactive excursion-performance is designed for a children's audience of 9–11 years. The route is planned as a tour of the historical and cultural space, and reinvigoration of this Byzantine city. Thus, the excursion content is realized by means of a visual and associative consequence connected with the places of interests artistic artifacts: Christian character images reveal the world views of the medieval culture. The project is part of the academic partnership program of the Russian State Pedagogical University named after A.I. Herzen with the historical and archaeological museum-reserve “Chersonesos Tauric” and is implemented during visiting summer practices of bachelors of the Department of Theory and History of Culture.


Author(s):  
Ausma Cimdiņa

The novel “Magnus, the Danish Prince” by the Russian diaspora in Latvia writer Roald Dobrovensky is seen as a specific example of a biographical and historical genre, which embodies the historical experience of different eras and nations in the confrontation of globalisation and national self-determination. At the heart of the novel are the Livonian War and the historical role and human destiny of Magnus (1540–1683) – the Danish prince of the Oldenburg dynasty, the first and the only king of Livonia. The motif of Riga’s humanists is seen both as one of the main ideological driving forces of the novel and as a marginal reflection in Magnus’s life story. Acknowledged historical sources have been used in the creation of the novel: Baltazar Rusov’s “Livonian Chronicle”; Nikolai Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State”; Alexander Janov’s “Russia: 1462–1584. The Beginning of the Tragedy. Notes of the Nature and Formation of Russian Statehood” etc. In connection with the concept of Riga humanists, another fictitious document created by the writer Dobrovensky himself is especially important, namely, the diary of Johann Birke – Magnus’s interpreter, a person with a double identity, “half-Latvian”, “half-German”. It is a message of an alternative to the well-known historical documents, which allows to turn the Livonian historical narrative in the direction of “letocentrism” and raises the issue of the ethnic identity of Riga’s humanists. Along with the deconstruction of the historically documented image of Livonian King Magnus, the thematic structure of the novel is dominated by identity aspects related to the Livonian historical narrative. Dobrovensky, with his novel, raises an important question – what does the medieval Livonia, Europe’s common intellectual heritage, mean for contemporary Latvia and the human society at large? Dobrovensky’s work is also a significant challenge in strengthening emotional ties with Livonia (which were weakened in the early stages of national historiography due to conflicts over the founding of nation-states).


Author(s):  
Pavel E. Fokin ◽  
Ilya O. Boretsky

The first Russian theatrical production of Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov premiered on the eve of Dostoevsky’s 20th death anniversary on January 26 (February 7) 1901 at the Theater of the Literary and Artistic Society (Maly Theater) in St. Petersburg as a benefit for Nikolay Seversky. The novel was adapted for the stage by K. Dmitriev (Konstantin Nabokov). The role of Dmitry Karamazov was performed by the famous dramatic actor Pavel Orlenev, who had received recognition for playing the role of Raskolnikov. The play, the staging, the actors’ interpretation of their roles became the subject of detailed reviews of the St. Petersburg theater critics and provoked controversial assessments and again raised the question about the peculiarities of Dostoevsky’s prose and the possibility of its presentation on stage. The production of The Brothers Karamazov at the Maly Theater in St. Petersburg and the controversy about it became an important stage in the development of Russian realistic theater and a reflection of the ideas of Dostoevsky’s younger contemporaries about the distinctive features and contents of his art. The manuscript holdings of the Vladimir Dahl State Museum of the History of Russian Literature includes Anna Dostoevskaya’s collection containing a set of documentary materials (the playbill, newspaper advertisements, reviews, feuilletons), which makes it possible to form a complete picture of the play and Russian viewers’ reaction to it. The article provides a description of the performance, and voluminous excerpts from the most informative press reviews. The published materials have not previously attracted special attention of researchers.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 53-58
Author(s):  
A.V. Shmeleva

This publication reveals the tradition of Russian literature, based on the principles of historicism and nationalities. The connection of speech and outlook of the writer as an example of creativity one of the outstanding figures of the second half of the XIX century – K.P Pobedonostsev. Research subject is the basic thesis of Pobedonostsev which is addressed to the writers - "We should live the people's lives ...." Accumulation of the ideals of the people, which are elaborated throughout the history of Russia. It allows to preserve the culture of artistic expression and national historic appearance.


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.


Author(s):  
Pavel E. Fokin ◽  
Ilya O. Boretsky

The first Russian theatrical production of Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov premiered on the eve of Dostoevsky’s 20th death anniversary on January 26 (February 7) 1901 at the Theater of the Literary and Artistic Society (Maly Theater) in St. Petersburg as a benefit for Nikolay Seversky. The novel was adapted for the stage by K. Dmitriev (Konstantin Nabokov). The role of Dmitry Karamazov was performed by the famous dramatic actor Pavel Orlenev, who had received recognition for playing the role of Raskolnikov. The play, the staging, the actors’ interpretation of their roles became the subject of detailed reviews of the St. Petersburg theater critics and provoked controversial assessments and again raised the question about the peculiarities of Dostoevsky’s prose and the possibility of its presentation on stage. The production of The Brothers Karamazov at the Maly Theater in St. Petersburg and the controversy about it became an important stage in the development of Russian realistic theater and a reflection of the ideas of Dostoevsky’s younger contemporaries about the distinctive features and contents of his art. The manuscript holdings of the Vladimir Dahl State Museum of the History of Russian Literature includes Anna Dostoevskaya’s collection containing a set of documentary materials (the playbill, newspaper advertisements, reviews, feuilletons), which makes it possible to form a complete picture of the play and Russian viewers’ reaction to it. The article provides a description of the performance, and voluminous excerpts from the most informative press reviews. The published materials have not previously attracted special attention of researchers.


Author(s):  
Anna V. Petrova

The article analyses the reaction of the press to the publication of A Writer’s Diary in 1873. It aims to answer the question of why leading daily newspapers such as Golos, Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti, Birzhevye Vedomosti, Novoye Vremya, did not accept and negatively evaluated Dostoevsky’s work as columnist and editor of the Grazhdanin. Dostoevsky returned to the newspaper business with a new genre, and from the very beginning of A Writer's Diary he declares his unlimited freedom of choice about the topics and format of his conversations with the reader. This fact immediately distinguished him from other columnists, who usually followed the standards of the feuilleton (a genre normally dedicated to the latest news), and strictly obeyed their editorial policies, constantly taking into account the publisher’s “wishes”. Columnists from leading newspapers in 1873–1874 could not find similarities between their work and Dostoevsky’s, between his method of describing reality and theirs, and so they neither could nor wanted to see the author’s novelty and originality that went beyond the established newspaper practice, to be surprised by the courage and innovation of his Writer’s Diary. Instead, most of the journalists (Lev Panyutin, Arkady Kovner, Mikhail Wilde and others) chose to be “critical” and – using irony, satirical attacks, sarcastic comments mockingly sought to undermine Dostoevsky’s authority as a columnist and discredit the values that he put above all in A Writer's Diary in 1873 (a “heartfelt” knowledge of Christ, the purification through suffering, the preservation of a relationship with the people). The article attempts to trace the development of this controversy and the factors that influenced its contents.


Vox Patrum ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 449-469
Author(s):  
Zofia Brzozowska

The РНБ, F.IV.151 manuscript is the third volume of a richly illustrated his­toriographical compilation (so-called Лицевой летописный свод – Illustrated Chronicle of Ivan the Terrible), which was prepared in one copy for tsar Ivan IV the Terrible in 1568-1576 and represents the development of the Russian state on the broad background of universal history. The aforementioned manuscript, which contains a description of the history of the Roman Empire and then the Byzantine Empire between the seventies of the 1st century A.D and 919, includes also an extensive sequence devoted to Muhammad (Ѡ Бохмите еретицѣ), derived from the Old Church Slavonic translation of the chronicle by George the Monk (Hamartolus). It is accompanied by two miniatures showing the representation of the founder of Islam. He was shown in an almost identical manner as the creators of earlier heterodox trends, such as Arius or Nestorius. These images therefore become a part of the tendency to perceive Muhammad as a heresiarch, a false pro­phet, and the religion he created as one of the heresies within Christianity, which is also typical of the Old Russian literature.


2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 1749-1755
Author(s):  
Asst. Prof. Raad Kareem Abd-Aun Asst. Lec. Ameer Abd Hadi

During the peak of the sectarian war in Iraq after the US invasion in 2003, there seemed to be an absolute absence of the mind and a great deal of hatred and tension among the people of Baghdad that turned into maddening acts of terrorism, like car bombings and suicide bombers, killing thousands of innocent people. Frankenstein in Baghdad came to be the mouthpiece of that very critical phase in the modern history of Iraq. The abundant acts of killing and bloodshed during 2005 turned into an ugly form of a monster called " Whatsitsname" formed from the fragmented parts of those killed by terrorist acts. The creature bears a clear resemblance to Marry Shelley's monster in her novel Frankenstein. The monster is a loose perpetrator that kills whoever it meets. This study attempts to analyze the writer's poetics of adaptation in the novel and his debt to other literary works.


Author(s):  
Maja E. Babicheva

Scientific bibliographic description of collections, which includes bibliographic description of the holding items, their systematization and scientific research, serves to disclose the library holdings. The purpose of the article is to study the process of scientific bibliographic description of the collections of Russian literature abroad in the Russian State Library (RSL) in its historical development. The author shows the evolution of this activity carried out by specialists of various departments of the RSL, and using reference to specific scientific articles on the theory of bibliography explains the importance of scientific bibliographic description of collections for creation of retrospective national bibliography.The author analyses and systematizes several dozen works related to the scientific bibliographic description of the Russian literature abroad in the RSL. This part of Rossika in the Library is mainly a single array. The work on its scientific bibliographic description is carried out in the traditional (printed) form, in modern (electronic) form, responding to contemporary trends, as well as in parallel in both forms.The article presents the consolidated list of local databases (DB) of Russian literature abroad, created in the RSL. Two main types of DB are distinguished: 1) Established on the basis of the collections of Russian literature abroad and intended mainly for their disclosure. The names of these resources fully reflect their essence: “Photographs in the Collection...”, “Publications with the owner’s marks from the Collections...”, “Displaced cultural values in the Collection...”; 2) Consolidated databases based on the collections of Russian literature abroad and a number of other sources. It is reflected and even underlined in the title, for example: “Consolidated catalogue of periodicals and continuing editions of Russian abroad in Moscow libraries”.The author collected and analysed scientific articles of the RSL researchers, revealing the history of these databases, the principles of their construction, the goals, objectives, opportunities and prospects. The article presents correlation between the database and traditional bibliographic indexes of Russian literature abroad in the RSL, as well as lists the cases when the DB is based on the index or, conversely, database serves as the basis for it. The author lists, systematizes and briefly describes traditional bibliographic indexes of the collections of Russian literature abroad created by the staff of the Russian State Library, as well as shows how to use technical possibilities in the indexes placed on electronic media.


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