RIVER IN THE WORKS BY M. F. ISTOMIN: ON THE PROBLEM OF MODELING THE IMAGE OF THE NORTH IN THE WORKS OF KOMI WRITERS OF THE XIX CENTURY

The works of Mikhail Fedorovich Istomin (1821-1862) are part of the unexplored and, until recently, not included in the history of Komi literature material - essays created by Komi writers of the XIX century in Russian language. Meanwhile, the work of M. Istomin is very representative both in terms of the formation of General regional characteristic of all the literature of the North, and the ways of familiarizing Komi intelligentsia to literary work. The analysis of works of M. Istomin made in this work, allows to judge about actual for the writer-“foreigner” of the XIX century connection to all-regional and all-Russian literary process, and also about a problem of creation of a native literary portrait for different people of the North. The description of the territory, its geographical and climatic features, the creation of descriptions of places was chosen by the writer as a priority, the most important task of creativity. This allows him to embody fragments of the Northern world through the focus of view of autochthon, to identify and record the most important, especially important for the northerner, locations and objects of environment. The writer paid special attention to the rivers as the most important geographical and natural attractions of the region. In essence, the North in the essays of M. Istomin takes the form of world saturated with many waters. The writer is far from symbolizing natural objects, does not endow their images with figurative meanings, at the same time, many descriptions of different rivers in his essays indicate the movement of regional and Komi literature by the way of creation its own concept of the North as a natural environment-centered world.

The “Bird Catcher” From Remizov’s “Nest”: To the Paris Biography of the Poet Dmitry Kobiakov

The article is dedicated to unknown plots from the biography of Dmitry Kobyakov – one of the poets of “lost generation” who shared the fate of post-war Soviet repatriates. On the basis of unpublished letters of Kobyakov from the American archive of A. M. Remisov the author reveals the motives of the rapprochement of a famous writer and an aspiring poet. At the external level it was connected with the publication of Kobyakov’s verse books, but on a latent level had according with innovative trends in artistic poetic and prosaic discourse of the second half of the 1920s. The article presents the first part of the study devoted to the literary life of Russian Paris, in the center of which with the support of Remizov appeared unknown Dm. Kobyakov; it contains substantial additions to the literary portrait of young Remizov’s correspondent, as well as to the bibliography of Russian abroad. The description of the history of these creative contacts is the object of new documentary materials that also fill the gaps in Remizov’s biography concerning the topic of literary mentorship of the writer and ‘nest’ of young writers had formed around him in the 1920s – early 1930s.

Una rappresentazione diplomatica e di parte: il ritratto (geo)letterario della Tunisi di Guglielmo Collotti (1876)

The paper aims to retrace the (geo)-literary portrait of the city of Tunis by analysing the work Tunisi e il suo popolo. Studi impressioni e ricordi (Tunis and its people. Studies, impressions and memories), written by Guglielmo Collotti and published in Catania in 1876. This work is a travel report of a journey planned by Collotti with the excuse of presenting a “philanthropic” award to the sovereign of the Regency of Tunis. In fact, it gave the Sicilian nobleman the opportunity to visit the places inhabited by a large Italian community. The epistemological approach being adopted in the study, which is a geographical one, takes into consideration the historical and cultural context in which the author’s political beliefs developed: his interpretation of the landscape and the places he describes mirrors his choice of sometimes favouring colonial propaganda “Occidental” over the narration of events.

Piano in the land of unsaid love – musical contexts of emotional lives of married female characters in Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks and Sándor Márai’s Embers

In The Sorrows of Young Werther, an epistolary novel by J.W. Goethe, we can find a literary portrait of a beloved woman playing a keyboard instrument. This is the motif Adam Mickiewicz referred to in his Dziady, Part 4. Both texts describe unrequited love to a woman belonging to another man. Belles-lettres reflect repertoire issues – at the turn of the 19th century girls from a proper home performed simple pieces, often dances. Subsequent decades of the 19th century came with the development of piano methodics, and composers wrote pieces which today constitute part of concert canon, whereas the piano became the perfect musical tool. The plot of Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks is set in the second half of the 19th century. Music plays an important role in that novel. Mann depicts the problem of clashing views in the marriage of Thomas, who was fond of “pretty melodies”, and Gerda, a magnificent violin and piano player who performed ambitious compositions and showed no mercy in criticising her husband’s musical taste. An important motif is the appearance of a young officer who visits Gerda in order to perform chamber works together. Thomas fears the mysterious bond between his wife and the lieutenant on the one hand and people’s opinions on the other. The motif of music as a platform for communication between a man and a woman can also be found in the novel Embers by Sándor Márai. Here as well it is a connection unavailable to the husband of the main heroine. At the end of his life, Henri, Christine’s husband, refers to music as the “melodious and obscure language” which allows “certain people” to communicate. Both novels include the motif of the end of an era and death of the characters for whom music was extremely significant and who performed compositions of the highest artistic value. Texts by Mann and Márai reflect a decline of a certain stage in the history of culture. It is also the end of the typical ways how burgesses and aristocrats spent their leisure time, how they treated the sphere of emotions and communed with the widely understood art. The result of these changes is the dethronement of the piano, which no longer was one of the most important pieces of furniture in a drawing room nor the most important instrument – as it used to be in the 19th century culture.

The genre of biographical essay in the works of Udmurt writers

Introduction: genre transformation in the Udmurt journalism of the end of the XX century is most clearly manifested in the biographical essays, based on real-life facts from the lives of famous representatives of the intelligentsia, natives of Udmurtia. The biographical essay in the Udmurt literature of this period demonstrates the presence of the elements of memoir, biography, elements of portrayal, problematic, biographical, social, historical essays as well as document / fact and fiction within the same work; the mental, intellectual principle is strengthened in it. The relevance of the article is due to the . fact that for the first time an attempt was made to consider the problems and poetics of the biographical essay in the work of Udmurt writers. Objective: to study the features of the biographical essay in the Udmurt social and political journalism at the end of the XX century; to describe the content and the formal components of the biographical essay, based on particular texts by Udmurt authors. Research materials: biographical essays of the Udmurt publicists M. A. Lyamin and S. A. Samsonov. Results and novelty of the research: the article is one of the first attempts of comprehensive analysis of the genre of the Udmurt biographical essay. The peculiarities of the modern Udmurt biographical essay are largely due to the desire of writers to convey the complex of the personality traits of their famous fellow countrymen – public figures, scientists, politicians, culture professionals. A biographical essay which combines «portrait-biography» and «portrait-characterization» as well as the parameters of a documentary story, a literary portrait and a historical biography testifies to the expansion of the aesthetic boundaries of Udmurt prose.

Vsevolod Ivanov’s Portrait Essay of the 1920s – Early 1930s in the Context of the Events of the Era

The aim of this article is to determine the features of the genre and the moral-philosophical perspective of Vsevolod Ivanov’s portrait essays of the 1920s – early 1930s published in Vladivostok non-Bolshevik newspapers (Russkiy krai, Russkaya armiya, Vechernyaya gazeta), in Harbin émigré periodicals (newspapers Svet, Gun-Bao, the magazine Rubezh). To achieve this aim, using a semantic-cognitive approach, the author of the article studied archival materials of periodicals of the Russian Far East and Far Eastern emigration and introduced into academic discourse new unexplored factual material contributing to filling gaps in the history of Russian literature and journalism of the 20th century. Ivanov’s portrait essays are analyzed in the context of the sociopolitical and cultural life of the Far Eastern Republic (FER) that existed in the Russian Far East and the large-scale emigration of Russians to China. The author considers the dynamics of Ivanov’s portrait essay genre development. It acquires elements of the memorial and obituary essay, the genre of the literary portrait as a reflection of the progress of the national historical-literary process in the mother country and in the diaspora caused by the spiritual-moral confrontation of the political forces of Russia, the ideological split in the national culture of Russia due to the events of October 1917. The author of the article relies on historically significant material: the memorial essay with the conceptual title “Justified Avvakum” actualizes the problem of a reasonable and balanced attitude to changes, the correlation of evolutionary and revolutionary principles in the development of society. Ivanov raises the question of personal, moral, and civil responsibility for the fate of his country in the essay “The Blood of the Tsar”, which recreates the tragic events of the execution of the family of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II by Bolsheviks. In the analysis of obituary portrait essays about the tragic losses of Russian literature of the Silver Age (“Conversant with Secret (In Memory of A. Blok)”, “In Petrograd the Bolsheviks shot the poet Nikolay Gumilev”), the author of the article concludes about the originality of the creative potential of Ivanov, who, using elements of the genre of the literary portrait, demonstrates the synthesis of scientific, literary, and journalistic writing. The portrait essays of Ivanov’s prominent contemporaries, figures of politics and culture (“Admiral Kolchak”, “Semenovshchina “, “Prof. D.V. Boldyrev”, “Vasiliy Fedorovich Ivanov”) complement the complex picture of the sociocultural context of the era with relevant axiological aspects identified in the essays. The author of the article considers Ivanov’s reference to the iconic figures of the turning epochs in the fate of Russia as a peculiarity of his journalistic position in relation to history as a criterion of truth and moral value of a person.

The engineeress of human souls. Anna Kozlova

The work attempts a literary ‘portrait’ of the contemporary writer and scenarist A. Kozlova. The author charts the evolution of Kozlova’s work, from the early ‘ultra-shock’ stories and the novel Whazzup, Winner [Preved pobeditelyu] (2006), a transparent satire of the fat years of the 2000s, to Ryurik (2019), a novel structured as a multilevel psychological quest. In addition, the critic describes the writer’s language as sharp, full of irony and in sync with contemporary culture and the modern Russian language. The critic notes that Kozlova’s works are highly context-dependent: one book picks up where the previous one left off, and together they form a confession and a journal of personal growth and development. According to Zhuchkova, the writer’s biggest achievement is that Kozlova managed to rise above the constrictions of the 1990s’ ‘ultra-shock literature’ and harness the format of autopsychological prose, which in Russian literature originates in E. Limonov’s works, to portray a transcendent image of a positive character and a history of personal development, both of the heroine and the author herself.