Leo Tolstoy and Andrei Platonov’s Prose of 1941–1945

Comparative analysis of A. Platonov’s wartime stories (1941–1945) and Leo Tolstoy’s Sevastopol Stories, War and Peace and Hadji Murat is performed. Items reviewed: 1) Both Red Army fighters in Platonov’s works and soldiers in Tolstoy’s works identify themselves not with an abstract “Fatherland,” but with their local “small motherland.” 2) Both for Tolstoy and Platonov, neither skilful strategy nor overpowering armaments become the war decisive factor but every single soldier’s courage. The battle often develops as an intersection of planned and unforeseen happenings, and everyone bears his own responsibility in it. 3) Platonov’s “truth,” like Tolstoy’s “providence,” is linked to the attacked side and serves as a moral justification of resistance to the aggressor. 4) Platonov, however, like Tolstoy (who speaks as a consistent pacifist in his later works), sees the danger of moral degradation as the result of war, and degradation signs had been notable before the war. Sacrifices (including, in this context, Platonov’s own son) are not in vain only if there is better life after the war.

Mythopoetics of Lesia Ukrainka’s Forest Song in English Reception and Interpretation

The article deals with English reception and interpretation of mythopoetics in Lesia Ukrainka’s Forest Song. The great difficulty of this work for foreign reception and interpretation due to the large number of mythical and folklore elements, which are important ethnic components of its poetics, is pointed out. The article is based on comparative and typological, structural, descriptive, interpretative methods and the holistic system analysis. It is noted that a significant part of the Forest Song mythology falls on demonology, where each of the demons has features attributed to him by folk beliefs. It is investigated that both translators managed to preserve ethnic specificity of these characters due to different ways of interpretation, although not without certain inaccuracies. It is also noted that an important component of the ethnic poetics of Lesia Ukrainka’s work is magic charm, the successful translation of which demonstrates the true interpretative findings of both translators. Translations of Ukrainian mythology of Lesia Ukrainka’s Forest Song by G. Evans and P. Cundy can be considered successful, as they are marked by the maximum approximation to the original content, spirit and style.

The Origin of Labour Camp Theme in A.I. Solzhenitsyn’s Works: from Poetry to The Gulag Archipelago

In the present article A.I. Solzhenitsyn’s poetic works and The Gulag Archipelago are analyzed, their proximity and thematic kinship are revealed. The authors appeal to the creative history of these works, remark that poems and parts of the Archipelago are arranged according to a certain pattern. Both in poetry and prose, Solzhenitsyn reveals the path taken by Soviet convicts. Camps for political prisoners and I.V. Stalin’s death take significant place in his works. A.I. Solzhenitsyn is particularly interested in the unity of heroes with nature, communion with it as with an attribute of free people’s life. The writer claims that the camp may become a starting point for spiritual resurrection of a human being. Metaphorization as one of the artistic elements is used for the first time in lyrics to reveal the image of Russia. The authors conclude that the camp theme arose during Solzhenitsyn’s imprisonment and was first expressed in lyrics and the narrative poem Dorozhen’ka. The Gulag Archipelago was formed later not only from the personal experience of the author but also from numerous materials and evidence of eyewitnesses.

Blake Studies in the 21st Century

The author summarizes Blake studies of the 21st century. The beginning of the modern era of Blake studies can be considered with the paradigm of deconstruction. At the end of the 20th century, synthetic analysis took a special place in Blake studies, when Blake’s illuminated books were studied as an inseparable unity of verbal and visual. Blake’s legacy has undergone a significant evolution related to deconstruction and postmodern approaches, and linguistic research. The development of traditional areas of research, such as psychoanalysis, textual criticism of manuscripts, religious and mystical allusions, and comparative studies is also traced. Postmodernism, which owes much to the Romanticism (i.e. the concept of irony, fragmentation, the category of the exalted, the original lonely hero), brought new features to Blake studies and greatly contributed to its approval among canonical authors of the Romanticism. In modern Blake studies, such areas as gender studies, postcolonial studies, studies in digital reality environments are most actively developing. Starting from the 2000s, the main direction in Blake studies has become reception, that is, the cultural influence of Blake’s writings on later culture, including the culture of other countries: poetry, literature, music and cinema. Each new era reveals fundamentally similar features and adds meanings to Blake: this process is going from symbolism and psychoanalysis to the present day.

Ethno-cultural Borderline: Conceptual, Typological, and Circumstantial Aspects (Alien — Other — One’s own). Third article

The final part of the triptych is devoted to the problematics of Ukrainian-Jewish literary border. Unlike two previous parts, where geoplitical and regional aspects prevailed (Galitchina, Kharkov — Donbass), here the “internal” border is focused on, or, according to M. Bakhtin, “the dialogical contact between texts (statements)” which implies the priority role of the synchronic approach. As а semantic and methodological “common denominator” for two approaches, the formula for the dialectical interconnection of categories “Alien,” “Other,” “Own” is used. The research is conducted in three directions: 1) the Jewish theme in Ukrainian literature as the “text;” the accent is put on the specificity of literary solutions; 2) writers-Jews in the liminal literary space of Ukraine, the phenomena of cultural diffusions and interferences; 3) Ukrainian writers of the Jewish origin — sociopsychological version of the ethnocultural border.

Alexey Remizov and Boris Zaitsev: 1926 Anniversary Preparation

The article is dedicated to a story from the literary life of Russian emigration related to the anniversary of Boris Zaitsev of 1926. The article introduces hitherto unknown archival material that demonstrates how Alexey Remizov worked to cover this literary event in the pages of the European press. Archival documents (fragments of a hitherto unpublished emigrant period correspondence of Remizov and Zaitsev) and unknown print sources have allowed me to describe the nature of the relationship between two writers sharing similar literary biographies in the context of the literary situation of 1926. The anniversary celebration as a factor of public recognition for Remizov became an occasion for integrating significant phenomena of Russian literature into European literature and culture. The article contains obscure biographical information about Remizov’s correspondents.

The Will in the East Slavic Folklore

The article explores the concept of the will in the East Slavic folklore. The main criterion for selecting the material is the frequency of the word “will” and corresponding lexical word family in different genres — epics, funeral, recruitment and wedding lamentations, lyrical songs, proverbs, and spiritual poems. The folklore component of the concept of will is considered in the totality of all semantic and plot information, taking into account synonyms, antonyms, epithets, predicates, and associative series related to the word “will” and its derivatives. The words of the lexical word family will reveal a wide range of meanings that generally coincide with the meanings of words in literary languages and dialects. Among them, in most genre projections of the concept of will, there are two poles, one of which collects positive meanings, such as the idea of the will as someone’s own right to choose as well as physical liberty, which is identified with the life itself. The other pole collects negative meanings: the idea of the will as the power of the alien, the older or the stronger one; redundancy of freedom and willfulness up to disobedience and immorality. However, in some genres such bipolarity is broken: in proverbs, negatively assessed meanings of will come to the fore, while spiritual poems render will in negative terms, as a centre of the sinfulness of a person and of the entire profane world.

Beyond the Epic. Richard II and the Nature of the Tragic in Shakespeare

The major disagreement on the nature of the epic is rooted in the opposition of two concepts — either the epic draws on the myth, or its optics is regulated by history. In Leonid Pinsky’s opinion the way leading from the epic past towards the individual and inward self was the way of Shakespeare’s heroes both in his tragedies and history plays. Richard II (1595, opening the second tetralogy) follows one of the two archetypes suggested by Hugh Grady in his article “Shakespeare's links to Machiavelli and Montaigne.” Richard is not essentially a machiavellian type, though occasionally called a weak, “deficient” tyrant by critics and a “landlord” (not a king) by John Gaunt in the play. Creating this character Shakespeare makes the first step towards Hamlet. The climax is reached in the scene of his dethronement, much more known for its political topicality than being scrutinized for the discovery a dethroned king is to make. Who is he now? A nonentity, or a new being? The mirror he asks to bring lies, he thinks, when he recognizes his own unchanged face in it. Several scenes in the play (the Queen and Bushy, Richard and his jailor) demonstrate how the lyrical experience, Shakespeare must have acquired in the two plague years (1592–1594), had changed his dramatic technique. In Richard II he gave a start to a new metaphysical tradition.

Literary Center of Constructivists on Its Way to the RAPP (From the History of Literary Life at the Turn of the 1920s — 1930s)

The article examines one of the episodes of the literary struggle of the late 1920s — early 1930s — the history of the entry of the Literary Center of Constructivists (LCC) into the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP). At the beginning of 1930, almost all literary groups and associations faced the need to define a new level of interaction with RAPP. LCC, as one of the literary groups closest to RAPP, seemed to have all the prerequisites for a successful association with the RAPP. But in reality, this did not happen. Members of RAPP are suspicious of constructivists; attacks at LCC are becoming more frequent in the press. Always considered a left-wing association, LLC is declared a petty-bourgeois group, with which, despite its disbandment, an irreconcilable struggle is required. This article bears upon not only the periodicals of 1930 but also and mainly upon the hitherto unstudied transcripts and other archival documents of RAPP. New archival materials reveal internal processes of the literary struggle at the turn of the decade, and make it possible to demonstrate how, even after the acceptance of the Constructivists by RAPP, the former continue to be perceived as a hostile group whose past was to always blame them.

The Trickster Hero in M. Frisch’s Novel My Name Be Gantenbein

The article offers an interpretation and analysis of the novel My Name Be Gantenbein, allowing to find an explanation to the genre uncertainty of the work of the Swiss writer M. Frisch. Due to the non-linear stylistics of the narrative, the image of Gantenbein eludes an unambiguous classification in terms of moral and ethical problematics lying on the surface. The hero of the novel turns into a methodological principle that clarifies the fundamental existences of life. In classical tradition, these included the concepts of freedom and law, truth and lies, truth and deception, game and life. The complicated plot makes Gantenbein a functional representative of both freedom and blind law. They create semantic space of self-organizing life. As a result, the character is endowed with properties of a trickster, because he accepts the complexity of such a life at the level of his existence. The investigation reveals that the game, roles and masks create the ideological basis of the story. This framework directs the reader to perceive life in its everyday manifestations, contributing to the development of an antidote to escapism.