The Women’s Question among the Masons of Russian Paris

The article is a introduction to the publication of the minutes of the meetings of the Russian lodge "Northern Star" in Paris, concerning the discussion on the admission of women to freemasonry. The proposed archival materials, deposited in the National Library of France in Paris, date back to 1945 and 1948. The women's issue became more relevant after the Second World War due to the fact that Masonic lodges had to recover and recruit new adherents. The article offers a brief overview of the women's issue in the history of Freemasonry in general, and in the Russian emigrant environment in particular. One of the founders of the North Star lodge, M. Osorgin, spoke out in the 1930s against the admission of women. In the discussions of the 1940s, the Masonic brothers repeat his opinion almost literally. Women's participation in Freemasonry is rejected using either gender or social arguments. Russian Freemasons mostly cite gender reasons: women have no place in Freemasonry because they are not men. Freemasonry, according to Osorgin, is a cult of the male creative principle, which is not peculiar to women. Discussions about the women's issue among Russian emigrant Freemasons are also an important source for studying their literary work; in particular, the post-war literary works of Gaito Gazdanov are closely connected with the Masonic ideology.

Leonid Dolgopolov’s Unpublished PhD Thesis on Alexander Blok’s Narrative Poems ‘Retribution’ and ‘The Twelve’

Russian Modernism scholar Leonid Konstantinovich Dolgolopov (1928 –1995), known for his studies on Alexander Blok and Andrei Bely, completed his PhD thesis on Blok’s narrative poems “Retribution” and “The Twelve” in 1960, received his degree in 1962, but never published the text (now in the author’s possession). Its major parts were published as papers, its principal propositions and conclusions were developed in Dolgopolov’s later research works, but the thesis was never printed as a whole, and, from the author’s point of view, is worth being published as a valuable source for history of literary studies on Russian Symbolism as well as an original work useful and readable even now. The article presents Dolgopolov’s unpublished PhD thesis. Chapter One deals with “Retribution” and presents a comprehensive study of the poem’s plan, plot, and literary history, its genre peculiarities and historical scenes. Chapter Two analyzes evolution of Blok’s political views during the First World War and the Russian Revolution of 1917 and also its reflection in Blok’s lyric poems of this period. Chapter Three is the first of Dolgopolov’s numerous studies on “The Twelve”, the work he considered to be Blok’s highest literary achievement. Dolgopolov analyzed the poem’s ideas and images (especially Jesus Christ), its formal and rythmic novelty, its place among other contempopary poetical works on Russian revolution.

Petrograd, 1920s: on Shadow Characters in Yuri Kamensky’s Memoirs

The memoirs of Yuri Kamensky, O.E. Mandelstam’s classmate at the Tenishev School, convey a life picture of the memoirist’s kindred-friendly circle in post-revolutionary Petrograd. Many people in this circle were closely connected with the world of art and literature, making up the cultural environment that was destroyed or adapted with great difficulty to the realities of a new life. Based on research in various St. Petersburg archives, the article provides biographical data on three previously uncommented characters in the memoirs – Polina Uflyand, the poet Nikolai Otsup’s first wife, Tamara Vreden and her husband Joseph Kobetsky, a journalist and publisher. The data of personal files, questionnaires, applications to various authorities, materials of personal correspondence were used.

Two Anatolys and One “Angelica”: On the History of the “Southwestern Literary School”

The subject of the paper is the cultural life of Odessa in the 1910s, and the reconstruction of Anatoly Gamma’s biography, who was 21 when he died in the fall of 1918. His creative life was very short, and appeared to be almost a literary hoax. However, Gamma’s poetry reflected a radical change in the artistic paradigm after the Revolution of 1917. Here the authors reprint all the existing Gamma’s poems published in 1917–18 in the Odessa periodicals. After the tragic death of another Odessa poet Anatoly Fioletov at the age of 21, Gamma’s name happened to appear in obituaries dedicated to both poets. One of those memorial articles entitled “On Two Anatolys (Anatoly Gamma, Anatoly Fioletov)” was published in the Kharkov magazine “Muses” under the nom de plume “Angelica d’Éspré,” which the authors decipher in this essay. Most importantly, being associated with Anatoly Fioletov, Eduard Bagritsky and other Odessa poets, Gamma became a part of a cultural phenomenon that was called by Viktor Shklovsky in 1932 the “Southwestern Literary School.”

V. Bryusov’s Letters to His Fiancée

The publication includes V.Ya. Bryusov’s letters to his fiancée I.M. Runt (1876 –1965) from June 9 to September 9, 1897. 11 correspondences, including the final telegram sent from Kursk, were written and sent from Aachen (Germany), Moscow and several Ukrainian localities. The letter 10 is accompanied by the full text of I.M. Runt’s only surviving letter to Bryusov, sent from Moscow to the village of Bolshye Sorochintsy and received by the poet a few months later at home. The relationship between the young people before the wedding were complicated. While the poet was preparing for the wedding in Moscow, he summed up the past contacts with “mes amantes”, and his state of mind was painful. Shortly before meeting his future wife, Bryusov broke up with the former governess of his family E.I. Pavlovskaya, who was terminally ill. A few days before the wedding he decided to go to say goodbye to Pavlovskaya to her homeland, Ukraine. In his letters to the future wife the poet tried to smooth out the tension of the situation, perhaps anticipating that he would be bounded with I.M. Runt 30 Литературный факт. 2021. № 2 (20) by a long-term relationship, where life and literature are closely interconnected. The letters are published for the first time.

M.E. Levberg’s Play “Danton” as Perceived by А. Blok

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.

N.V. Gogol’s Works and Censorship

For the first time, an analytical review of all, without exception, censorship stories of N.V. Gogol’s works is presented. An objective picture of Gogol's relationship with the censorship is being recreated. The findings of the study allow, with good reason, to judge about the interference of censors in the writer's works in a fundamentally different way, in comparison with the ideas offered by literary criticism of the previous period without solid evidence. Based on a thorough analysis, involving numerous archival sources, the common, stereotypical opinions about the extremely negative role of censorship in Gogol’s fate are being revised. The most significant negative result among all censorship interventions in Gogol's works was the activity of the censor of Westernizing views, opposed to the government, a professor at St. Petersburg University, A.V. Nikitenko. It is the numerous reductions of Nikitenko, И.А. Виноградов. Произведения Н .В. Гоголя и цензура 255 a friend of V.G. Belinsky, in Gogol's religious and patriotic book “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends” that the writer called “censorship murder”. No less significant was the intervention of the liberal censor in the texts of “Dead Souls”, “Theatrical Travel after the Presentation of a New Comedy” and other works of the writer. It is concluded that, with the exception of this “intrigue” against Gogol by the censor Nikitenko, on the whole Gogol's texts encountered relatively insignificant difficulties in censorship.

Diary Entries by N.P. Kiselev as the Secretary of the Publishing House “Musaget”

For the history of the Moscow Symbolist publishing house “Musaget”, which in the early years of its existence was a circle of like-minded people who sought occult knowledge, in many respects the key years were 1913–1914. The fascination with anthroposophy of some of the employees of Musaget caused rejection on the part of the founder of the publishing house, E.K. Metner, who defended the principle of serving culture, and not one of the spiritual teachings. The diary of N.P. Kiselev, who took up the post of secretary in the publishing house during the separation, reflects not only the daily life of the editorial office, but also attempts to reunite different directions of “Musaget”.

From the History of the Journal “Severny Vestnik”. Commentary to the Commentary

The history of literary associations, including the history of any journal, is primarily the history of people's relationships with each other. In such a history, personal likes and dislikes play the most essential role. This law of personal sympathies and antipathies manifests itself very expressively in a rather short history of the journal “Severny Vestnik”, published by L.Ya. Gurevich (1891–1898). The article offers significant additions to comments to published texts on the history of the journal. A.L. Volynsky and N.K. Mikhailovsky showed equal harshness and indelicacy in their polemics, but their contemporaries almost unanimously sided with Mikhailovsky as an older and deserved writer. Volynsky acquired a reputation as an unscrupulous person and gossip begins to gather around his name. Volynsky demonstrated unacceptable immodesty towards D.S. Merezhkovsky and Z.N. Gippius and allowed himself to use of someone else's material, bordering on plagiarism. But most importantly, in the plot of the book about Leonardo da Vinci, he depicted his personal relationship with Merezhkovsky and Gippius and his interpretation of the relationship between them. In addition, he expelled Merezhkovsky from the journal “Severny Vestnik”, which closed for him the opportunity to publish his novel about Leonardo da Vinci.

“The Life of Arsenyev, of Course, Is Primarily Poetry”: Georgy Adamovich on Ivan Bunin’s Novel, 1929–1952

The author expresses his heartfelt gratitude to the staff of the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, as well as to S.N. Morozov (IWL RAS) and S.R. Fedyakin (Gorky Literary Institute) for their assistance in the preparation of the article. Abstract: The article uses the material of G.V. Adamovich’s publications in emigrant periodicals to address the problem of critical reception of I.A. Bunin’s novel “The Life of Arsenyev” in the late 1920s – early 1950s. Bunin in 1928–1939 published his novel in parts. At the same time, the appearance in the magazine “Sovremennye zapiski” (Paris) of each of the five books included in the novel and the release of individual book editions were preceded by the publication of fragments of “The Life of Arsenyev” in emigrant newspapers. This explains the relatively large 324 Литературный факт. 2021. № 3 (21) number of Adamovich’s responses to Bunin's novel. The critic did not let “The Life of Arsenyev” out of his field of view from the time of the publication of her third book in “Sovremennye zapiski” (1929) until the first complete edition of the novel was published in the New York Chekhov Publishing House (1952). The article traces how Adamovich’s attitude to Bunin’s work was adjusted over the years, and how, as a result, sophisticated pickiness was replaced by unconditional admiration. The empirical material is grouped taking into account the chronology of the publication of “The Life of Arsenyev”. The research methods used are the principle of historicism and comparative analysis.