Arseny Tarkosvky’s small cycles: The artistic history and principles of text preparation

The article analyses the publication problem of A. Tarkovsky’s so-called ‘small cycles’ — poems sharing a common storyline and theme, which were not, however, published as poetic cycles in Tarkovsky’s lifetime, even though he had planned them as such and leſt respective handwritten collections. According to the critic, Tarkovsky created these poetic compilations irrespective of the actual possibility (or impossibility) of their publication. His entire experience of ‘living in literature,’ long years of failed attempts to publish abook of original poetry, the type of forbidding censorship policy prevailing at the time — everything indicated that one should better give up attempts toget published in the heavily supervised literary sector. Bak concludes that a publisher of Tarkovsky’s works should focus on reconstruction of the corpus that was not meant for censors, as the two compilations of his lyric oeuvre— the one prepared for publication and the other preserved in manuscripts only— exist in a sort of ‘alternative complementation,’ as if in parallel to each other, and should both be considered for preparation of scholarly publications.

Chekhov’s text as a text of life. The ‘anti-theatrical’ stage adaptation of The Seagull [Chayka] by the Hungarian director Árpád Schilling

The article considers A. Chudakov’s idea about the significance ofanunfinished fabula in Chekhov’s works with regard to the theatrical practice of the Hungarian director Á. Schilling. According to Chudakov, Chekhov’s works without an unfinished fabula resemble an extract from the character’s life, selected at random. This randomness convinces the reader that the storyline is virtually unembellished poetically. The fabula and the plot of a short story or a play are carefully extracted from the ‘stream of existence,’ which is endless. Chudakov’s assessments of Chekhov’s poetics suggest that a theatrical specialist’s desire to remove the barriers between the stage of Chekhov’s plays and their audience represents a suitable approach to the playwright’s textual world. An appropriate example can be found in a staging of The Seagull [ Chayka] in Hungary in the early 21st c., namely, ÁrpádSchilling’s version in the Krétakör theatre. The author focuses especially on those artistic solutions found by Schilling that enable the aforementioned phenomenon of the vanishing boundaries, art’s expansion into life and, conversely, life’s expansion into art, to be realised during the performance.

P. P. Bazhov. The Malachite Box [Malakhitovaya shkatulka]: A scholarly edition

A review of the first scholarly edition of The Malachite Box [ Malakhitovaya shkatulka], a famous collection of tales (skazy) by the Russian writer Pavel Bazhov. Bazhov created his distinctive artistic world, which provided the basis for the subsequent emergence of the unique mythology of the Urals. Bazhov’s skazy are an example of stylised folklore, yet the stylisation is itself rooted in folklore tradition. This scholarly edition of The Malachite Box includes a comprehensive historical, literary and philological commentary. The editors examine the differences between all nine editions of The Malachite Box published in Bazhov’s lifetime and the first publications of the tales and their holographs and discover a number of minor textual discrepancies across all publications in question. The book has the tales arranged chronologically, which offers a chance to follow Bazhov’s creative evolution and get a better understanding of his connection with his time.

‘My mother left behind a few manuscripts.’ On the author’s perspective of L. Petrushevskaya

The genre-specific nature of L. Petrushevskaya’s The Time: Night [Vremya noch] and its intertextual aspect are examined in the context of ideas about the folk character of art. The paper especially focuses on drawing parallels with A.Akhmatova’s works. The authors pose a question: how does the story interpret the topic that is paramount for Russian literature — public consciousness? Petrushevskaya’s works typically evoke the drama of antiquity, Russian folklore and the Narodnichestvo ideology. Her prose brings back the images of the classical tragedy (fate, retribution, the chorus), common Russian folk mythologemes (an orphaned child, a frisky steed, and sister Alyonushka), as well as Pochvenniks’ theses about popular wisdom. The article suggests that The Time: Night both subverts and pays homage to it. The novelet parodies but also celebrates folk epos and its creators.

Nikolay Antsiferov. ‘That’s our life in letters’: Letters to family and friends (1900s — 1950s)

The collection prepared by IMLI RAN contains letters of the eminent specialist in local history N. Antsiferov and focuses on the biography of this St. Petersburg Imperial University alumnus, who, despite many arrests by the Soviet regime on trumped-up charges, incarceration in prisons and guarded camps and exile, preserved his inner freedom and, therefore, his scholarly potential. The book details the political context that brought about the outrageous persecution of this highly skilled and staunchly apolitical scholar aswell as the abrupt clearance of charges. Also included is a summary of his scholarly output in literary history, local history and cultural studies. The book lists the scholar’s acquaintances and correspondents, e. g., M. Bakhtin, V. Vernadsky, M. Lozinsky, A. Meyer, K. Chukovsky, B. Eichenbaum, and many other members of the intellectual elite. The book is celebrated as a landmark scholarly publication; highly praised are the text preparation efforts and explanatory notes.

The lyric oeuvre of Afanasy Fet and Chinese idyllic poems

There are compelling similarities between Afanasy Fet’s lyric poetry and classical Chinese lyric poetry. This connection is traced in the article with specific examples. Fet, carried away by the ideas of Schopenhauer, argued that thepoetic feeling lives in every person and can be called the sixth and highest feeling. In classical Chinese poetry, the Confucian concept of ‘the sense of things,’ the Taoist formula ‘words and forms’ and the idea of the unity of man and nature played an important role. With characteristic fixation of subtle changes of light and shadow, with the transmission of flushed feelings, Fet’s oeuvre reminds the readers of the ancient Chinese lyric poetry. Like classic Chinese texts, Fet’s poems are textbooks where the idea of the unity of man and nature is developed. In both Chinese poetry and Fet’s works, human life goes into natural life, gaining eternity in the nature. As a result, although Fet was not familiar with Chinese culture, the intuitions that fed his work surprisingly coincided with pictorial techniques as a way of conveying emotion in classical Chinese poetry, separated from him by many centuries.

The Last Day of creation. M. Naimy’s mystical manifesto

The article is devoted to the mystical manifesto The Last Day (1963) of the Lebanese novelist, playwright and journalist Mikhail Naimy (1889–1988). The author suggests that Naimy, under the spell of classical Russian literature, attempted an audacious experiment: by successfully combining the totality of concepts of Dostoevsky’s The Dream of a Ridiculous Man [ Son smeshnogo cheloveka] with the traditional mythologemes of Sufi poetry, this graduate of the Poltava theological seminary overcomes mystical imagery, and in doing so postulates human impotence in the face of the Nietzschean ‘eternal recurrence’ and the ineffable nature of true the ophanies. The article demonstrates the innovative character of The Last Day, a novel that stands apart from the works of other Pen League members: while Gibran’s The Prophet seeks to infantilise a religious myth, Naimy’s objective is to bring mythology back into the 20th-c. Middle Eastern literary discourse and reimagine it using the categories of contemporary existential philosophy. The study opens with a short biography, covering Naimy’s Russian and American periods.

D. Portnova. The dotted line of distant joys

The review deals with a book of reminiscences by Dalila Portnova, a niece of the writer Yury Dombrovsky (1909–1978), a preeminent master of prison camp prose who wrote extensively about Stalin-era repressions. The chapters devoted to the author’s family include Portnova’s memories of her late uncle that were first printed in the Noviy Mir journal in 2017; a sensation at the time, they also provoked a mixed reaction of surviving family members and people who knew Dombrovsky well. Yet no coherent attempts were made to disprove the publication (other than comments on Facebook), even though Portnova’s account is not without flaws and inaccuracies. In his review, Igor Duardovich points out the valid new facts recounted in Portnova’s memoir as well as its discrepancies and explains why the book is relevant for a complete reconstruction of Dombrovsky’s biography: a project as yet unaccomplished, either in the form of separate publications or as a monograph.

On the main-meta-song by Bulat Okudzhava

The article analyses Bulat Okudzhava’s ‘The Main Song’ [‘Glavnaya pesenka’] (1962). The poem’s metapoetic leitmotif and expressive structure are examined in a broader context of corresponding common literary motifs, Okudzhava’s poetic invariants, and immediately contemporary subtexts, including in song lyrics. The intertextual field comprises poems of the same metric structure, namely, three-foot amphibrachs. M. Gasparov specified themetre’s appropriate halos: suggestions of a drinking song ( ‘zazdravnaya,’ sung to toast someone’s health); a ballad; an allusion to Heine’s manner (memory, dreams, daily life); a Romantic intonation; and, lastly, a ceremonial verse, including metapoetic works, i.e., written by poets about poetry (namely, V. Bryusov’s, A. Akhmatova’s, and V. Khodasevich’s poems). Okudzhava’s ‘The Main Song’ belongs with the aforementioned series, as well as with poems united by the leitmotif of walking (departing), rejection and the actual process of poetry writing. A detailed analysis of Okudzhava’s intertext and method helps reveal the originality of the poet’s take on a traditional topic.

Sergey Khoruzhy, or the motif of the problematic character of death

The article is devoted to the memory of an outstanding scholar — physicist, philosopher, theologian and translator — S. Khoruzhy (1941–2020), with whom the author maintained active communication for three decades. This communication included various human and scholarly encounters: meetings in person, correspondence, participation in projects and conferences, book presentations, and shared accommodations in Sofia and Moscow. The article reveals a number of hitherto unknown facts of the scholar’s biography. Also published are his thoughts on topics he found most relevant, based on an interview in Sofia in June 1997, transcribed by the author. Khoruzhy’s philosophical studies ran in parallel with his major subject (theoretical physics), but it was not until 1989 that his theological and philosophical works reached a wider audience. The article emphasises Khoruzhy’s versatile giſt: an original philosopher, author of the concept of synergetic anthropology and successor of the traditions of Russian religious philosophy, he is also atranslator of Ulysses, a scholar of J. Joyce, and a prominent figure of 20th- and 21st-c. Russian culture.