ROME AND CARTHAGE BY A.V. TIMOFEEV: ON THE PROBLEM OF THE GENESIS OF “HISTORICAL FANTASY” AS A GENRE VARIETY OF RUSSIAN ROMANTIC DRAMA OF THE 19TH CENTURY

The paper explores the genre of scarcely studied play by Russian minor writer Alexei V. Timofeev (1812-1883) Rome and Carthage (1837). Timofeev’s contemporary literary critic Osip Senkovskii treated like poet’s failure his use of romantic techniques in the play on ancient plot. Taking into account this opinion the paper analyzes the paratextual elements in the play, the way of describing characters, the division of the play into acts, the connection of the plot events with historical facts. The paper argues that the play approaches the kind of romantic drama, which the author suggests to call “historical fantasy” Its main feature is the coexisting in the plot mythology and religious tradition, on the one hand, and historical events, on the other, the heroes of historical chronicles and the heroes of folk legends, belief in miracles and rationalism. The goal of historical fantasy is to produce a generalized image of the time, to convey the spirit of the epoch while the dramatic action takes a secondary place. Samples of the genre were given in the works of Alexander A. Shakhovskoi, Alexander I. Gertsen, Apollon N. Maikov. Timofeev’s play was just in the way to this kind of drama.

“NEXT TO GENIOUS”: G. FLAUBERT IN M.M. BAKHTIN’S THINKING

The article analyzes Bakhtin’s 1944 notes on Flaubert. Under discussion is, first, some general background of Bakhtin’s philosophical and scientific methodology as expressed in the notes, secondly, the notes themselves. Bakhtin’s views on Flaubert and the novel of the 19th century are re-presented in connection with the Russian thinker’s theories of the “grotesque realism” and “novelization”as opposed to the “ideological culture of the new times”. The article discusses some principal methodological difficulties of Bakhtinian approach to literary texts as expressed in his notes on Flaubert. In contrast to most philosophical approaches to literature, Bakhtin always treats any text, in his own expression, “in the liminal spheres” of different disciplines, that is, as both a philosopher and literary critic, a theorist and a historian of literature and culture. In these notes this specificity of the Bakhtinian methodology is expressed drastically, but in principal it is quite typical to his thinking “on the borders”. In the subsequent parts of the article Bakhtin’s approach to Flaubert’s “realism” is commented on, from the point of view of those elements of his artistic vision and his world view, which, according to Bakhtin, are not congruous with the concept of the so-called “critical realism”. These elements, Bakhtin implies, belong not so much to the classical novel of the 19th century, but, rather, to what he calls “grotesque realism” before the new times and in the 20th century. These elements are: mutual reversal of “short” and “long” (or “great” time in the images of the day, Flaubert’s artistic opposition to the “straightforwardness” of the idea of “progress” typical for the European Enlightenment and the modernity at large., the artist’s interest in the “elemental life” of human beings and animals. These and some other elements characteristic of Flaubert’s art and ideology, Bakhtin treats as if from within “creative consciousness” of the author.

MAURICE LEBLANC - “GRANDSON OF FLAUBERT”?

Maurice Leblanc, Gustave Flaubert’s countryman, author of the famous series of novels and short stories about adventures of “gentleman-burglar” Arsène Lupin, from his youth had an interest in works of the author of Madame Bovary . The interest was shared by his sister Georgette Leblanc, a singer, actress and writer. This essay critically examins the early prose of Maurice Leblanc, its connections with the traditions of Flaubert and with typical for “fin de siècle” erotic prose of decadence. A special attention is paid to the novel A woman and its parallels and allusions to Madame Bovary . This essay shows the peculiarities of Leblanc’s description of Roune (against the background of a nagative perception of the city by Flaubert).

I.S. TURGENEV, A.A. BLOK, M.A. VOLOSHIN AND “THE LEGEND OF ST JULIAN THE HOSPITALIER” BY G. FLAUBERT

Flaubert’s “The Legend of St Julian the Hospitable” was first translated into Russian by I.S. Turgenev, and more recently - in beginning of the 20th century - by M.A. Voloshin and A.A. Blok. The paper addresses Voloshin’s “Preface to the translation of Flaubert’s ‘The Legend of St Julian the Hospitable’”, which he wrote in polemics with Turgenev’s translation. The analysis of the reason of Voloshin’s interest in the text by Flaubert shows that “The legend of St Julian” attracted the poets of the Silver Age with its unusual content, peculiar mysticism and particular - Flauberian - style of presentation. Each of the writers who translated the legend tried to keep the balance between content and style as much as possible. The paper also raises the question of romantic tendencies in Flaubert’s novels on religious subjects.

FLAUBERT’S HYPERTEXTS IN CHEKHOV’ WORKS (ON THE CONCEPT OF “CONSTRUCTIVE CRYPTO-PARODY”)

The article addresses the hypertexts of Flaubert in Chekhov’s works. The hypertextuality in Chekhov’s story Duel (1891) is connected with Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary (1856), and is hybrid and optional. The story The Jumping Girl (1891) written shortly after, is already a fairly obvious hypertext of Flaubert’s novel: the scheme of the plot and the semantic of the original source is transformed to a much lesser extent. One more explicit hypertext of Flaubert’s A Simple Soul (1877) could be found in Chekhov’s late story Darling (1899). The article both describes and analyzes in all these texts (following R. Nazirov) a kind of “constructive crypto parody” which is not the parody on Flaubert’s works, but the polemical interpretation of them. Flaubert’s hypertexts in Chekhov’s prose bear a distinct imprint of the Russian classics with its “anti-individualistic” endency, on the one hand, and of Chekhov’s own artistic world based on overcoming Flaubert’s keen sense of the tragedy of life with sarcasm and laughter, on the other.

The old well forgotten, or Nothing is new under the moon

The article examines the origin of two related maxims: «There is nothing new except what has been forgotten» and «There is nothing new under the moon». The Russian form of the first maxim («The new is the old well forgotten») belongs, probably, to the publicist N.V. Shelgunov. Initially, the first maxim appeared in England and France, and for a long time existed in two versions. The earliest of them (c. 1820) was usually attributed to Rose Bertin, the milliner of Marie Antoinette. The second («There is nothing new but what it has been old») is a quote from Chaucer’s «Canterbury Tales» in Walter Scott’s version («The Adventures of Nigell», 1822). In Germany and Russia, only the first, «Bertin’s version» was in circulation. One of the probable sources of Karamzin’s family sayings «Nothing is new under the moon» was the maxim «Il n’y a rien de nouveau sous la Lune», which appeared at the end of the 17 th century in the novel «Turkish Spy» by Giovanni Paolo Marana.

ON THE NARRATOR IN MADAME BOVARY

The paper written in polemics with the truisms of the Soviet literary criticism (identification of Flaubert with his narrator in Madame Bovary , Flaubert’s critical realism etc.) analyses in full detail a figure of the narrator in this novel, his methods of self-presentation, motives of narration, narrative metamorphoses. A particular attention is given to analysis of the narrator’s “we”, “nous”, “madness” and to the related images of “lie”, “mask”, negative search for Absolute, the embodiment and symbol of which in the novel is death, non-being. In context of lie, the characters of the novel, in-cluding Homais, are not opposed to each other but are the continuation of the narrator’s projections as well as of Flaubert’s personal views on writing. The paper actualises intertextuality of the novel corresponded with images of Saint Anthony, Don Quixote, King Lear, Hamlet and also of quest, fulfilled in a tradition of some apothetical mysticism or gnosticism.

G. FLAUBERT’S NOVEL MADAME BOVARY: HORIZONS OF AESTHETIC TRANSFORMATIONS

The article examines the peculiarities of the poetics of Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary which occupies a central place in French novelism of the 1850s and is associated with the literary trends of the time in many ways. The article discusses the transformation of Balzac’s canon of realism, the differences in the artistic principles of depicting contemporary reality between Flaubert and such representatives of the school of realism as Chanfleury and Duranty; the proximity of certain elements of poetics of the novel and the portrayal of heroes to naturalism (the role of social motives, temperament and environment); the typological similarity of Flaubert with the principles of aestheticism of the Parnassian school. The main attention is paid to the peculiarities of Flaubert’s realism, to the role of romantic motives and allusions, their ironic interpretation in the novel. Romantic traditions, even in their mass psychological refraction, retain their value semantics, contribute to the formation of a halo around Emma, typical to the eternal images of world literature. The semantics of Bovarism is opposed to the vulgarity of the commonness, at the same time almost coinciding with it. As a result, bovarism appears as a sociocultural analogue of such significant and large-scale phenomena of the 19th century culture as Byronism and Georgesandism. Transforming, rethinking the existing and emerging strategies of artistic writing, Flaubert in his novel creates an innovative, unique aesthetic synthesis, including the interaction of various literary trends, aesthetic impulses and ideas. The new non-romantic dual world arises on the basis of the contrast between the vulgarity of life and the artistic perfection of its embodiment, in that approaching the antitheses and antinomies of Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil .

Machiavelli – Turgenev – Dostoevsky: transformation of the tragicomic motif («Cletia», «The First Love», «The Brothers Karamazov»)

The Renaissance comedy of N. Machiavelli «Cletia» (1525), the story by I.S. Turgenev’s «First Love» (1860), the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky’s «The Brothers Karamazov» (1879-1880) reveals related plot situations and motives. All three texts depict the situations of love rivalry for one woman between two applicants - a father and a son. These situations, having the pathos of a tragicomic paradox, are resolved, however, in several different semantic registers and in several different pretentious fillings. Machiavelli is edifying. Turgenev remains closed in the chamber, private sphere of the personality (and touches little on the general social). In «The Brothers Karamazov», within the framework of Dostoevsky’s analysis of the general contemporary crisis, the author’s skepticism does not find a way to self-overcoming.

Oscar Wilde and Dostoevsky: vector of suffering and compassion

At first glance it would seem difficult to find more different writers than Dostoevsky, who knew the depths of suffering and poverty, and Oscar Wilde - esthete, hedonist, dandy, sybarite. And yet it was Wilde, who, one of the first in Great Britain, appreciated Dostoevsky and outlined the main parameters of his perception in British culture in the future. Life and Dostoevsky led the British writer to understanding of the most important truths, and this revelation brought new meanings into English literature.