Written during his American ‘exile’ and depicting an alternative story of the prophet Moses, T. Mann’s little studied novella The Tables of the Law [Das Gesetz] (1943) is compared with S. Freud’s Moses and Monotheism [Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion] (1939), his last work completed before his death. The author traces a number of significant parallels: in particular, Moses’s origins in the highest classes of Egyptian society. Mann sees the figure of Moses in The Tables of the Law as one of the purest and most vivid embodiments of creative principles, going back to his own period of ‘playing Goethe.’ Moses is yet another of his powerful, harmonious and optimistic characters from the 1930s–1940s (Joseph in the four-part novel Joseph and His Brothers [Joseph und seine Brüder] or Goethe in Lotte in Weimar), with roots in the majestic Dutchman Peeperkorn from The Magic Mountain [Der Zauberberg] (1924). Instead of engaging in a direct polemic with corresponding ideological dogmata, the two books written by the giants of Germanspeaking culture in Nazi times reveal a profound examination of not fully recognized and therefore still dangerous sources of Nazi ideology on the mythological level in mankind’s collective unconscious.

The article discusses the transformation of the image of ‘eternal’ Sonechka, originating in F. Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment [Prestuplenie i nakazanie] and undergoing subsequent changes while preserving the stability of an archetype and acquiring new meanings in M. Tsvetaeva’s The Tale of Sonechka [Povest o Sonechke] (1938), T. Tolstaya’s short story Sonya (1984) and L. Ulitskaya’s novel Sonechka (1992). In following the logic of the heroine’s development, the author finds that all Sonechkas share such features as femininity, loyalty, and an inherent ability to ‘radiate passionate enthusiasm and give warmth:’ this talent for self-sacrifice can be realized in a family, in one’s attitude towards art or a lover, or just by mistake (as in the case of T. Tolstaya’s Sonya). It is easy to see that all female authors in focus of L. Korotkova’s article, while polemicizing with Dostoevsky in that they exaggerate the heroine’s traits to absurd proportions, fall under the spell of the charming ‘eternal Sonechka as long as the world lasts.’ The undying interest of Russian literature in this character only confirms its archetypal status in Russian culture.

Jack London’s books have always been known and loved in Russia. However, most readers, including professional ones, tend to see them only as romanticized stories about exotic locations, people and customs. Some critics, including the American Malcolm Cowley, even went as far as to state that Jack London belongs in the past. This paper offers a slightly different take on one of the writer’s most popular novels: White Fang. The story of a strong and ferocious beast, three-quarters a wolf, is treated as a parable about the creature’s original life choice: a turn from sociopathy to acceptance of a society, and from hate to love. Also pointed out is a plot parallel in London’s narrative: at the end of the novel, two creatures stand against each other as deadly foes, both nurtured by a hostile environment but driven by circumstances to completely opposite modes of life. Such a plot structure appears to be archetypal for modern authors. It is used, in particular, in one of James Cameron’s movies, Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

M. Khlebnikov’s essay is devoted to the ‘rediscovered’ novel Stoner by the American writer J. Williams, published in 1965 but unknown to wider audiences until the early 2000s. Through detailed analysis of the novel’s plot and psychological structure the author offers his understanding of what caused the book to plunge into obscurity for many years and the meaning of its recent ‘rediscovery.’ According to Khlebnikov, the success of Williams’s novel is symptomatic of some serious process that has not come to an end: on the one hand, the enthusiasm for Stoner can be explained by a gradual ‘renewal of the canon,’ highly anticipated by critics, professors and other members of the literary community trying to bring back forgotten books; on the other hand, the attention towards Williams’s work may be viewed as a reaction to the excesses of Postmodernist aesthetics. Overwhelmed by excessive literariness and sheer concentration of quotes, one begins to hanker after ‘life that’s alive;’ thus the novel’s objective flaws, which inevitably caused it to flop in the past, are now hailed as its irrefutable merits.

The article analyzes physical and physiological problems caused by fashionable clothing in the mid-18th to early 20th cc. that shaped people’s appearances and lifestyles in the past. Affecting the skeletal system and the functioning of internal organs and brain in particular and causing various illnesses, these problems went largely unrecognized by contemporaries, including writers, but would inevitably surface in literary works as part and parcel of everyday life. Without understanding their role, one may struggle to comprehend not only plot twists and characters’ motivations but also the mentality of the bygone era as portrayed in fiction. Chronologically, the research covers the period from the mid-18th c. to World War I. The author only focuses on so-called respectable society (a very tentative term that covers members of the aristocracy and other classes with comparable lifestyles), since it was this group which drew the most attention from fiction writers of the period. The scholar chose to concentrate on the kind of daily realia of ‘noble society’ that permeate works by Russian, English, French and, to some extent, German authors, considered most prominent in Europe at the time.

The article deals with the evolution of female demonic characters appearing in literature since the classics to this day. In Russian classics, infernal females with magical powers were not uncommon: described by V. Zhukovsky, O. Somov, N. Gogol, A. Kuprin, etc., they were mostly treated as ‘abnormal’ or negative. The perception has changed dramatically in modern literature: a woman with connections to infernal powers (e. g. princess Tichert in A. Ivanov’s novel The Heart of Parma [Serdtse Parmy] or Rogneda in M. Galina’s Mole Crickets [Medvedki], etc.) is no longer a manifestly negative character. A. Guskova discovers that the contemporary infernal (or demonic) female character is not so much part of a love theme but is rather connected to the magic of the story’s location: the Urals in A. Ivanov’s book and Transdniestria in M. Galina’s, respectively. Also transformed is the nature of the contact between the heroine and the male protagonist: the impossibility of a constructive interaction and mortal danger (in classic prose) are replaced with a positive tone, granting the protagonist an opportunity for development.

The interview of E. Konstantinova with the prose and script writer and social activist L. Ulitskaya mainly focuses on the latter’s books, their origins and unique features and principles. In particular, Konstantinova brings up the fate of screen adaptations of Ulitskaya’s works, including the scripts for the episode A Hundred Buttons [Sto pugovits] in the almanac A Joyful Roundabout [Vesyolaya karusel] (1983) and for the cartoons The Toys’ Secret [Tayna igrushek] (1986) and A Lazy Dress [Lenivoe platie] (1987), which became a sort of springboard for her career in grown-up literature. Also mentioned are films: This Queen of Spades [Eta pikovaya dama] (2003), The Kukotsky Case [Kazus Kukotskogo] (2005), and others. As the interview was conducted remotely due to the pandemic, it also discusses the ways in which the novel coronavirus may change the world (if at all). Ulitskaya also shares her opinion on what a writer should do in these changing times.

The article considers the motif structure of the books by three young poets: G. Medvedev (A Butterfly Knife [Nozh-babochka], 2019), A. Trifonova (a yellow Ikarus bus in the distance [zhelty ikarus vdali], 2019), and A. Kinash (Fragments from a Dream Dictionary [Otryvki iz sonnika], 2019). A comparative analysis of the three books helps the author to identify typical generational traits — in poetics, themes, the motif structure, as well as ways to interpret the laws of the universe and solve semantic problems. The topic of a child’s world features in the works by Medvedev, Trifonova and Kinash alike; their childhood is shaped by playgrounds in provincial towns, active outdoor games and 1990s children’s folklore, although each of them treats these biographical and literary themes in their own way. Trifonova prefers a linear interpretation of time and space, while Kinash chooses to employ a mythological chronotope; in Medvedev’s book, time and space follow the principles of historical organization with their holistic and systematic character. Childhood appears to be the starting point for creation of the poetic system of each of the poets as well as a destination they keep returning to.

The article examines the poetry collections printed by Voymega publishers in their new series ‘Pyroscaphe.’ Authors of the six collections published so far are young poets who participated in the literary seminar ‘The way to literature. Continued’ held by the Moscow Writers’ Union in 2019: M. Bessonov, D. Nozdryakov, B. Peygin, K. Tarayan, E. Uliankina, and V. Fedotov. Despite their very dissimilar poetics, the study of their works enables the critic to trace certain common features that define the new generation of poets. In particular, Batalov believes that each author tells their own myth. What unites those myths are the concept of the post-Soviet childhood (with all realia typical of the 1990s), the crossing of the border between life and death, and idealization of the provinces; it is also pointed out that each of the authors eventually arrives at the myth of Hades, the kingdom of shadows, where human souls are roaming in solitude. In conclusion, Batalov proposes to poets that if they cannot overcome the inertia of mythological thinking, they should at least mitigate it by addressing reality.

The two-part structure for the sequence of Shakespeare’s Sonnets was suggested by its first editor Edmund Malone at the end of the 18th c. and proved to be a long-standing tradition. Recently not a few attempts have been made to clarify the logic practiced by the Renaissance sonneteers in whose context Shakespeare’s lyrical narration is problematized. This article joins to ascertain the boundaries of inner cycles within the sequence in order to follow the denouement of its plot. The author argues that the Renaissance sequence, much unlike the narrative logic in the novel, does not present a consistent love story but rather the sessions of sweet silent thought (sonnet 30), reflective in the sonnet and growing more and more metaphysical in Shakespeare, both in diction and metaphor. Certain biographical allusions in the sequence (some of them advanced by the author) support that it was written between 1592 and 1603–1604 to the Earl of Southampton as its addressee.

The article examines methodological principles of studying the Russian literary canon in the cultural context of Eastern Orthodoxy, as demonstrated in I. Esaulov’s book. While acknowledging the importance of the book’s method, the article reviews and criticizes the concepts used by the scholar (the Eastern archetype, the Christmas archetype, the categories of Law and Grace, etc.). In particular, the author challenges the statement that a writer populates his works with archetypes prevailing in his culture (so Eastern Orthodox ones in the case of Russian culture), often against his own religious principles. Also subjected to critical analysis is the thesis about the Easter archetype being more specific to Russian literature, with the Christmas archetype being more typical of Western literature. On the whole, the paper argues that the transhistorical approach declared by the scholar as opposed to the rigorously historical method (M. Gasparov and others) may often lead to strained hypotheses and mythologizing; all in all, it may result in an ahistorical perception of both Eastern Orthodoxy and the literary canon.

The article is concerned with the origin problem of the pen name adopted by the Russian philosopher Leib Schwartzman (Lev Shestov). The author questions the explanation of Shestov’s pseudonym in the 1920s–1930s as provided by the philosopher himself and quoted by A. Steinberg in his memoirs. As the pen name Lev Shestov first appeared as early as in 1897–1898, it must have stemmed from a fascination with the works of I. Turgenev, the subject of L. Shestov’s book written at the time. Shestov was certainly well acquainted with Turgenev’s novel Smoke [Dym] (1867), which has a female protagonist named Tatiana Shestova. No coincidence then that Tatiana was the name that L. Shestov chose for his daughter born in 1897. The article also considers other hypotheses which complement rather than contradict each other. The pseudonym Lev Shestov, therefore, is examined as an intertextual microtext denoted by an allusion and characterized by a wide range of symbolic meanings.

The article defines the principal artistic conflict in S. Dovlatov’s works as an irreconcilable contradiction between the ugly truth of reality and the embellished lies of Soviet ideological appearances, imposing themselves as a substitute for that particular reality. However, a third element in this universe is a recurrent type of protagonist who remains consistent in all of Dovlatov’s works. His situation, fate and personality are defined by his sticking to ‘a third way.’ It is from this viewpoint alone that one can observe the workings of the law of absurdity that rules the universe. According to the author, the popularity of Dovlatov’s books lies in their mainstream protagonist. Devoid of individual traits, Dovlatov’s hero is easy for any reader to identify with psychologically; and not because of many similarities, but due to very few differences. All in all, the article attempts to describe S. Dovlatov’s artistic world as a system that represents an organic unity of the writer’s creative principles and his deeply dramatic worldview.

The article takes a look at the issues arising during translation of M. Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita [Master i Margarita] into the Persian language and the history of translations of Bulgakov’s works in Iran. The author sets out to identify specific realia and language nuances that are hard to understand by readers in the target culture of Iran as well as ways to render them in Persian, using the example of Abbas Milani’s translation. The scholar enumerates possible strategies for vocabulary that does not have equivalents in the target language: the use of transcription and transliteration, the descriptive method, contextual translation, etc. The author finds that the best strategy would combine all of the above, as well as make good use of footnotes and references to help readers reconstruct the cultural and historical background of the events described in Bulgakov’s novel. Although Iran, too, experienced effects of the socialist revolution, Sovietisms remain too complicated for Iranian readers and require more detailed knowledge of the period. In this case, the only way for a translator to preserve the flavour of the era is to use footnotes, comments, and explanations.

The reviewer considers the main areas of scholarly research represented in the collection of articles titled East–West... [Vostok – Zapad...] dedicated to the Volgograd-based researcher A. Goldenberg and compiled from the materials of the 2018 conference of the same name. The papers include general theoretical research into the problem of artistic space and studying Gogol’s works in this aspect, and articles on the ‘TsaritsynVolgograd’ text in literature and on the relevant aspects of the literary tradition. A significant part of the papers contains analyses of western and eastern influences on works of Russian literature. The reviewer holds an overall complimentary view of the materials in the collection, acknowledging their thematic and methodological diversity and stressing the importance and rich potential of studying literature and folklore within the framework proposed by the authors and editors of this collection.

A review of A. Denisov’s book on Kolomna realia in the life and works of the famous Russian writer Boris Pilnyak (Vogau) and the 30 years of Pilnyak Readings, a tradition founded by A. Auer. The book’s two-part structure is directly explained by the logic of the author’s plan: he sets out to describe the close Kolomna ties of B. Pilnyak’s family and to illustrate Kolomna-related details in the writer’s books; in the second and more voluminous part of his book, A. Denisov focuses on the personality of Professor A. Auer, the founder of Pilnyak Readings, a conference that introduced systematic studies of B. Pilnyak’s works and at first attracted local history researchers and scholars, later reaching an international audience. The history of Pilnyak Readings establishes a strong association between the writer B. Pilnyak and the internationally renowned scholar Professor A. Auer.

The second volume of the a logy prepared by a team of compilers from papers submitted for the literary conference They Are Gone. They Stayed On [Oni ushli. Oni ostalis] includes works by poets who passed away in the 1970s–1980s at an age younger than forty and showcases little known as well as very familiar names. Each poetic collection is supplied with a brief biography and critical reviews and reminiscences by contemporary scholars as well as people personally acquainted with the poet. The review considers the structure of the book and attempts to identify its underpinning principles; the author points out genetically and topologically cognate phenomena which provide a context for a discussion of the anthology and touches on the issue of professionalism and dilettantism in the contemporary literary process, such an issue being pivotal for identification of this book as a cultural phenomenon.

A review of the collection How We Write. Writers on Literature, Time, and Themselves [Kak my pishem. Pisateli o literature, vremeni i o sebe] published by Azbuka-Attikus in 2018. The reviewer analyzes the difference in approach to compiling the material for the reviewed collection and its ‘original’ of the same name initiated by Eugene Zamyatin and published in 1930. The author provides a general description of essays in the collection, produced by contemporary writers. He singles out authors whose self-reflection transcends into an aesthetic dimension. Several internal plots of the collection are identified: ‘I and literature,’ ‘I and time,’ and the writer and a multicultural situation. Noted is the disparity on the artistic level among the essays by different contributors. The reviewer concludes that, rather than representing a consistent statement defined by an internal logic and purpose, the collection attempts to cover the entirety of the contemporary literary process and showcase its diversity.

The Iliad: An Epic and History [‘Iliada’: epos i istoriya] is the last book by L. Klein, a prominent Russian historian, archaeologist, philologist, and the founder of theoretical archaeology. The book was originally conceived as the third part of a larger research project, The Iliad Deciphered [Rasshifrovannaya ‘Iliada’]. The Iliad: An Epic and History includes important additions to The Iliad’s Anatomy [Anatomiya ‘Iliady’], with references to its tables and maps, as well as to Disembodied Heroes [Besplotnye geroi]. Klein analyzes how frequently epithets were used with city names and names of the heroes, as well as morphemes of frequently used and key words in terms of their age and geography. Based on the results of this analysis, he divides the Iliad into parts and proceeds to describe them in detail. Klein also elaborates on the images of the heroes and their origins in local cults. A large part of the work is devoted to analysis of the Catalogue of Ships. Thanks to the findings provided by the book the readers get a comprehensive view of the overall textual structure of the Iliad.

The book comprises manuscripts written by female mystics in Middle High German and Latin in the 1200s–1300s. The works are created in the genres of sister-books, revelations, Gnaden-vita (‘blessed lives’), and private epistles. In the comments to the collection, its translator and compiler examines various aspects of the origin and existence of medieval mysticism, reconstructing its historical and cultural context, and explores everyday behaviour and distinctive psychological traits of Dominican nuns and the Beguines. Based on the stylistic and verbal characteristics of the works, the scholar reveals the meaning of the metaphors employed and considers the utilized text-generation models and their connection with behavioural ones. This method appears highly relevant in the light of contemporary research into the performative character of medieval culture.

The monograph of the American scholar Joseph A. Kestner is devoted to Victorian novels and stories that feature a female detective protagonist. The author introduces a large volume of little studied texts written in the period from 1864 to 1913, which he explores to follow the process of the female detective character taking shape, noting its specific structural and sociocultural traits as well as features of narration. As a literary example and a starting point, the author considers the character of the amateur detective Sherlock Holmes: it is in comparison and polemic with him that the character of a female detective is formed in the subsequent literary tradition. In recognizing realistic prose as documentary evidence, the author painstakingly reconstructs the historical context, mostly in the area of gender issues. This enables him to shed a new light on the origins of English detective writing, while not without certain limitations.