Although he mentioned more than once that Tolstoy was his idol, Aldanov, driven by the force of circumstances and catastrophic dimensions of the contemporary historical process, appears to be closer to Dostoevsky, both in terms of theory and subject matter. Scholarly writings that concern Aldanov’s understanding of chance as a historical trigger are often tinged with irony, dismissing his ideas as a prominent writer’s fancy. Aldanov summarises his views on the role of chance in a brilliant book, possibly the best historiosophical treatise written in Russian — A Night at Ulm: The Philosophy of Chance [Ulmskaya noch. Filosofiya sluchaya] (1953), a kind of manifesto of his main idea, where, citing Descartes and employing his style, Aldanov describes different variants of historical occurrences but leaves out their final resolution, only pointing at the possibility of multiple outcomes. This means that chance rules as ever and sometimes bad luck prevails. Lenin epitomised such a bad turn of events for Russia. The country’s subsequent history became that of survival after the terrible blow. The history continues and it remains unclear if any recovery has been made.

The prose by the contemporary Russian writer Kirill Ryabov is deceptively simple and bleak. Known for their pithy and cinematographic phrases, dynamic plot and succinct portrayals of the characters’ appearance and speech,
Ryabov’s books remain highly seductive for critics and offer numerous angles of interpretation. A. Gusamova’s article is written in a manner that is unmistakably Ryabov’s, i. e., only a few lines of text suffice to reveal the main message: the paradox of Ryabov’s books is that most of them remain unwritten. A two-hundred-page paperback constitutes the bare essentials.
Everything omittable has been left out: descriptions, the characters’ personal traits, as well as the usual psychological particulars. Ryabov’s poetics is founded in omitted elements. Gusamova seeks to reconstruct them in her analysis and interpretation of the milestones marking Ryabov’s artistic evolution. The article focuses on the development of the existential and moral agenda which plays a key role in the artistic world of Ryabov’s prose.

Following an analysis of Kirill Ryabov’s works published in the years 2021 and 2022, the author finds that in Ryabov’s metamodernist aesthetic paradigm the modernist communicative model is preserved alongside some concepts of postmodernist aesthetics. Modernism, postmodernism and metamodernism appear as three stages of the single itinerary with a goal of overcoming the logic of binary oppositions and achieving heteroglossia and dialogue (M. Bakhtin) as a new artistic structure. Through the re-introduction of the depth of emotion and the humanistic dimension, metamodernism strives to comprehend the systemic integrity of the universe. The same agenda characterises Ryabov’s books which show people in their systemic relationships with their own egos, society, the world, and God. The aesthetics of Ryabov’s metamodernist text is defined by such parameters as the abandonment of a clearcut opinion of the author or the protagonist in favour of a dialogue with the reader, reliance on a myth, the concept of a ‘void,’ minimalism, experimentation with the word’s inner form, and the use of mass literature techniques.

The article looks at the origins of the concept of autofiction and compares S. Doubrovsky’s and R. Federman’s theories, emphasising the influence of American criticism on the concept’s development. Although often referred to as a hybrid genre first emerging in France in the 1970s and combining fictional and factual events, ‘autofiction’ at its inception was understood as a special narrative practice of traumatic self-reflection through the concept of fiction. In Doubrovsky’s critical works, fiction emerges not as a product of imagination but as a psychoanalytical practice of entrusting one’s experiences to writing. In parallel with Doubrovsky, another scholar, the French-American novelist of Jewish descent Raymond Federman, challenges the limitations of the traditional autobiography. His manifesto, Surfiction (1973), reflects on the boundaries between reality and fiction and questions the very possibility of an autobiographical experience representation. Along with Doubrovsky, Federman views autobiographical writing as an attempt to render a not-to-be-represented and traumatic experience.

The article discusses the latest novel by one of the most celebrated contemporary writers (who may have been intentionally mystifying their audiences): Elena Ferrante. In her analysis of The Lying Life of Adults [La vita bugiarda degli adulti], the critic offers a consecutive examination of Ferrante’s take on such problems as coming of age, national identity, socio-cultural stratification and, finally, the problem of falsehood, treatment of which defines the novel’s narrative. In Ferrante’s interpretation, the story of the protagonist Giovanna logically follows from the dishonesty of culture and religion. However, the critic argues that this ideological charge kills the novel, turning an overall masterly psychological tale of a teenage girl’s coming of age into a platform for a feminist jab at culture. The only redeeming quality that balances off the plot’s ideological dictate, something immediately associated with the literature of social realism in the mind of a Russian reader, is the image of the narrator, whose consciousness is depicted by Ferrante to be more nuanced and psychologically convincing than the heroine’s radicalism.

The article is written in memory of Yury Mann and follows the life and work of the prominent scholar, whose books not only constitute a landmark phenomenon of Russian literary studies but also offer a new perspective on a number of episodes in the history of literature. Mann’s scholarly career was shaped in the years after WWII. In his book of memoirs, written towards the end of his life, Mann attempts an analysis of his philological pursuits and how, trying to keep up with contemporary trends, he would still occasionally find himself to be an outsider. The article sets out to explain how Mann’s personal and scholarly journey eventually resulted in his remarkable achievements.
The author pays special attention to a lesser-known sphere of Mann’s interests: his analytical studies of modern literature (among fellow philologists, he is mostly known as an expert on Gogol and Russian romanticism), his thoughts on conventionality in art, and compelling evidence that Mann’s works follow traditions of Russian formalism.

The review considers K. Azadovsky’s translation of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Children’s and Household Tales published by Ladomir Press in their Literary Monuments [Literaturnye pamyatniki] series in 2020. The first complete Russian edition of the collection follows the last original compilation printed in the scholars’ lifetime and includes a foreword and a letter to Bettina von Arnim, both appearing in the Russian language for the first time. By pondering the vicissitudes of the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales in Germany and Soviet Russia and especially by comparing the new book with previous publications, the author demonstrates the book’s significance and helps appreciate the sheer scope of preparation and research behind the translation and comments. The review contains a careful analysis of Azadovsky’s translation which offers the most faithful interpretation of the German original. In addition, the author discusses the general problem of scholarly comments of the Brothers Grimm’s tales as well as accuracy and thoroughness of the information provided in comments, and considers the commentator’s freedom of interpretation.

Researchers and memoirists have for some time been focusing on Y. Dombrovsky’s fourth criminal proceedings (1949). Their peculiar appeal lies in a fatal woman’s involvement. Among the writer’s friends and acquaintances who testified during the proceedings, there is a record of one Irina Strelkova. Years later she would be condemned as a female Judas. Accounts would emerge insisting that it was her testimony that sealed Dombrovsky’s fate, featuring prominently in the prosecution’s case and bringing about his ten-year prison camp sentence. The accusers rely on Dombrovsky’s letter published soon after his death that talks of Strelkova and her enthusiasm during the investigation — in short, her eagerness to bury him. The article attempts to get to the bottom of these accusations and, should they prove false, discover the reason for this vilification. In order to do so, I. Duardovich scours the case file, uncovering previously unpublished and uncommented materials, thus making it the first comprehensive study of the proceedings.

The book written by the Polish scholar treats Russian theory as it has been informed in the process of understanding Shakespeare and in its turn served as a basis for Russian theory. The term ‘Russian theory’ is advanced as analogous to ‘French theory’ represented by M. Foucault and French deconstruction in general. ‘Theory’ in this broader sense is used to denote scientific mind represented in various discursive practices, namely historiosophy, religion, philosophy, and partly politics. An attempt to understand Russian intellectual life through analogy with certain Western events can be productive as it brings the national into the world context, but at the same time it is fraught with a danger to wipe off those features that do not fit into the analogy.
Thus, Russian historical poetics, the Russian variant of theory, is practically left out, or falls into separate sections and loosely related individual practices. The book is important as a case study of modern theoretical appropriation at work in the domain of literature.

The review is devoted to a new monograph about the problems of the Russian translation method in the period between the 1900s and the late 1930s. Particularly detailed is the analysis of the book’s main idea that faithfully equirhythmic translation was gradually abandoned in favour of a method more appealing to mass readership. The reviewer highlights the activities of the principal translation institutions of the period and explains their role in the shaping of the new translation method. In addition, the review comments on the book’s structure and praises the decision to publish archival materials, such as M. Alekseev’s article on translation. The reviewer challenges the thesis offered by the book’s compiler M. Baskina, who claims that, although originally executed to high standards of philological accuracy, collections of translated works after WWII were produced with an increasing degree of ‘compromise.’ For an example to disprove this statement, the reviewer points to the Complete Works of Shakespeare published in 1958–1969 under A. Smirnov’s editorship.

This review of P. Calderón’s collected plays focuses on a stylistic analysis of Natalya Vankhanen’s new Russian translation of Life Is a Dream [La vida es sueño], considered the crowning glory of Spanish baroque theatre, as well as its interpretation and the dramatic nuances of the translated play in the stage version of the Moscowbased Elektrotheatre Stanislavsky, including their effect on the production’s portrayal of Segismundo. The reviewer stresses the translator’s unique, authorial view of Calderón’s poetic text. It results, firstly, in the translation’s heightened emotional charge, signaled by a profusion of exclamation and question marks and ellipses, and, secondly, in a shift of semantic emphases from the topic of overcoming one’s animalistic instincts to that of discovering the reasons for ‘animalistic’ behaviour in humans. The same topic — the father’s fault for raising a tyrant — is accentuated in Elektrotheatre’s production where Segismundo is shown to become despotic only in the palace upon learning of his mistreatment by the family.

The reviewer finds A. Grodetskaya’s scholarly contributions particularly valuable because they result from open-minded research. Equally undeniable are her achievements in the preparation and publication of Goncharov’s Complete Works and Letters. The book refers to the Maykovs’ literary circle alternately as a literary salon, a circle, or a literary home, each implying an air of literary domesticity. A member of the Maykovs’ literary circle, V. Solonitsyn collaborated with Biblioteka Dlya Chteniya (a monthly printed magazine) and had a number of works by other members published there; interestingly, he also instigated the Maykovs’ handwritten magazines. Homemade journalism coexisted with professional literary work. Goncharov may have started as a professional author, but in the Maykovs’ salon he drifted towards amateur art. He could not imagine his life without writing and discovered many channels like Biblioteka Dlya Chteniya, Podsnezhnik (a handwritten magazine), and the opportunity to join the expedition of the frigate Pallada, which produced a series of the famous sketches penned as private journal entries.

The review concerns a coauthored monograph that examines the various aspects of the famous anthology of German Expressionist poetry — The Twilight of Humanity [Menschheitsdämmerung]. For the first time Kurt Pinthus is presented as the solo architect of this complex work of art designed to resemble a symphony. The reviewer notes the originality of the comparison with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and argues that the monograph discovers similarities not only on a larger scale but also on the level of specific details, i. e., the arrangement of the poems that enriches the meaning of an individual text through its placement in the new context of other poems. In addition to general comments about the structure of the anthology and its thanatological code, the researchers suggest independent interpretations of the poets (J. R. Becher, T. Däubler, and others) and their role in the orchestration of the anthology. Among the monograph’s very few flaws, the reviewer points out the book’s somewhat excessive reverence for Pinthus’s mythologising.

The review discusses two anthologies of contemporary Greek literature (prose and poetry), comprising works of the authors distinguished with the country’s State Prize for Literature in the years from 2010 to 2018. The two books succeed in capturing the multidimensional character of Greece’s modern life and literature in small forms (short stories, novellas and poems). The first anthology features short stories and novellas by fourteen authors. The second contains works by twenty poets, each represented by five poems. While some authors were rewarded for their literary debut, others received the prize for lifetime achievements. Thanks to the anthologies, characterised by a diversity of subjects, artistic methods and poetic messages, the Russian audiences can join in the polylogue between classics and avant-gardists, realists and surrealists, and gurus and novices, as well as broaden their knowledge of the latest developments in a literature rooted in ancient history that remains unique and inspired through the oeuvre of its masters.