The author assumes that the former idea of the cultural universal implied the danger of unification for a national and cultural identity associated with something conventional, virtual, essentially spurious, and thus divorced from the national-literary discourse. The exaggerated identification of tradition and the universal blocked a further extension of the semantic space of literature. The article considers the mutually complementary nature of tradition, on the one hand, and novelty, singularity, and a consolidating supra-ethnic idea, on the other: to preserve itself, individuality needs communicativeness, whereas ‘the force of universality,’ according to Hegel, ‘contains particularity.’ The unique and individual qualities of each national literature suggest unisolated locality and, therefore, the universality of the particular. In the specific literary work (A. Kim’s prose) the article traces the author’s predisposition for a holistic worldview that combines a national mode and a universalization paradigm.

During his visit to Germany in 1829–1830, Pyotr Kireyevsky wrote lengthy accounts to his family back in Russia, detailing the conspicuous qualities of European lifestyle as well as his personal attitude to, and experience of, such mode of living. His letters supply the readers with a guide for a virtual tour of Europe. In many ways, Kireyevsky’s letters invoke the influential pretext of Russian travelogues: N. Karamzin’s Letters of a Russian Traveller [Pisma russkogo puteshestvennika]. However, Kireyevsky does not target a large audience, nor does he try to educate his readers or preach Europeism. His older brother Ivan, who followed Pyotr to Europe, would keep his letters to the family brief and rather unsystematic, choosing to focus on his personal judgements and impressions. It seems that, without Pyotr’s letters, it would be nearly impossible to make sense of those epistles or get a good idea of Ivan’s life abroad. Meanwhile, it was Pyotr’s letters that displeased his loved ones. Apparently, the family considered them too good, too ‘correct,’ and, therefore, ‘impersonal.’ They felt that Pyotr’s character was missing from them, which hindered an open and sincere dialogue.

The article is concerned with the Slavic question in Gogol’s journalism and that of the Russian Slavophiles as it was perceived in Serbia. The study was prompted by the author’s discovery of an article printed in the Serbian journal Ljetopis (1860) where Gogol is referred to as a Slavophile. This somewhat biased inclusion of Gogol into the circle of Khomyakov and the brothers Aksakov stemmed from the fact that his view of Slavic issues resembled that of the authors of Russkaya Beseda. Sartakov argues that Gogol decidedly avoided taking sides in the central dispute of the period — the rift between the Slavophiles and the Westernizers — and criticized extreme opinions expressed by both parties. According to Sartakov, Gogol’s ideological affinity with Khomyakov, the brothers Aksakov, and others proves that, rather than being influenced by their ideas, Gogol’s view on Slavic history had the same origins. To support his point, the scholar cites Gogol’s little-known sketch about the Slavs, in which the writer posits that they stood in profound civilizational contrast to their European counterparts, especially Germanic tribes.

The article analyzes the motifs, imagery, and plot structure of three poetic collections authored by Tatiana Repina, one of the remarkable poets of ‘the thirty-year-old generation:’ Monograph. Written by a Single Person [Monografiya. Pishet odin chelovek] (2013), Without Chapters [Bez glav] (2014), and Air Density [Plotnost vozdukha] (2018). In her detailed study of the plot structure and distinctive characteristics of Repina’s poetics, Kadochnikova emphasizes the concept of boundaries as being of principal importance for understanding Repina’s poetics. The concept is revealed through the problem of a geographical identity and the lyrical heroine’s gender ambivalence, the ‘childlike/adultlike’ dichotomy, and the motif of puppetry and theatricality. A selection exemplifying the ‘local’ (Izhevsk-based) text serves the critic as a starting point for interpretation of Repina’s lyrical poetry, which Kadochnikova expands to include poems devoted to St. Petersburg, the image of the ‘generation of the 1990s,’ and problems of contemporary poetry at large. The resulting study uses Repina’s works to address the issue of boundaries in modern poetry.

The article discusses the poetic evolution of the contemporary author Polina Barskova. Nuzhdina follows the logic of Barskova’s poetic experimentation: from her early works written in the 1990s–2000s and inspired by the then-fashionable postmodernist intertextuality to the present-day verse marked by Barskova’s engagement with other, non-poetic new genres. Particularly important are her historical essays, such as The Seventh Alkali [Sedmaya shchyoloch], a book concerned with the distinguishing features of the poetry written in the besieged Leningrad in the 1940s, or her article in the collection of fiction and literary criticism entitled After the Siege [Blokadnye posle], which she also prepared for publication. The matter of genre becomes prominent in Nuzhdina’s analysis: the scholar argues that, following her beginnings in the tradition of intertextuality, typical of the period, Barskova, as early as in the 2010s, went on to master a specific genre of a ‘poetic archive,’ evidenced both in her poetry and historical research. Her poetic texts and essays share a number of characteristics: a diversity of ‘disguises’ and voices, a focus on documentary accuracy, and an ‘uninterrupted alternation’ of narrative and lyrical scenes.

The article undertakes a comparative study of the lyrical prayer poetry authored by K. Kravtsov and S. Kruglov, both ordained priests as well as poets and each offering a personal interpretation of the canon of prayer, transforming it into a unique poetic genre. Going into the history of the phenomenon, V. Razumov provides a classification of the prayer genres proper, noting that the diversity of prayers can be grouped into five principal types: invective, supplication (including intercession on somebody’s behalf), penitence, thanksgiving, and praise. Those are the prayer intentions explored in Kruglov’s and Kravtsov’s poetry, with the addition of elements typical of contemporary as well as folk poetry (a stream of consciousness, a counting rhyme, intertextual references, a lyrical hero in a particular role, a civically-minded lyrical subject, etc.). Razumov finds that Kruglov extends the limits of the genre convention, whereas Kravtsov appears to transcend them. This difference notwithstanding, both poets write at the confluence of literary and liturgical traditions and undoubtedly enrich the tuning and intonation of modern poetry.

Walter Scott’s Rob Roy and Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter [Kapitanskaya dochka], similar in plot, could not be more different in speech organization. Pushkin’s speech genre is unique as a lightly gravitating text: short and verb-dominated sentences, compressed action, and a fast-paced narration that avoids lengthy descriptions of material objects. The implied reader’s role in both authors’ novels also differs. While Scott’s reader experiences the events in progress, Pushkin’s ‘incomplete present’ (Bakhtin) does not take shape. The reader of The Captain’s Daughter does not live the time through with its characters but uses their analytical skill to relate symmetrical episodes and images. The light gravitation of the text prevents the reader from immersing themselves into the novel’s progress, but allows to conceptualize the philosophy of history. Part of the article is dedicated to French translations of English novels in Pushkin’s days. The statistical data of the average sentence length in Pushkin’s works and other writers’ output demonstrates that The Captain’s Daughter holds a truly unique place.

The article analyzes an episode from N. Leskov’s novella Iron Will [Zheleznaya volya], whose sequence of events resembles a particular anecdote from Historiettes by the French memoirist Tallemant de Réaux. Both stories concern the character’s prodigious linguistic skills: having learned a foreign language in total secrecy, he shocks his audience by an unexpected display of total fluency. The scholar investigates the possibility of Leskov directly borrowing the plot: hand-copied manuscripts of Tallemant de Réaux’s stories circulated in Russia well before their publication in 1834, and as such provided inspiration for one of Pushkin’s epigrams. The study sets out to establish Leskov’s logic in portraying a stereotypical German (based on strong will) and Russian (based on indolence) national character; notably, contemporary critics have repeatedly described Leskov as a master of narrative paradoxes. For this purpose, the article also analyzes extracts from Historiettes devoted to the manners of French courtiers, largely shaped by Castiglione’s famous courtesy book. It appears that the French stand in stark contrast to both Russians and Germans alike, since they typically disguise their true intentions and efforts in achieving a goal.

Devoted to Pushkin’s novel in verse Eugene Onegin [Evgeny Onegin], the article is a sequel to the author’s previous article ‘What! From outback steppe villages…’ [‘Kak! Iz glushi stepnykh seleniy…’] (Voprosy Literatury, 2019, No. 5) on the same theme. The scholar sets out to reconstruct those facts of the protagonist’s and his relatives’ biography that can only be discovered by detailed historical analysis of the text in comparison with the historical and cultural realia of Pushkin’s days. Such in-depth analysis throws new light on the complicated relationships of the novel’s main characters, determined by a psychological as well as socio-cultural subtext that was immediately recognizable by Pushkin’s contemporaries, but which is lost on later generations. Based on her earlier studies of Russian Catholicism and the problems of the historical reconstruction of literary texts, E. Tsimbaeva proposes a tentative spiritual and intellectual portrait of Onegin’s mother, whom Pushkin never mentions directly. The scholar sees her goal in broadening the reader’s understanding of the poet’s original design as well as the stages of, and reasons for, subsequent alterations acknowledged by Pushkin himself in his mention of ‘contradictions’ in the final draft.

A new collective monograph (this is an important generic definition for the authors), brought out by the Ural State University in cooperation with a St. Petersburg press Aleteya, is their fourth publication devoted to the ‘marginal issues.’ The first three dealt with the ‘author’s crisis,’ ‘author’s failure,’ and ‘the unfinished.’ In the present book a collective effort is aimed at the analysis of the generic forms considered as ‘aftertexts.’ They range from the author’s inscription on the book to various personal documents, critical reaction, and in the broadest sense up to the whole cultural tradition dependent on the text. Most of the papers are devoted to Russian literature in the 20th c. and include a random selection of Bunin’s inscriptions, his marginalia on the book of Blok’s verse among them, Zoshchenko’s letters to his readers, the brothers Strugatsky’s reputation as a myth, etc. The collective theoretical effort does not help much to clarify the term, or to locate it with any precision in the contemporary scholarly discourse, but it wittily chooses it as an umbrella to cover the papers collected in  book and considered as variations of the ‘aftertext.’

The review discusses a biography of Zinaida Gippius that covers the events of her life from 1869 to the 1920s. The author chooses to dwell on her role as the ‘Warrior Maiden of Russian symbolism,’ consequently omitting the last 25 years of her life from the study. Mark Uralsky utilizes an extensive range of documents to show Zinaida Gippius’s significance as a poet, literary critic, philosopher, and activist in the shaping of Russian symbolism and the so-called ‘new religious consciousness.’ The book particularly explores the psychophysical aspects of her personality that largely predetermined her often scandalous public appearances. The sheer wealth of information in combination with a frequent lack of in-depth analysis creates a superficial impression, which is reinforced by the book’s many repetitions. It would be satisfying to see more in-depth research and more skill and scholarship in exploring the extensive material garnered from various sources, as well as more convergence between biography and poetics. At the same time, the collected material and bibliography will be useful for subsequent research of the topic.

Kvyatkovskaya has published an anthology of her poetic translations from French: her book covers works by 23 authors written in the period from the 16th to 20th cc. The collection is divided into three different genres: ‘Poems,’ ‘Fables,’ and the first ever Russian translation of Voltaire’s tragedy Les Guêbres. The latter is supplied with texts related to the play’s reception and the polemic it incited (Voisenon’s remark in verse). Voltaire’s play is devoted to the ever-relevant topic of tolerance and castigation of hate-mongering against cultural or religious diversity. In her anthology, Kvyatkovskaya demonstrates a profound understanding of the original, and a poetic skill in perfect keeping with the principles of the Leningrad school of poetic translation. The choice of authors and their works is guided by the translator’s personal taste and the strategy of discovery: the book features relatively unknown pursuits of renowned authors, such as Racine’s epigrams and Les Cantiques Spirituels, Perrault’s fables, and Artaud’s Sonnets Mystique.

The review discusses a volume of scholarly articles edited by Samantha Rayner and Kim Wilkins that sets out to present a comprehensive body of research into the oeuvre of the English novelist Georgette Heyer. The book comprises several sections: gender, genre, sources, and circulation and reception. Heyer is the renowned founder of Regency romance, whose work is noted for exceptional attention to historical facts and reconstruction of the aristocratic slang of the period. Her novels, however, remained largely ignored by scholars. The volume’s editors succeed in producing an invaluable compilation enriching the studies of 1920s English genre literature by considering Heyer’s work in the context of post-war culture, with its heightened interest in the Napoleonic era, as well as in relation to literary tradition, especially Jane Austen’s works, but also referencing adventure novels of Heyer’s older contemporaries Baroness Orczy and Rafael Sabatini.