The article considers the works of Alexey German in their semantic and stylistic aspects. In his earlier films, in the spirit of the Sixtiers, German advocated for an objective and uncompromised truthfulness, especially in war pictures. In the 1980s (e. g. in My Friend Ivan Lapshin [Moy drug Ivan Lapshin]), the director moves on to a more personalized, ‘transformative’ and fantastic depiction of reality. This approach is epitomized in his film Khrustalev, My Car! [Khrustalev, mashinu!], only to be followed by a complete rejection of a historical sense and a belief in humanity’s enduring corruption in It’s Hard to Be a God [Trudno byt’ bogom]. Another topic examined in the article is German’s treatment of original literary sources during script writing and filming. Despite the fact that almost all of his projects were based on well-known stories and novels, German would systematically expunge any narrative quality, or semantic certainty, or plot continuity, opting instead for an involved sonic register. He liked to stress independently valuable visual imagery, associative aspects, and the overall character of the image: this approach proved highly beneficial in Khrustalev, My Car!, but failed entirely in the flop It’s Hard to Be a God.

The article focuses on the priorities in contemporary studies of cinematic adaptations. Looking at the various appropriations of this Shakespeare’s tragedy in art and indie movies, the researcher reveals how by underscoring the director’s visual imagination and the ‘power’ of a cinematic tradition one can revise the scope of adaptation studies. Concentrating on the signature elements of A. Kaurismäki’s and M. Almereyda’s cinematography, the author emphasizes the productivity of the audience’s ‘entrancement’ with the visual and sonic interpretation of the classical piece (through the use of the American film noir stylistics by Kaurismäki, and through Almereyda’s interplay of multiple on-screen realities). In the viewers’ memory, literary meanings are expelled rather aggressively by new cinematographic ones. Kaurismäki turns the tragedy into a tastefully stylized noir whodunit, while Almereyda went for a reflective narrative about neo-Hamletism at an age of expanding virtual realities. In her demonstration of how the directors achieved such effects, the author argues the priority of the cinematographic auteurship (including the case of collective auteurship) in the analysis of contemporary film adaptations.

In this review of the novels and stories by the contemporary Russian author I. Bogatyreva, winner of numerous literary awards, including The Student Booker 2016, the critic highlights the principal motifs of her plots, including the motif of travel, pilgrimage, and the search of a certain human common ground: be it age, philosophy, or nationality. The paper also examines the chronotope and the writer’s use of mythological allusions, which permeate both her historical and modern day-based novels, only to conclude that ‘emerging adulthood’, a term from the psychological studies of young adults, is the most apt way to describe Bogatyreva’s prose. That the writer maintains keen interest in the subject is not only because of her role as ‘a real master of innovation in young Russian prose’ (quoted from the blurb on the cover of her prize-winning novel Kadyn), but due to its relevance for contemporary young adult readers, themselves in search of their models growing up and their future destiny.

The article considers the works of a contemporary writer, winner of the Yasnaya Polyana 2016, N. Abgaryan in the context of the thinning borderline between mass and non-mass literature. Along with trying to make her readers laugh or shed a sympathetic tear (That Broad That’s Just Moved In [Ponaekhavshaya], 2011), Abgaryan has another agenda of showing the daily life of modern Armenia and its tragic history (People Who Are Always with Me [Lyudi, kotorie vsegda so mnoy], 2014), and insisting on a careful treatment of the single individual, of their past and future. The author argues that, after epitomizing the worst taste in the period between the 20th and the 21st centuries, mass literature has moved on to show a dramatic improvement of quality in the 2010s, as evidenced in N. Abgaryan’s works.

The article examines the role of autobiographical retrospections and reminiscences in Igor Klekh’s stories Diglossia [Diglossiya], A Partial Man, or Notes of a 40-year-old [Chastichniy chelovek, ili Zapiski sorokaletnego], The Judgement Day [Svetoprestavlenie], and The 1999 Chronicles [Khroniki 1999 goda]. The writer’s Soviet childhood represents an artistic technique, a unique way to perceive and organize the narration. It is possible to say that it is from a child’s perception of the world that Klekh draws his literary inspiration, and that it is nostalgia that determines his stylistic experimentation. Speaking of Klekh’s leitmotifs and poetic imagery, such as the material metaphor of memory, documentary letter, reshuffled reminiscences, etc., the author points out that it is this specifically perceived and artistically digested phenomenon of the Soviet childhood that defines Klekh’s fragmented narrative style.

The paper deals with the little-known aspects of the famous writer K. Fedin’s publishing activities. In the years from 1927 until 1934 he held an uninterrupted record as chairman of the editorial board at the Publishing House of Writers in Leningrad [Izdatelstvo pisateley v Leningrade, IPL], a cooperative that printed works of contemporary authors. Despite dramatic turns in history, the press enjoyed a steady growth in output, expanding its range of authors and genres; the story of the covert struggle between literature and politics is examined by the team of research fellows of the Saratov-based state museum of K. Fedin. With the help of their open archives, particularly letters and journals, they meticulously reconstruct Fedin’s activities as publisher: from the creation of the new publishing house, which united the poputchiks (satellites, fellow-travellers): authors who advocated preservation of the Russian literary tradition, free of ideological pressure, until the moment when Fedin’s much-cherished project was cannibalized by the mammoth publishing institution called The Soviet Writer [Sovetskiy Pisatel].

Based on letters, archived documents and the works written by A. Dobrolyubov during his religious exploration, after he set off on a pilgrimage across Russia, this article considers the foundations of the poet’s religious teaching and its perception by peasants and ‘literate’ society. The researcher focuses on A. Dobrolyubov’s collections of poetry From the Invisible Book [Iz knigi Nevidimoy], My Eternal Fellow-Travellers [Moi vechnie sputniki] and the songs he composed for group performance during community/brotherhood gatherings. A particularly valuable input is provided by I. Yarkov’s archive about Dobrolyubov and his followers (kept at the manuscripts departments of the Russian State Library and the Samara M. Gorky Literary Museum).

The researcher points out that Dobrolyubov’s religious teaching, which used to enjoy a big following across a wide geography, was either ignored or misinterpreted in literary circles, and that, once he cut off his ties with the intellectuals, his contemporaries began to compare Dobrolyubov with Leo Tolstoy and those characters of classical Russian literature whose devoted their lives to the search for God and the truth. Dobrolyubov’s ideas of refusal to perform military service, genuine emancipation of peasants, the inner revolution as a prerequisite for progress, a universal unity, and respect for folk culture are not unlike the values that shaped European democracies.

The article examines the Finnish period in the writings of Leonid Andreev, trying to answer the question of whether the writer’s work represents a ‘borderline effect’ (mixing of cultures), or an isolated cultural phenomenon invoked by external and internal factors alike. The researcher looks for the influence of the Finnish culture and landscape (‘the power of location’, according to N. Antsiferov’s local history method), and the unique cultural environment of the Finnish Karelian Isthmus on these writings (and introduces the term of ‘Russian summer cottage dwellers’ effect’). The article considers Andreev’s contacts with Russian artists and thinkers, and his translated works that were published in Finland during his lifetime. The author’s output is regarded as an isolated cultural act through the prism of M. Bakhtin’s outsideness (vnenakhodimost’), and the researcher lists the factors behind the process. A special focus is given to the effect of the Russian revolution of 1917 on Andreev’s life and work: the article shows how it turned his ‘semi-emigration’ into a ‘complete emigration’ and steered him towards journalism.

The relationship between K. Chukovsky and V. Nabokov is a topic little covered by scholars. Even less is written about the mutual literary influence of the two preeminent Russian authors. The article examines their journals, letters and literary works to reveal the development of their artistic disputes.

Doyens of Russian culture, the two simply couldn’t have ignored each other, especially as they met in person before the Revolution and thanks to literary circumstances. The article shows that each one’s personal and artistic opinions were bound to cause a clash of worldviews, which indeed took place on paper, and continued without any face-to-face polemics.

The author finds a lot of similarities in the two writers’ creative method: they both demonstrate astonishing literary erudition, synthesize new imagery, plots and narrative forms. Both favoured formalistic and stylistic experimentation, literary game and cryptography, pranking, puns, allusions, and anagrams.

The first analysis of this kind, the article considers the image of the executioner in V. Nabokov’s novel Invitation to a Beheading [Priglashenie na kazn’]. One of the novel’s main themes is defilement of an individual in a violence-fuelled system. It is through the image of the executioner M’sieur Pierre that we grasp everyman’s cruelty towards the liberal thinker Cincinnatus. At the same time, resisting the executioner, Cincinnatus achieves new insight into the purpose of life and experiences an existential winning of Freedom.

A year before Nabokov’s novel came out P. Lagerkvist published his story The Hangman [Bödeln] (1933) in Swedish. The author points out the hitherto unnoticed similarity between the two works. Comparing two executioners, the author discovers that, although Lagerkvist’s menacing hangman looks nothing like Nabokov’s rotund and vulgar joker M’sieur Pierre, their inherent urge for cruelty and abuse is the same, so is the cheering of the surrounding townsmen. The two different works also share their historical context (Europe in the 1930s): the executioners in Nabokov’s and Lagerkvist’s books embody the new historical discourse.

The article deals with the little examined period in the life and work of Thomas and Henry Mann, when, from 1895 up to 1896, Henry was editor-in-chief, and Thomas  one of the authors, of the blatantly anti-Semitic journal The Twentieth Century. For the first time in the Russian studies of the writers, the article reveals a compendium of their articles that appeared in that journal. They make it clear that, during the time the two authors worked for the journal, they were under a powerful influence of the nationalistic ‘voelkisch’ ideology, a precursor to National Socialism. The researcher points out the specifics of the brothers’ attitude towards the Jewish world. While Thomas’ articles are not infused with the kind of aggressive anti-Semitism of his brother’s works, they still make a noticeable use of anti-Semitic stereotypes, evidence of his negative perception of Jews. The paper also follows the evolution of the two brothers’ views of the ‘Jewish problem’. Whereas Henry gave up his aggressive anti-Semitism rather easily and moved on to a sympathetic depiction of Jews in the early 1900s, Thomas’ works show little change as far as the Jewish theme is concerned. Thomas Mann, on the other hand, believed that literature and politics were dimensionally separated; but what proved advantageous in terms of artistic quality resulted in a flawed interpretation of the Jewish theme.

The article deals with the image of time of Heinrich Böll’s Billiards at Half-Past Nine. Undergoing transformation as the novel progresses from beginning to end, time is promoted beyond the formal meanings of the word to the book’s theme, key driver of its plot, and one of the novel’s main characters. The author examines the artistic techniques, composition, timeline, and topography related to this metamorphosis, as well as the writer’s typical stylistic methods.

To mention just a few, its dramaturgical substitution (whereby the role of the narrator is passed on from one character to another, and the scene moves across time); semantic surprise (an unexpected use of a word, or change of the topic of narration); spiral composition (description of past and present events in a cyclical rather than linear narration); the poetics of repetition and artistic laconicism.

In addition, the research looks at the novel’s position in time and space in accordance with M. Bakhtin’s classification.

This hitherto unpublished conversation between the famous Bulgarian philologist Emil Dimitrov and Vyacheslav Ivanov deals with fundamental philological problems, such as Slavonic culture, language development, artistic translation, etc. The two scholars are particularly interested in culture: its experience and perception, involvement in it, and various ways for its scholarly study. The interview is prefaced by E. Dimitrov, who shares the story behind his acquaintance with the interviewee and his first impressions of him. Dimitrov insists that only a scholar with a strong personality can achieve cultural prominence. It was for the purpose of revealing such scholarly personality that Dimitrov structured his interview as a lively and exciting commentary to Vyacheslav Ivanov’s major research.

Devoted to the production of M. Bulgakov’s plays in the 1926 Kiev, the article examines a comprehensive selection of archived manuscripts and printed material related to the staging of Bulgakov’s plays The Days of the Turbins [Dni Turbinykh] and Zoyka’s Apartment [Zoykina kvartira] in Ukrainian theatres: in I. Franko Ukrainian Drama Theatre and the Russian Drama Theatre (RDT). This review is the most comprehensive one to this day that analyses the main circumstances and motifs of the short-lived stage life of Bulgakov’s plays in the 1926 Kiev, a consequence of both the artistic policies of theatrical management, as well as the financial situation. Another reason was the ideological censorship imposed not only by the designated officials, but also by the contemporary nationalistic mood: first, it led to the ban of The Days of the Turbins at the I. Franko Theatre (director G. Yura) and then at RDT (director Y. Sobolev); next, the very popular and therefore lucrative play Zoyka’s Apartment had to be cancelled by RDT, which thus lost their box-office hit.

The paper tells the story of Ivan Bunin’s correspondence with Vadim Rudnev (dating from 1933-1934), managing editor of the Paris-based Russian émigré journal Sovremennie zapiski. Judging by the quoted letters, Bunin did not sever ties with the journal, despite what many researchers suggest; nor did he plan to snub the editors by refusing to send in new works. If we accept Bunin’s own words about his very fastidious approach to proofreading, it becomes clear why he barely published any new works in the period from 1934 to 1936. It was in those years that the Berlin-headquartered publishing company Petropolis printed his collected works in 11 volumes. It was to become Bunin’s last fundamental publication, comprising works entirely proofread by the writer himself. It is only natural that such a humungous effort had affected the ageing writer’s productivity, and Bunin simply could not generate new material for the journal.

The article is devoted to the book Letters from the War, 1941-1945 [Pis’ma s voyny. 1941-1945], which comprises 139 letters written by A. Tvardovsky to his wife while he was on the front lines. The letters offer a sequence of insights into the poet’s soul affected by the violence of yet another whirlwind of history. They reveal a lot about the poet’s personality and creative method. These 139 letters are a testimony of a great love as well as creativity in times of war. The paper has a very straightforward plot: the author examines the letters in chronological order, starting with the first one, written in 1941, all the way to the last one, dated 1945. The research cites other resources, including ancient Indian poetry, Homer’s Odyssey, a story by a contemporary journalist about the life of evacuees (famous writers) in the small town of Chistopol, A. Kondratovich’ book Aleksandr Tvardovsky, Three Soldiers by J. Dos Passos, A. Bek’s reminiscences, and V. Akatkin’s article A. T. Tvardovsky’s Finnish Sketches in the Dialogue of Epochs [Finskie zapisi A. T. Tvardovskogo v dialoge vremen]. What sets this paper apart from other studies is the use of personal observations and insights collected by the author during his service in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

From The Poetry Diary [Dnevnik poezii]. Publication and foreword by Zoya Mezhirova

A. A. Ryabova. Christopher Marlowe and Russian Literature.

James Shapiro. 1606. Shakespeare and the Year of Lear.

K. Balmont. Uncollected and Forgotten Works. From K. Balmont’s Literary Heritage.

V. M. Essipov. Vasily Aksenov’s Four Lives.

Georgy Levinton. Articles on Russian Avant-Garde Poetry.

New books.