The article argues in favour of the hypothesis that L. Tolstoy’s The Living Corpse [Zhivoy trup] was written in response to the covert message in F. Dostoevsky’s Idiot and followed years of indirect exchange between the two authors. Both books set out to portray an ideal positive hero, embodied by their respective protagonists: Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin and Fyodor Protasov. The fact that both of them meet with a tragic end signifies the futility of any attempt to realize an ideal human in modern society.

It is most likely that exiled to his family estate Mikhaylovskoe in 1825 Pushkin, with pen and pencil in hand, read and marked the second volume of Konstantin Batyushkov’s breakthrough works (1817). The 2-volume collection (with verse in the second one) summed up a literary career of a mentally deceased poet, Pushkin’s immediate predecessor in ‘light verse’ and the genre of elegy. At that moment, for Pushkin working on the first collection of his lyrics Batyushkov’s achievement served to test his own experience. A question in the title of this paper should be assessed in the context of this moment in Pushkin’s career and a turning point in the development of Russian elegiac genre. In his estimation of Batyushkov’s lyric ‘My Genius’ [‘Moy Geniy’], Pushkin discarded what was to hum a worn out elegiac convention and enjoyed what Batyushkov’s elegy had introduced to the verse technique and sensitivity of Russian poetry. Pushkin appraised as ‘charming’ a vivid recollection of the beloved, far away at the moment, but added: ‘with the exception of the first 4 [lines]’. The ‘first 4’ in their melancholy declaration of lonely sadness stood out for him as an out-of-place reminder of a genre that used to be in fashion but good for parody only in 1825.

Yamshchikov examines the oeuvre of V. Popov, a living classic of the ‘Leningrad school.’ The focus of the article are his three books, an unofficial trilogy of loss, comprising the novellas Third Breath [Tretie dykhanie] (2003) and A Mosquito Lives as Long as It Sings [Komar zhivyot, poka poyot] (2006) and the novel To Dance to Death [Plyasat do smerti] (2011). Although correlating with the latest versions of European autofiction produced in the past couple of decades, Popov’s trilogy constitutes an unconventional example of autobiographical self-reflection, recorded on the ‘margins’ of the writer’s professional and private life. Unique in its contrast to Popov’s typically cheerful and optimistic oeuvre, the ‘loss trilogy’ is less of a search for new heights common in Russian autofiction in the years before the genre really took off (‘female’ optics, the essay-novel), and more of a bridge to the 2010s’ more relaxed experiments with prose — most importantly, abandonment of genre constraints and development of a free style, unrestrained by context, tradition, or genre conventions. Popov’s writing is analyzed as part of the literary process of the 2000s to the 2010s, with its relevant emphases and characteristic trends.

The article analyzes Aleksey Oleynikov’s novella Light Breathing [Lyogkoe dykhanie]. An example of artistic fanfiction, the book is loosely based on I. Bunin’s short story of the same name. The fanfic originated as a piece of amateur writing inspired by a beloved original work and until recently remained within the domain of the fic writer (creator of fanfic) subculture, separated from professional literature. However, Boroda argues that, following a long period of accumulation, fanfiction is shifting from the realm of dilettantes into the professional sphere and forming its distinct genre structure in the process. Thus, Oleynikov’s Light Breathing features a fusion of detective and psychological fiction, as well as detailed portraits of characters Bunin mentions only fleetingly. The article also outlines modern literary trends connected with the legalization of fanfiction and considers the conditions necessary for its conversion into a bona fide literary movement.

The article looks at several contemporary theatrical productions of classical plays that subtly ridicule the original or even reject the original plot twists. The author examines the productions of Ivanov by P. Shereshevsky (2014), Count Nulin [Graf Nulin] by M. Romanova (2016), A Month in the Country [Mesyats v derevne] by A. Ledukhovsky (2023), Hedda Gabler [Gedda Gabler] by M. Lebedev (2021), and Without a Dowry [Bespridannitsa] by G. Smirnov (2022). Apart from A Month in the Country, staged at the Astrakhan Drama Theatre, all plays were put on stage at the Novokuznetsk Drama Theatre. I. Kim argues that changing the canonical ending has become a principal method of reinterpreting a play for modern theatre. On the one hand, it helps to adapt a one- or two-hundred-year-old classical piece of drama to contemporary taste and context and make it more relatable for the audience. On the other hand, such an experiment only pays off if the audience is familiar with the original and can therefore appreciate the director’s ingenuity as well as the play’s original message.

The article sets out to establish the extent of influence exercised by the philosophical and literary-poetic legacy of Greco-Roman antiquity on the Arab civilization during the Islamic Golden Age. To do so, the author characterizes the ideological foundation and methods of classical philosophy and poetry and analyzes their reinterpretation by the Arab Caliphate. The study explores the caliphate’s protoscientific, political and social developments, law, literature, and poetry. The author notes that Plato’s and Aristotle’s cosmogonic models with their premises of the dualism of faith and rational knowledge appealed to the theocratic state, prompting their reinterpretation in religious writing. K. Alabdallakh concludes that the influence of the Greco-Roman classical legacy proved inconsistent and mainly concerned the areas of knowledge, manufacturing, and politics, while barely traceable in law and poetry. At the same time, the Arab Caliphate created a hierarchical model of classical achievements that, in its various forms, lives to this day.

In focus of this article are anthroponyms from Nikolay Leskov’s chronicle The Cathedral Folk [Soboryane]. Leskov’s interest in the everyday life of the Russian Orthodox Church stems, among other things, from his family background: one of his grandfathers was a priest, and the last name Leskov is not uncommon among the clergy. The names of the chronicle’s principal characters (two priests and a deacon) are typical of the Russian clergy in the 18th and 19th centuries: Tuberozov, Benefaktov, and Desnitsyn. Such elaborate and ‘artificial’ surnames would be normally given to seminarians or students of primary theological schools. V. Korshunkov analyzes the name of the archpriest Savely Yefimych Tuberozov in great detail. The scholar demonstrates that the flower-related semantics of Tuberozov makes it a typical clerical last name. Notably, the use of the surname-forming suffix -ov goes against the rules of Russian grammar, but is a widespread practice when coining ‘fancy’ last names. In addition, the article offers a critical review of existing scholarly research of the character’s full name. To this end, Korshunkov touches on rose symbolism in Christianity, examines the hero’s anthroponymic space, and explores the semantics of Latin-based terminology with the stem tuber-.

The article considers problems that plagued the book publishing industry of Russian émigrés in the late 1940s, following the destructive Nazi occupation of France during World War II. The study examines the personal experience of Nina Berberova, a ‘first wave’ émigré poet and writer, to identify the strategies used by authors to represent their output in the markets for Russian and translated literature amid the publishing crisis. A. Martynov also describes the helpful interventions in favour of the publication of Berberova’s collected novellas The Relief of Fate [Oblegchenie uchasti] (1949) by YMCA-Press. The writer Boris Zaytsev, the poet and art historian Vladimir Veidle, and the philosopher and head of YMCA-Press Nikolay Berdyaev lent a hand. The article details their acquaintance with Berberova and mutual support (in the case of Veidle and Zaytsev) dating back to before the publication. Appended to the article are Berberova’s hitherto unpublished letter to Boris Krutikov, one of the executives of the Russian section of YMCA-Press, which offers a generous insight into the decision-making process at the press, and Zaytsev’s internal review of Berberova’s book.

Included in this publication, M. Aldanov’s and B. Zaytsev’s letters offer an insight into one of the most notorious conflicts that polarized the Russian émigré community at the end of World War II. Once the defeat of the Nazis became a matter of time, accusations of collaboration during the occupation started to appear. A similar ‘charge’ was brought against N. Berberova, prompting her fellow émigré writers to come out as either defenders or accusers. This topic dominates the published correspondence between Aldanov and Zaytsev. Aldanov’s epistles to M. Karpovich and P. Ryss are also appended and help complete the picture. Several studies have suggested that the conflict around Berberova’s alleged culpability reveals a more general rift between Russian and Russian-Jewish émigré writers. Therefore, this publication, supplied with comments and references to the most recent sources, clarifies the writers’ attitude to Berberova’s case, depicts various sentiments typifying the community of Russian ‘first-wave’ emigrants, and offers missing details for a better understanding of the complicated story of Berberova’s ‘moral collaboration.’

Analyzing the collection of articles entitled Fiction in the Archives [Beletristikata v arkhivite], the review discusses the principal areas of research of Bulgarian scholars studying facts and fiction in artistic literature and archived documents. The contributors pursue an ambitious goal of offering a comprehensive overview of the diverse forms of interaction between documents and inventions. The collection consists of eighteen articles that approach the topic from either theoretical or practical perspectives and can be divided into two thematic groups. The first one explores the connections between reality and imagination in the context of artistic fiction and offers detailed analysis of individual works of literature. The second group studies the correlation between facts and fiction in archived documents and contemplates the prospects of literary archive studies and the relevance of documented testimonies for the preservation of Bulgaria’s national legacy.

The review concerns Cynthia L. Haven’s book about George Kline. The first English translator of Joseph Brodsky’s poems shares his views of the poet, his poetics, and the nuances of collaborating and communicating with Brodsky, whom he met in Leningrad in August 1967 and stayed in touch with until the poet’s last birthday. The first in the West to recognize Brodsky as a preeminent poet, Kline became Brodsky’s first translator. With his excellent command of the Russian language, Kline insisted on faithfully rendering the original’s metre and rhyme. Except for Brodsky himself, Kline produced the greatest number of Brodsky’s translations ever made by a single translator. Alongside Brodsky’s poems, Kline left brilliant translations of B. Pasternak’s, A. Akhmatova’s, M. Tsvetaeva’s, and T. Venclova’s works. In addition to an exquisitely detailed story of the relationship and collaboration between the poet and his philosopher translator, the book features a meticulous study of Brodsky’s poetics. The list of G. Kline’s published translations of Brodsky’s poetry was compiled by V. Polukhina, who also provided the book’s afterword.

The review considers Guido Mazzoni’s concept explained in the Italian theoretician’s study of modern poetry. The author examines the genesis of the lyric, highlighting its main milestones, from its use by Petrarch to the radical subjectification by Romanticists. Mazzoni interprets this process as a departure from ritualized forms in favour of the total freedom of self-expression achieved by avant-garde poets. The scholar dwells on the comparison between the Western and Russian traditions, indicating their common ground as well as fundamental differences. He argues that the national tradition of the perception of Russian poetry was shaped by the early 20th century’s preference for a dialogue with tradition and the discovery of the dialogic nature of words. In Mazzoni’s concept, poetry reaches the apotheosis of individualism and reclusiveness, and faces a crisis of the Romanticist worldview that prompted the arrival of the avant-garde. This, in turn, encourages a search for alternative paths of development, which the Russian poetic tradition successfully identified.

The review discusses the genre, ideas, and style of M. Kudimova’s A Phobia of Long Words [Fobiya dlinnykh slov]. Taking into consideration 20th-c. Russian essays and the contemporary methods of book-writing by incorporating social media posts, the review proceeds to examine the principal characteristics of the publication: the prevalence of literary references, an emphasis on the classics, the fact that memoirs and autobiographical notes become a means to a journalistic end, the paradoxical nature of titles and combinations of topics, and its aphoristic quality and intellectualism. Bursting with volumes of content that reflect intensifying social media communication, missing structural elements to help readers personalize their reading choice, and peppered with emphatic statements, an encyclopaedic density of proper names, and complex terminology and metaphors, this book proves a challenge for any reader but intellectuals and philologists.

The review examines A. Alyokhin’s monograph The Goal of Poetry [Tsel poezii]. Chief editor of the poetic and literary critical journal Arion in the years 1994–2019, Alyokhin became a preeminent authority on present-day Russian poetry. The book is formally comprised of articles and interviews that appeared in different periods and on various occasions. But collected in one volume, they read as a single conceptually solid text, which can be explained by the author’s clear view of poetry and consistent historical and cultural creed. The monograph discusses such typical and distressing issues of contemporary literary culture as the substitution of art with extra-aesthetic objectives, clichéd and irresponsible writing, writers’ psychological maturity and infantility, and the loss of professionalism in poetry, among others. At the core of Alyokhin’s position is his belief in the hierarchical structure of art. He defends the aristocratic quality of poetry and consistently challenges the idea that any versified form of self-expression is valid.