The article focuses on the conception, transformation, and operation of the term ‘world literature’, including its historical origins and modern problematics. When meaning is problematized, and the reality of world history is radically revised, the changes cannot but affect the derivative phenomenon of world literature, where historical challenges give rise to the need for reconstruction of its very concept and clarification of its components (language, culture, nation, and territory), as well as of the nature of their connection. The author distinguishes between world, or global, literature, on the one hand, and globalization, multiculturalism, and other concepts, on the other. He argues that cultural references in a ‘post-national’ world are doomed, and that world literature, rather than neutralizing cultural differences, should identify and define them, also by comparison.

The paper deals with the contemporary transformation of a historical novel. Unlike the traditional ‘costume’ genre, where the plotline, subject matter and psychology adhere to a certain historical period, a modern historical novel is growing more metaphorical, if not altogether fantasy-like. An example can be found in G. R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, adapted into the TV series Game of Thrones: the saga which, by his own admission, inspired one of the renowned present-day Russian ‘historical’ prose-writers, A. Ivanov, to create a novel that wasn’t just historical, but also metaphorical, not unlike Martin’s, with the ideas and images of modern Russian civilization depicted in a condensed and emblematic manner. The article analyses the metaphorical fabric of Martin’s novels and of Ivanov’s two-volume Tobol, noting those of their common features that can influence the future of the genre.

The article examines the ‘geographical dimension’ of modern Russian prose, in particular, through a mythological, and even demonological, prism. The mythological-dimensional complex is especially prominent in the Urals-themed works by O. Slavnikova (2017 (2006)) and A. Ivanov (his 2-volume series Parma’s Heart, or Cherdyn – The Mountain Princess [Serdtse Parmy, ili Cherdyn – knyaginya gor] (2003) and The Gold of the Uprising, or Down the River Gorge [Zoloto bunta, ili Vniz po reke tesnin] (2005)). Not only do the novels promote a region-specific metaphorical and mystic flavor of theUral Mountains, but they also feature very active and authentic demons, thus creating a unique provincial topos, whose spiritual quality stands out especially in comparison with its callous and apathetic metropolitan counterpart. Mainly based in the spiritual opposition between the Urals and the capital city, the conflict in the novels by Slavnikova and Ivanov is resolved in a historical dimension, because the hitherto culturally unexploredRussia offers unlimited riches for literary and mythological constructs and their integration into fiction.

The article is devoted to reconstruction and analysis of the mental and linguistic models of Elena Chizhova’s dystopian novel The Sinologist [Kitaist]. A thesaurus of the novel is compiled in order to study its core concepts, and none more important than ‘ideology’, semantically linked with other entries in the thesaurus. It is in the novel’s dystopian dimension that the author models modern society’s biggest scares and challenges, focusing the reader’s attention on the social calamities of the 20th century, including the aftermath of World War II. The mentality of the dystopians is perceived as a threat to the nation’s psychological and social-cultural wellbeing. The totalitarian regime, shown by Chizhova at the moment of its bleak decline, is ruining society’s integrity, causing national extremism and social inequality, and provoking a new linguistic reality to the detriment of the true linguistic identity.

Spanning over a decade from 1990 until 2003, the transcripts of interviews with Inna Lisnyanskaya and Semyon Lipkin mostly deal with literary topics. I. Lisnyanskaya discusses her works and poetic methods and talks about her friends and acquaintances in the literary world. Featuring on these pages are 20th-century authors: Sergey Averintsev, Vasily Aksyonov, Bella Akhmadulina, Anna Akhmatova, Eduard Bagritsky, Andrey Bitov, Joseph Brodsky, Elena Bulgakova, Igor Vinogradov, Andrey Vosnesensky, Rasul Gamzatov, Lidia Ginsburg, Evgeny Evtushenko, Olga Ivinskaya, Yury Kublanovsky, Feliks Kuznetsov, Vladimir Maksimov, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Osip Mandelstam, Yury Nagibin, Boris Pasternak, Maria Petrovykh, Evgeny Popov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Arseny Tarkovsky, Korney Chukovsky, Anastasia Tsvetaeva, and Marina Tsvetaeva. I. Lisnyan skaya’s opinions are often biased and extremely subjective: they are interesting not despite, but because of it. Another important topic is the repercussions of publishing the Metropol almanac. The transcripts also help reconstruct the history of some of Lisyanskaya’s poems.

Alexander Zholkovsky’s essay brings together the figures of three Russian writers: the еmigrе Nobel prize winner Ivan Bunin (1870–1953), the Soviet classic and Stalin prize winner Veniamin Kaverin (1902–1989), and the еmigrе poet, prosaist and literary scholar Lev Loseff (1927–2009). The essay starts by briefly summarizing its author’s recent studies of the major works of the first two (The Dark Alleys [Toymnye allei] and The Two Captains [Dva kapitana], respectively) and stating their nearly polar difference, despite having been written almost simultaneously (in the 1940s). The narrative then involves a chapter from a book of memoirs by the third writer, Lev Loseff, which focusses on his childhood (in the same 1940s) and in particular, on his reading of books about the Soviet North, including Kaverin’s The Two Captains. The chapter’s denouement features Kaverin himself in person and Loseff’s stunning insight into the workings of Kaverin’s literary craft. Inspired by Loseff’s insight, Zholkovsky proposes his own: an unexpected link between Kaverin and Bunin (spoiler free).

A review of S. Volkov’s History of Russian Culture during the Romanovs Rule. 1613–1917 [Istoriya russkoy kultury v tsarstvie Romanovykh. 1613–1917] and A. Davydov’s Neopolitical Liberalism in Russia [Neopoliticheskiy liberalism v Rossii], the article is concerned with depiction of I. Turgenev’s personality and creative legacy. Both historians set ambitious culturological goals for themselves, yet their interpretations of the subject betrays their very tentative knowledge of historical and cultural realia, as well as poor grasp of art’s aesthetic nature. Volkov chooses to build his story around a para-literary gossip verging on an abusive lampoon, with Turgenev’s character downgraded and distorted, and the scale of his work completely overlooked. In his search of ‘neopolitical liberalism’ in Russian literature, Davydov finds it in unexpected places, while missing it altogether in Turgenev’s works, where it constitutes an ideological foundation and key element of their meaning and poetics. The studies by Volkov and Davydov tend to sacrifice historical-literary and artistic material in favour of prejudice and subjectivity, as well as arbitrary concepts.

The article considers the French edition of Ivan Turgenev’s Poems in Prose [Pofmes en prose], published during his lifetime, as a cycle of miniatures different from its contemporary version printed in Russia. The detailed textual analysis indicates minor differences in translation of several poems – caused, apparently, by their so-called untranslatability – and more serious ones in the order and organization of the poems. The latter could have been Turgenev’s own intention, given the potentially different readership type and the profound contrast between the European and the Russian consciousness. Consequently, the French cycle is missing 20 vignettes, which is only logical in some cases (e. g. The Russian Language [Russkiy yazyk]), and highly curious, from a scholar’s viewpoint, in others (e. g. several spiritually/religiously charged poems like The Monk [Monakh] and Christ [Khristos], etc. were excluded). The study emphasizes that the French collection is a translation of the Russian edition, and, despite its own inner dramatics, follows the writer’s idea realized through the special cyclical strategy of Senilia.

The article analyzes the significance of the ‘bridge’ detail in F. Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment [Prestuplenie i nakazanie]. The bridge is not a mere landscape feature, but a means of subtextual expression of the protagonist’s inner drama. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate the detail’s artistic significance in the novel.

Examination of the plot sequences and the context for the mention of a bridge helps to establish its compositional role as a connector between two existential dimensions: the true one, inspired by realization of God’s design, and the false one, generated by Raskolnikov’s theory. The symbolic meaning of a bridge in the aesthetic universe can explain the character’s internal struggles and acute spiritual controversy.

The study of the functions of the ‘bridge’ detail in Dostoevsky’s novel clarifies the writer’s artistic intent and the book’s philosophical background.

The article attempts to analyze the relationship between Renе Descartes and Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac. The study focuses on one of the most amazing episodes of 17th-century French literature, when philosophers, following Descartes, were transitioning to the use of the vernacular, while writers, including de Balzac, were experimenting with new forms of expression, favouring the epistolary genre, among other things. The episode is even more significant because it begins with a young Descartes’ little known reflections on de Balzac’s Letters [Lettres]: published in 1624, the latter provoked one of the century’s most vociferous public disputes. At the same time, the notes provide a good starting point for discussion of a highly controversial topic of the philosopher’s legacy, namely, his ties with 17th-century intellectual libertinism, epitomized by de Balzac, as well as his hostile opponent, the preeminent French poet Thеophile de Viau. The study mainly suggests that, despite certain differences, the philosopher tends to share the two authors’ views of the greatness and freedom of the human self.

The article analyses the dialogue happening between two historical periods inside the fairy-tale context of Beauty and the Beast: a story with its origins in the late days of the ‘gallant’ age and on the cusp of the Age of Enlightenment. A product of the conflict between the two, the fairy-tale provides ample inspiration for contemporary re-tellers of classical stories. The original work by Madame de Villeneuve centres on the idea of assimilation of a territory, its colonization and its integration into the political and economic context of the inhabited world. The same idea is taken up and reinforced by the American author M. Lackey, who considered the French original and its origination period through the concept of a national idea, in particular, the notion of the ‘hearth’. The article demonstrates how this idea, reaching its peak during the American Enlightenment, helped Lackey to transform the original’s colonization motifs and endow the classical plot with new prospects. In her ‘domestication’ of the fairy-tale world, Lackey delivers it a paradoxical blow at the end of the story, and turns de Villeneuve’s triumph of civilization into a more relevant ideal of freedom and unlimited opportunities, where the female protagonist enjoys emancipation and is invested with her rights.

The published correspondence between two Soviet literary critics, N. Berkovsky and V. Grib, dates from 1936 and 1939 (letters from 1937–1938 are missing from the archive). The subject of the letters was determined by their mutual academic interests (European literatures of the new age) and, equally importantly, their determination to subject historical material to philosophical analysis, and preoccupation with general aesthetic problems. However, squabbles were not uncommon: Grib’s rationalistic tendencies throughout his research (corresponding to his biggest academic interest: literature of the Enlightenment) would prompt an occasional joke from Berkovsky, whose ideas were often guided by romantic intuitivism. Over a decade after Grib’s untimely death (1940), Berkovsky published a laudatory review of the fellow scholar’s posthumous works, where he still managed to gently point out their differences. He expressed even more praise for Grib’s unorthodox academic views in a private letter (to B. Zingerman, 1961), an extract of which is cited in the closing lines of this article.

The search method demonstrated in the discovery and examination of the new sources of O. Mandelstam’s poems and prose is the subject of this article. The author suggests consistent analysis of the mentions of Mandelstam and his works in the newspaper Vecherniy Kiev in the years from 1927 up to 1929. Among them is the poet’s name mentioned in the article by the Leningrad-based ideologist A. Stetsky, attacking the local literary journal Rezets. The study of the two publications reveals a number of real-life sources of the pivotal images in the poems Down the Streets of Kiev, the Viy... [Kak po ulitsam Kieva-Viya...], I’m not Quite a Patriarch Yet... [Eshcho dalyoko mne do patriarkha...], The Fourth Prose [Chetvyortaya proza], etc. More new sources are uncovered to explain the ties of Mandelstam and his works with D. Zaslavsky, I. Selvinsky, M. Tarlovsky, N. Ushakov, etc. A special emphasis is placed on the changing perception of Acmeism by the Leningrad bureau of RAPP [Russian Association of Proletarian Writers], as well as different perceptions of Mandelstam as an active Soviet writer, on the one hand, and àn acmeist, on the other. The study also looks into the roles played by K. Tokar and B. Rosenzveig (the editor and a contributor of Vecherniy Kiev, respectively) in the poet’s life, and discusses the episodes related to B. Lecache, whose novel Mandelstam was translating.

The review is concerned with detailed analysis of I. Kargashin’s monograph on Russian poetic narrations in the 17th–21st centuries. Normally applied to the epic genre, the concept of skaz [oral narration, tale] is extrapolated by the scholar to describe lyrical poetry. Hence the broad scope of issues discussed in the book: how accurately can the term be applied to lyrical works, since poetry is anti-narrative in its ‘pure form’? How can one structure the subjective sphere of poems, given that a skaz recreates a consciousness other than that of the author, unlike in lyrical poetry, where the author and the hero are inseparable? Following the questions, the scholar identifies typological characteristics of the examined phenomenon (appropriation of another’s consciousness, realization of this consciousness through a colloquial monologue, and depiction of the subject’s speech in verse), uncovers the reasons for its emergence (including ‘emancipation’ of the hero and transition to the spoken word), and traces its history and development.

The reviewer raises the question of what should be the circumstances to make possible a translation of a canonical piece of ancient Russian literature. The review points out the novelty of the publication, in particular in its treatment of court poetry as the Tale’s most immediate context; of Bayan’s role among the court poets and his hypothetical use of pre-made genres, and of the book’s themes and hidden dialogue. The reviewer proves that the new translation actualizes and nuances our idea of medieval literature as a culture of ‘pre-made word’, in describing how pragmatic goals, polemic pathos, and intellectual aspirations called for an original cross-genre interaction. The reviewer discusses applicability of the author’s perception as a function to medieval literature. He demonstrates the author’s compelling interpretation of the complexity of Bayan’s position, acknowledged by the Tale’s author, and of the author’s stance, which caused the translator to reject any preexistent forms of eloquence.

The review discusses N. Perlina’s monograph about the problem of ekphrasis in Dostoevsky’s ‘most mysterious’ novel The Idiot [Idiot] (1868) and highlights advantages and disadvantages of her study. The review contains a summary of key Russian bibliography about ekphrasis in literature (L. Geller, R. Poddubtsev, E. Novikova, O. Dzhumaylo, etc.). It is noted that, despite studying ekphrasis, many philologists may not actually use the term in their research. The review touches on Perlina’s polemic with another renowned scholar of the novel, T. Kasatkina. Perlina’s monograph is structured into six discernable parts: Excursus into the Theory of Ekphrasis, Meetings with People and Portraits, Pictures of Executions and Conversations about Faith, Cervantes – Dostoevsky, Myshkin – Don Quixote, The Triangle Nastasya Filippovna – Myshkin – Aglaya: Pictures of Struggling Hearts, and Implied Ekphrasis Stories in the Novel’s Fourth Part. A vague authorial position is deemed the biggest downside of Perlina’s book.

The main goal of the collection is to define the specific character of Acmeism as a separate trend inside Russian Modernism. This specification is derived through a series of basic categories like space and time continuum, the philosophy of the written word, and poetic semantics, etc. The collection is divided into several sections. The first, a summary of the general theory about the subject, discusses the significance of Acmeism in the Silver Age semantic paradigm. The second section is devoted to O. Mandelstam’s poetry, and in particular his logos concept. The third centres on A. Akhmatova’s poetics, with particular attention to her world view. It also includes several papers on A Poem Without a Hero [Poema bez geroya]. The fourth section covers various aspects of works by acmeists N. Gumilyov, V. Narbut, and M. Zenkevich. 

The review considers the opinions of L. Vinogradova, who wrote a book about Soviet women pilots during World War II, based on the recently discovered documentary evidence and witness reports, as well as taking into account the relevant experience of her predecessors. At the centre of the book is a life story of the war hero L. Litvyak, who shared a similar lot with her sisters in arms. Following the descriptions in war correspondent V. Grossman’s Stalingrad Notebooks [Stalingradskie tetradi], the author details aerial battles in the skies above Stalingrad. In her reconstruction of the ferocious engagements, Vinogradova also covers the boisterous propaganda of pre-war years and questionable episodes in Russian war history. The book seeks to disprove the American historian B. Yenne, who, in his biography called The White Rose of Stalingrad, showed L. Litvyak as yesterday’s schoolgirl, killed when not yet 22. 

In her book, Olga Partan touches upon theatrical and literary history from the early 1600s, her detailed analysis of certain renowned works of literature and dramatizations revealing their new aspects. The interdisciplinary method of her work enables Partan to create a study which comfortably accommodates Trediakovsky with Gogol, and Dostoevsky; Sumarokov with Block, and Bely; and even Alla Pugachova with Vladimir Nabokov, side by side on its pages. The author of Vagabonding Masks examines their 300-year old adventures in Russian culture, from the times of Peter I. She believes that the Italian genre became part and parcel of Russian culture from the moment when the first Italian theatrical companies were invited to perform at the court of Empress Anna Ioannovna. The book follows a chronological order: starting from the first Russian theatres and all the way to Giorgio Strehler’s tour of the country in the early 2000s: a powerful boost to Modernist theatrical art inRussia, as opposed to the deeply rooted Stanislavsky traditions.