Literary criticism

The following article off ers a theoretical interpretation of Nabokov’s aphorism on Joyce’s inner monologues. Nabokov supposed that thinking is extraverbal and cannot be fully embodied in a word. He assumed that James Joyce was wrong to materialize the stream of inner life in a rigid verbal form. For Nabokov, thinking as an uninterrupted continuum of psychological states, should be opposed to the ‘stream of consciousness’ technique and should be moved towards the lyrical synthetism.

The purpose of the article is to analyze the main functions of the landscape in the works of F. Kryukov. Nature in his narrative system acts as an independent object of portrayal and a toolkit for description, as the place of the character’s residence and the contemplated landscape, as an integral picture and a set of contrasting elements. The emphasis is placed on the narrative role of the landscape in the development of the author’s point of view, the structuring of the artistic space, and plot formation.

This article traces the history of Jack London’s business relationships with The Cosmopolitan magazine, which are reconstructed on the material of the scientifi cally commented The Letters of Jack London (1988). In this relationship London originally acted as an independent writer, who was attracted by the maximum royalties paid by The Cosmopolitan, then he began writing by request of the magazine’s editors, and fi nally signed a permanent contract with them, in which, contrary to his expectations, he was forced to perform the functions of a literary day-labourer.

This article examines the features of how the system of semantic oppositions of landscape images is objectifi ed in the stories about childhood by the writer of the Russian expatriate community Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev, created in 1906-1912. The research material constitutes the works The Sergeant, On Urgent Business, One Night, Gingerbread (the Doctor’s Story), Festive Heroes, Stars, Timid Silence, related to the pre-emigration period of the author’s ouevre.

In the article the motive of the music of the moon in K. D. Balmont’s poetry is researched on the material of his poems, prose and aesthetic articles. Its symbolic value and evolution in books of the early, mature and late periods are explored. The following conclusions are drawn. In the early lyric poetry of Balmont the moon is associated with the oxymoronic motive of the ‘sounding silence’.

The paper examines the creative history of the play Psisha by Yuri Belyaev – a theatre critic, fi ction writer and dramatist of the Silver Age. While working on the article cycle A night at “The Opera House” about theatre history of the times of Catherine II, the critic researched historical sources: periodical, fi ction, documents of the second half of the 18th – early 19th centuries. There Belyaev must have found the material for his early fi ctional experience – the historical short story Psisha.

The article deals with the critical review written by the Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov on the third and fourth volumes of Ivan Bunin’s collected works. These two volumes were published by the publishing house “Znanie” partnership. The review was written on February 17, 1909 in the city of Pavlovsk. Its purpose was to pass a resolution on whether or not Bunin should be awarded the Pushkin prize. Analyzing the original poems and translations of the award nominee, the critic K. R.

The article analyzes the work of the understudied writer of the 19th century, Korneliy Vladislavovich Thorzhevsky, in particular, the poetics of the author’s unique colorful sketches from military life, short stories, novellas, essays is considered on the example of the story The Non-Hunters on a Hunt. The aim of the research is to fi nd an answer to the question about the place of the writer K. V. Tkhorzhevsky in the literary process, about the peculiarities of his author’s style, the originality of the poetics of his artistic heritage.

The article studies literary sources of the plot about the arrival of a landowner in the village, presented in A. F. Pisemsky’s novel The Troubled Sea (1863). The paper reveals that the model of this plot was formed in the stories of the pre-reform period, i.e. at the turn of the 1850s–1860s. Especially often stories with this plot were published in M. N. Katkov’s magazine Russkiy Vestnik (The Russian Bulletin). The main feature distinguishing this plot is the image of a landowner coming to the village.

The article studies the diversity of ideas on the role of childhood in human fate in the work On man, his death and immortality (1792-1796) by A. N. Radishchev. The author pays particular attention to the main features of the moral ideal of a human being which, from the point of view of the Enlightenment writer, should be achieved through upbringing. In connection with this set of issues, A. N.