Literary criticism

In the Manuscripts and Rare Books Division of the Regional Scientific Library of Saratov State University, an early autograph of Ivan Bunin, which has not yet been introduced in scientific circulation, has been discovered. This is a signed copy of the translation of G. G. Byron’s Manfred published by the “Znanie” Partnership. It is known that Fyodor Batyushkov, holding the post of the editor-in-chief of the magazine Mir Bojiy (The World of God), wrote reviews of the works of authors nominated for the Pushkin Prize.

The article deals with the study of the Crimean journey of A. A. Fet (September 25 – October 8, 1879). The introduction of unpublished materials (from the poet’s correspondence with X. Revelioti, A. Kazi, S. Argamakov, A. L. Brzheska, and M. K. Revelioti) into the scientific circulation allows us to clarify the chronology, circumstances, and content of the trip to the Crimea.

Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet (2020), the novel about Shakespeare’s son and wife, is considered as the continuation of postmodernist interest in Shakespeare exemplified by A. Burgess’s and R. Nye’s novels about the Bard. However, O’Farrell’s approach to history through the lens of everyday family life, her present-tense narrative and especially her manner of reinterpreting the historical facts all point to another, more recent literary influence – Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell novels.

The article defines the importance of the non-fictional text of V. S. Naipaul Michael X and the Black Power Killings in Trinidad in the creative work of the writer. The article provides the features of a journalistic investigation, the history of its creation and the analysis of its place in the bibliography of V. S. Naipaul. The text is also considered as the key to the evolution of the hero and theme in the author’s creative heritage.

The article examines the literary context of one of the most important poems of Bulat Okudzhava. Special emphasis is placed on the pattern of making a classic poet a myth in the belles-lettres of the Soviet era. The connections of the poem Meeting with Lermontov’s poetry are noted, the functions of reminiscences are examined. The place of Lermontov’s image in the ‘poetic mythology’ of Okudzhava’s poetry is defined.

The article analyzes the image of Norway in A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s memoir sketches The Oak and the Calf and Between Two Millstones and his letters. The writer intended to settle there in case he was exiled from Russia, because he felt the affinity of living in Norway with that in Russia, he called Norway his ‘second motherland’. The author of the article considers Norway as a significant place in A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s worldview geography.

The novel Night and Day was initially published in the journal Sovetskaya Literatura (Soviet Literature) in 1934, but was soon banned. In 1989 the Russian translation of the novel was published. The influence of the Russian novel writing school is manifested in the conflict, composition and imagery of the work. In this article, the novel Night and Day is reviewed from the point of view of literary influences on the author. While analyzing the ideological concept, storyline and dramatic episodes of the novel, the author gives some analogies from the classical Russian literature.

The article examines the responses of critics and leaders of the Siberian partisan movement to Vsevolod Ivanov’s story Partisans, as well as the historical events of 1919–1920 in Siberia, which influenced the formation of the idea of the story. The author identifies the historical and literary contexts that contribute to understanding both the writer’s work and the period of the Civil War in Russia.

The article studies the topic of music and its functioning in the poem by B. Poplavsky Dark Madonna. Its motivational and symbolic structure, as well as its composition and intertextual ties with the modernist poetry are considered. The article focuses on the description of the ‘spirit of music’ concept in the poet’s philosophy and its interpretation in the text of the miniature.

The article deals with the problem of differentiating the spheres of use of the terms ‘medical discourse’ and ‘morbual code’ while analyzing a literary text. The theoretical definition of the morbual code of literature has been clarified and its varieties and main representatives have been described on the basis of semiotic, linguistic and cultural approaches.