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• The Audience of Art: Myth and Reality

  13 p.

  Alexandr Ushkarev

  Views:

  158

  Interest in the audience arose while art became public and since then it has not weaken, rather it has become more and more special. For more than a century the audience of art has been the subject of systematic scientific research. Why then is the problem of the relationship between art and its audience becoming once again a topical issue? The consequences of the civilizational shifts in the last decade have clearly shown: the things that have for a long time been considered true suddenly turn out to be illusive or banal in the changing world. In the modern market paradigm of the artistic culture development, the problem of the relationship between art and its audience acquires a new sound. A theater, a museum or a concert organization needs not the social and cultural portrait of the spectator, but an understanding of the causes and characteristics of its consumer behavior in the wider context of cultural life. And the first step to overcome the communication barriers between art and its potential consumers should be the abandonment of stereotypes and outdated research approaches.

• A Story by A. P. Chekhov “The Wolf”: Historical-medical and Archetypal Aspects

  Viktoriya Kondratyeva

  Views:

  354

  The plot of A. P. Chekhov's story "The Wolf" (in the first edition the story was called "Hydrophobia (A true story)") is associated with the frequent facts of wolves attacking people in the 1880s in the central part of the country (called an epidemic at the time).The time of writing the story between March and December 1886 is a year after the discovery of the rabies vaccine in the laboratory of Louis Pasteur and its successful testing in 1885; and in the year the story was created, the first Pasteur stations in Russia were opened. The paramount aspect of a plot of the work by A. P. Chekhov is connected with the field of psychology. Fear, which takes possession over the character, the landowner Nilov, is a psychological phenomenon in the medical sense and leads to an understanding of the fact why Chekhov needs an emphasis on the wolf in the title of the second edition of the story. The image of a wolf with its archetypal component plays a fundamental role in recreating a clinically accurate picture of fear. The real clash with a real wolf becomes a reflection of the fight with the "mental wolf," with its own fears. The writer is interested not so much in the existential side of the phenomenon of fear, as in the psychological one. And the image of a wolf with its archetypal component plays a fundamental role in recreating a clinically accurate picture of fear.

• How E. Vodolazkin’s Laurus Was Made

  Valery Kupka

  Views:

  97

  In the paperan attempt has been made to define the basic principles of the composition of E. Vodolazkin's novel Laurus and their role in creating an atmosphere of timelessness and ahistoricism in the novel. The possible influence of the ancient Russian hagiographic icon on the nature of the composition is also investigated.

• Women's Prose: Past, Present and Future

  Olga Novikova

  Views:

  159

  The very expression "women's prose" in Russian literary discourse is debatable, since even many female writers refuse to identify themselves as such. A woman writer has all the rights of a writer, but she also has the additional right to self-identify as a representative of "women's prose". Women's prose requires a double research point of view: looking at it as an integral part of fiction and identifying the specific features of works created by women writers.    During the period of perestroika (the second half of the 1980s), women's activity in Russian prose became more active, and L. Petrushevskaya and T. Tolstaya came to the forefront of literary life. An important milestone in the awareness of the specifics of women's prose was the series "Women's Handwriting" by the publishing house "Vagrius". A characteristic trend in the development of modern Russian women's prose is the democratization of the artistic thinking and language, the attraction of high prose tothe mainstream, to mass nature and the feeling of accessibility. In this regard, the article examines the prose of V. Tokareva, O. Slavnikova, D. Rubina, M. Stepnova, N. Abgaryan, G. Yakhina and others.

• Censor Nikolay Ratynsky’s Role in Russian Journalism of the Second Half of the 19th Century

  12 p.

  Dmitriy Mazalevskiy

  Views:

  180

  Recently, the political climate in Russia has caused the question of censorship to become
  an increasingly relevant issue, the history of which is necessary to explore and understand.
  The prevailing view regarding censorship is that it is a tool used to suppress the freedom of
  speech by stifling the writer’s thoughts. However, there were some eminent censors such as
  the poet Fyodor Tyutchev and the writer Ivan Goncharov. In this regard, it has become commont
  to consider censorship isolated from any moral categories and interpret g it only as a
  professional activity. In this context, the work of the censor Nikolai Ratynsky is of particular
  interest to us. Until now, little has been published on his influence as a censor on the writers
  of his time on the high professional level of his work in this capacity. Most of the corrections
  Ratynsky made were valid and justified by the political situation in the Russian Empire. He
  himself is further proof that, along with Tyutchev and Goncharov, there were honorable and
  qualified men among the censors of the time. All this allows us to claim that it is necessary
  to objectively consider and study the work of censors and ignor preconceptions and stereotypes
  that are usually associated with the word censor.

• The relationship between Excellent People by Chekhov and the ideological position and artistic attitude in the late short stories of Leo Tolstoy

  Ildikó Regéczi

  Views:

  26

  In Chekhov and His Prose (first published in 1965), the author, Thomas G. Winner contends that the subject matters of a few of Chekhov’s short stories written in the 1880s (such as «Хорошие люди» [Excellent People]) were created in the spirit of Leo Tolstoy, yet the one called «Несчастье» [Misfortune], written also in 1886, already marked the beginning of a series of texts that can be interpreted directly as “a light parody” of Anna Karenina (1873–1877) as well. The basic question posed here concerns whether there is really a significant difference that can be observed between the above two works and whether they reveal this sharp difference in the reception of Tolstoyan ideas that Winner's monograph suggests. The paper seeks to answer this query on the basis of the interpretation of Excellent People and the textual representation of the issue of goodness. In this analysis, particular attention is given to the way in which Tolstoy's ideas are represented and to the author's poetic choices that bring the text close to Tolstoy's late short stories.

• «Chekhov’s Stage Set»: «The Cherry Orchard» in the Russian Poetry of the 20th – Early 21st Century

  8 p.

  Marina Larionova

  Nadezhda Tropkina

  Views:

  215

  Chekhov’s text is one of the most significant constituents of the Russian poetry of the 20th – early 21st centuries. The one most frequently alluded to is the play by Chekhov – «The Cherry Orchard». The play written at the break of historical epochs turns out to be in tunes with the times of another turning-point. This fact conditions the allusion to the Chekhov’s text in a poem «The Young Poetry» by V. Kornilov. The main feature of the crucial time period in the poem is the category of freedom, unexpectedly granted during the historical turn and change. The key theme, which determines the historiosophical sense of the text, is a quotation from «The Cherry Orchard», a dialogue between Gaev and Fiers. I. Kabysh perceives the Chekhov’s play both mythopoetically and symbolically in such poems as «How Niveous-White Everything Is in Russia Today! » and «The Snow Started to Fall Without Delays». She introduces a different time into the text, models the reality after the events described in «The Cherry Orchard» and interpreted by the author of the poem in the lower clef (as in «crumbled estate»). The loss of the Garden, its disintegration, the loss of entity, is a gradual, step by step, process – into dachas, then into dust; that is the way the motif of vanishing space and culture appears.

• Nowe dwudziestolecie (1989–2009). Rozpoznania, hierarchie, perspektywy [The New Twenties (1989-2009): Recognitions, Hierarchies, Perspectives]. Ed. by Hanna Gosk. Warsaw: Dom Wydawniczy Elipsa, p. 530, ISBN 978-83-7151-873-7

  Orsolya Németh

  Views:

  54

  The volume Nowe dwudziestolecie (1989-2009): Rozpoznania, hierarchie, perspektywy [The new twenties (1989-2009): Recognitions, hierarchies, perspectives] reflects on the twenty years of Polish literature and literary change between 1989 and 2009, and compares and contrasts this period with the twenty years between the two world wars. The two twenty-year periods are linked by the fact that their starting point is associated with a date of immense importance for Polish history: 1918 is the year when Poland was returned on the map of Europe, and 1989 is also the year of the change of regime in Poland. The period between the two world wars is also regarded as a separate period in Polish literary history, while the second twenty years covered in this volume are questionable as a literary unit, a question which the essays in this book seek to answer. The volume is divided into three large sections, the first focusing primarily on theory, the second on Polish characteristics and themes that characterised Polish literature after 1989, and the third large section on the genre characteristics that have characterised Polish literature since the fall of communism to this day but were also important between the two world wars.

• World Model in the Novel “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by A.I. Solzhenitsyn

  7 p.

  Viktoriya Kondrateva

  Views:

  339

  The paper deals with the world model and ways of its creation in a novel “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by A.I. Solzhenitsyn. In the process of world-modeling following basic categories are of a great importance: native-strange, light-darkness, principle of 3 levels. The space of camp is characterized by features of a strange world. Native world is narrowed to the boundaries of hut, bed and even to a hole in a mattress. World organization is also realized with the help of a system of prototypical images, e.g. a table, bread, sun, a stove, etc. Due to this concepts, which have hierarchic values, are formed. Solzhenitsyn achieves generalization following a peculiar way of depicting of a group of characters which can be conditionally called “convicts”. There we can see different social layers, nationalities, ages. It has metonymical nature: according to the principle “a part of the whole” the fate of the entire country is shown. In terms of sense complex “human-being – environment – their interaction” the world model in A.I. Solzhenitsyn’s novel has “human”, natural and social levels in its structure. The writer compresses time and space, satiates it with details, which are different in semiotic power of generalization, and as a result he receives solid world model.

• Interferences in the Field of Literature and Philosophy: Contact Points in the Poetry of Russian and Hungarian Authors: Dukkon Ágnes: A veszélyes szépség útjain. Eszmék, témák, kapcsolatok a klasszikus orosz irodalom világában, L'Harmattan Könyvkiadó – Uránia Ismeretterjesztő Társulat, Budapest, 2021, 340. p. ISBN: 978-963-414-702-2

  Ildikó Regéczi

  Views:

  49

  The Hungarian literary scholar Ágnes Dukkon set herself a great task to complete in her new monograph by undertaking to offer a broad overview of the entire 19^th century epoch of Russian literature through monitoring the transformation and evolution of the literary motive of dangerous beauty [ужасная красота]. While focusing on the concrete correspondences between a variety of literary worlds, the study presents interpretations of works by A.S. Pushkin, M.Y. Lermontov, F.I. Tyutchev, N.V. Gogol, I.S. Turgenev, F.M. Dostoyevsky, M.Y. Saltikov-Shchedrin, N.S. Leskov, and L.N. Tolstoy. At the same time, however, the author of this monograph never fails to keep in mind the conceptual context of the artistic texts by analyzing their relationship with the topical contemporary philosophical ideas of the age. For the Hungarian readers, the chapters incorporating the conclusions of research aimed at Russian–Hungarian connections, conducted with the methodology of historical poetics, comparative literary studies, intertextuality, and biographism, are of special interest. The scholarly findings of this renowned researcher would definitely deserve to be translated in the future into an international language.