A series of two articles is devoted to the study of posthumous narration (i. e. the narration of a character who, in the conventional reality of the text, is represented as a dead person) in the works of the British writer Muriel Spark. It is argued that Spark gravitated toward various narrative experiments of a paradoxical nature, which certainly includes posthumous narration-a technique that she used repeatedly. The first article in the series analyzes her short stories "Portobello Road" (1956) and "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (1957) in this aspect. In both cases, the plot centers on a criminal event, namely the murder of the main character who is also the narrator. But the perspective is different: in "The Girl I Left Behind Me," the narrator does not know that she is dead until the very end, until the last paragraph (nor does the reader know this), whereas in "Portobello Road," the narrator knows about her ontological status from the very beginning of the narrative (and for the reader, it becomes clear quite quickly). Accordingly, the entire plot of "The Girl I Left Behind Me" is built precisely on the female narrator's gradual insight into her new status, whereas "Portobello Road" is more of a story about retribution. In "Portobello Road," the narrator is represented as a writer, the story is metafictional, and the theme of "writing about life" becomes fundamental here. In "The Girl I Left Behind Me," the plot's "spearhead" is aimed at the goal of a sudden flash of understanding, and the motif of the relationship between soul and body, which has been repeated in various posthumous narratives since ancient times, comes to the fore.
This final article offers an analytical reading of the last two stanzas of A. Bunina's poem. It compares the idyllic portrayal of Zvanka in "Twilight", which is localized by the mise-en-sc & egrave;ne and the genre-specific "common places" in the chronotope and setting, with the discontinuous depiction of the idyllic life in G. Derzhavin's poem "Eugene. The Life of Zvanka". The comparison, conducted with the use of both poets' works, reveals the motivational and poetic similarities and differences between Bunina's visionary idyll and Derzhavin's country estate. Special attention is paid to the main character of the idyllic mise-en-sc & egrave;ne, the poet's wife, who is idealized and mythologized by the author. In the context of Derzhavin's works and the biographical material of his contemporaries, the similarities and differences in her figurative presentation in Derzhavin's poem and Bunina's poem are determined. In the course of the text analysis and interpretation, the author of the article comes to the following conclusion: the praise of the inhabitants of Zvanka is conditioned by the target super-task of the poetic message-receiving an invitation to visit the estate, which can change the poetess's life experience and female biography. Bunina's unspoken desire explains the composition of the genre motifs (epistle, vision, complaint, etc.) and the evasive poetics of "Twilight" (strangeness, allusions and reminiscences, speech breaks and inserts, etc.). At the end of the article, the author concludes that A. Bunina's poem initiated the tradition of female ars poetica.
The article offers a brief analysis of Leo Tolstoy's discursive strategy in constructing the image of Anna Karenina, with a focus on how the speech of characters and the narrator undergoes restructuring in the first part of the novel. Conclusions about the protagonist's image are drawn through the lens of the name-word as both an expression of subjectivity and a structural element of the text. The image of Anna Karenina is interpreted as a linguistic-symbolic form of subjectivity that generates a text with new poetic semantics. The analysis demonstrates how, at the discursive level, the liberation of words occurs, including that of the novel's title. It is shown that conventional linguistic and thematic correlations are disrupted in the process of discursive presentation and meaning-generation: the name "Anna Karenina" begins to correlate with concepts of beauty, assumes the grammatical gender of "woman-wife", and metaphorically embodies a poetic image of femininity. The article emphasizes the meaning-generating function of such metaphorical words as "picture", "husband", "wheel", and "ring", which appear in Anna's image on a metanarrative level. It becomes evident that the protagonist continually exceeds the boundaries of the role assigned to her: on the plot level, this is expressed in her desire to free herself from Karenin, while on the discursive level-in the revival of the flat image of "horror" through the poetic word of "beauty". Thus, the purpose of the research is to reveal the role of figurative motifs and significant elements in the formation of this model and the way they interact in the poetic system of Tolstoy's novel.
The article examines the peculiarities of the Christmas prose of the first wave of emigrant writers on the example of N. Taffy's story "The Neighbor" and E. Gagarin's story "A Trip to Christmas Eve". While preserving the genre specificity of Christmas prose, the authors try to recreate the vanished world of the past, distant and ideal, to keep it in memory. The key image in this context is the image of Russia, which in N. Taffy's story is revived from the details of everyday life, the peculiarities of Russian culture, perceived through the eyes of a little French boy. The author uses a non-diegetic narrator to shift the narrative to the point of view of a child, for whom contact with the "world of Russians" becomes a Christmas miracle prototype. In E. Gagarin's story, the lost homeland emerges in a nostalgic plot about a trip to the family home lost in the snows of Arkhangelsk Province. The narrator's memories of high school alternate with the author's nostalgic and bitter digressions. The image of the mysterious homeland contrasts with the callous, pragmatic world of European philistines. In the analyzed texts, the boy's role as a recipient of Russian culture is directly linked to the need to convey the richness of memories about the homeland. The images of the child and lost Russia embody the Other and a different way of life. In this way, Christmas stories written by the emigrant writers acquire additional emotional and philosophical depth, becoming not only literary works, but also a kind of "bridge" between the past and the present, connecting the lost pre-revolutionary Russia with the experience of emigration. For the writers, the genre of Christmas prose becomes not only a literary tradition, but also a form of preserving national identity.
The article examines the concept of a key phabulous scheme, previously proposed by the author for the analysis of dramatic works. It is introduced in relation to the term "plot scheme" applied by M.L. Andreev to the history of classical European comedy (from the Roman palliate to the drama of Anton Chekhov). It turns out that the plot scheme formed by the influence of ancient comedy (the new Attic comedy and the Roman comedians Terentius and Plautus) on the emerging national European dramatic genres was already been given failures in the golden age of Spanish literature, and therefore the article attempts to move from pointing the general scheme to a specific play (with the identification of its deviations to the immanent) to "exfoliate" a plot scheme from a separate dramatic work. To do this, the plot of a certain play is preliminarily outlined, which is "filtered" to the key phabulous scheme as such a plot grain, without which this play is unimaginable. The described operation is performed with five comedies by Lope de Vega and one by Calderon de la Barca. The generalization of the obtained schemes to a single dominant plot scheme is, due to the limitations of the analyzed material, preliminary. The author hopes to make more significant generalizations in the sequel (the second article in particular). In the current article, along the way, the problems of thematization of the classic love scheme in Lope de Vega and the relationship between author and hero in his plays are touched upon in connection with the manifestation of the category of authorship in Renaissance fiction.
The article explores the interaction between axiological and hermeneutical processes while reading literary text. This interaction occurs within the framework of a subject-subject relationship between the reader and the embodied character, who is not just a nominal "partner of communication" for the reader but also a concentrated being through which artistic meaning is conveyed. Several characteristics of artistic meaning are presented and explained: informational value, meeting orientation, artistic potentiality, otherness, intersubjectivity, and axiological dependence. In relation to the subject-subject model of understanding a literary work, the article also highlights the subject-subject nature of aesthetic value realization within a literary text, with the embodied character serving as the carrier and embodiment of an axiological system. The essential nature of aesthetic value is emphasized, its connection with the value system of the individual who experiences it, which allows us to talk about the interdependency of the meaning and value of a work of art. An axiological analysis of Leo Tolstoy's novel "The Kreutzer Sonata" is conducted. As a result of this analysis, the protagonist's axiological system is presented, its contrast with the values of other characters is demonstrated, and its direct connection to the value system of the subject is proven. A condition is identified that characterizes the importance of the axiological aspect in understanding a work of art, which involves openness and acceptance of the value system of the reader.
The article presents an analysis of the opinions expressed by defense critics of the 1930s about the style of contemporary authors. These critical works appeared on the pages of magazines such as "Zalp", "LOKAF", and "Znamya". The critical works focused on three main aspects: 1) providing guidance to novice authors, 2) identifying flaws such as clich & eacute;dness or, conversely, an over-literary style, and 3) establishing attitudes towards formalism. The specific nature of the research topic, which focuses on critical works on military subjects published in these journals, means that the ideological component plays a significant role in these articles. This is a novel aspect of the research, as it analyzes the opinions of these critics on the style of authors in relation to their stance on formalism. All critics agreed that it was necessary to teach writers to write, to find a balance between the template and the "literary" style, and in relation to formalism, there were two opposing tendencies: one was to oppose formal experiments, and the other was to find a compromise between ideological content and form. This form was not an end in itself, but rather a tool to strengthen the content of the text. Even after the defeat of formalism, defensive criticism actively used its tools, referring to both modern and classic texts. The material demonstrates that critics did not abandon formal experiments even after M. Gorky's call for "purity of language". The presented conclusions contribute to a deeper understanding of general trends in literary criticism. The relevance of this work lies in broadening our understanding of the literary process in the 1930s.
The article examines the epistemological issues in Chekhov's work. In the late 1880s, the writer came to the conclusion: "No one knows the real truth". He considers our knowledge of the world to be relative and hypothetical. Chekhov understands that rational cognition turns out to be dependent on the point of view from which it is produced, and therefore is insufficient, incomplete, and not entirely reliable. Reducing a person to a "label" (a general concept) impoverishes ideas about him and leads to distorted opinions about a person. The "label" also eliminates people, erases, at least partially, their individual differences. The disadvantages of rational cognition look insurmountable. For Chekhov, as well as for N.O. Lossky and A. Bergson, life is an organic whole. According to Chekhov, knowledge in its own, "pure" sense involves an uninterested immersion in the subject of knowledge. We believe that all of this led the writer to become distrustful of rationalistic knowledge, which divides organic wholes into their component parts, and to come to the conclusion that intuition is necessary. Chekhov does not reject the great role of rationalistic cognition in understanding life, but it turns out to be not the main thing, the main cognition is intuitive cognition, "the gift of insight into life," as Chekhov defines it, which is not given to everyone. At the same time, a deep intuitive understanding of life must be combined with an ethical principle, this brings to mind the philosophy of N.O. Lossky, A. Bergson, and M. Scheler.
The article offers a contextual analysis of the themes of boundary, border, and line in the A.T. Tvardovsky's lyrics and poems. The peculiarities of the writer's work with the poetic word show that the widespread idea of the "simplicity" of his language is deceptive. Adhering mainly to the poetics of direct utterance, Tvardovsky maximizes the range of contextual meanings of words, realizing the effect of multilayered meanings. As a result, the concept of border in his poetic world goes far beyond spatial meanings into temporal and axiological spheres. The semantic diversity of the concept's implementation turns out to be wider in Tvardovsky than on average in the Russian linguistic picture of the world, reflecting mainly the meanings of "separation", "lack of exit", "reaching the limit", "distancing", "isolation". Contrary to the expectations associated with the traditional inclusion of Tvardovsky in the concept of the Smolensk Poetic School, the border in Tvardovsky's poetics does not become one of the characteristics of a local text, neither Smolensky nor any other. In addition, there is an evolution of the image of the border in his poetry. In his early work, the border is synonymous with the boundary and is closely connected with the earth. In wartime, it tends to the frontier and becomes a measure of combat events. In the post-war period, its spatial significance decreased, the border was actively metaphorized and characterized by abstract concepts of glory, freedom, and the afterlife. In the late lyrics, the border is transformed into a line as a measure of time and an ethical assessment of events.
This article explores the "Martial code" in the works of A.S. Pushkin. Despite Pushkin's well-known love for Martial, repeatedly mentioned in Pushkin studies and in various scholarly and popular sources on Martial, Pushkin's work, including his epistolary texts, lacks direct evidence of his familiarity with Martial's texts. This study aims to fill this gap and highlight implicit references to the emblematic texts of Martial's epigrams, as well as Pushkin's adoption of the epigrammatic pattern established by Martial's works. The study traces the interaction between Pushkin's epigrams and Martial's epigrams, revealing similarities in theme, structure, and artistic devices (laconicism, aphorisms, and a striking ending). The functional commonality of the epigram's use as a genre of reputational action is demonstrated: just as for Martial, the epigram became for Pushkin a genre of moral denunciation, an ironic critique of the dark side of the cultural and political life of his era. It is proven that the famous epigram "Rumpitur invidia" ("Bursting with envy") influenced A.S. Pushkin's interpretation of the theme of envy and the motif of the relationship between the poet and his Muse in his drama and lyric epics. The conducted research allows us to demonstrate the reception of Martial in Pushkin's work in two guises: Pushkin's perception and reworking of the structure and functions of epigrammatics, as well as the use of the idea of the duality of the poet and his muse from Martial's programmatic poem. The obtained results open up additional perspectives for the study of A.S. Pushkin and the interaction of Russian classical literature with the ancient tradition.
The article analyses the communicative organisation of two poetic texts by G. Aigi, which are variations on the same theme: an excerpt from the 'poem about Volker' and the poem 'Trains' translated into Russian by B. Akhmadulina. It is substantiated that the implemented communicative strategy of the poet in these texts is determined, as in the poets of the sixties, by the dialogical intention aimed at creating a trusting relationship with the reader-collaborator. The analysis has shown that in the poem 'Trains', built on the principle of 'open work', communication with the reader is projected from the point of view of the reception of Volkerian, Pushkin's and Blok's codes embedded in the artistic structure of the text. It turns out that the development of the Volker-style system of poetic images in this text and the features of its rhythm correspond to general trends in Russian Soviet poetry of the 1950s and 1960s. In the poem 'From the Poem about Volker' unconventional syntax, heteromorphic verse form, strophic and semantic pauses that slow down the pace of speech and accentuate the recipient's attention to the most important components of the thematic composition of the text are interpreted by the author of the article as structural components of the poet's communicative strategy of building a dialogue with the reader about the problems of human existence in the modern world. Experiments with form in the passage 'From the poem about Volker' are considered in the aspect of the poet's search for a new language of artistic communication in order to actualise the creative activity of the perceiving consciousness.
This article is devoted to the textual study of the manuscript fund of L.N. Tolstoy's story "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" stored in the Manuscript Department of the L.N. Tolstoy State Museum. In the course of the work were analyzed the features of each manuscript of the story, starting from the autograph and ending with the proofs. The analysis of the autograph manuscript shows that the first edition of the story contained a general plot outline and was subsequently expanded with details and plot elements. The article substantiates that already in the autograph Tolstoy supplements the text with a second layer and inserts, introducing in particular such an important element for the work as a dream on the eve of round the field. Four copies of the story also contain numerous authorial corrections, which indicate intense work on the most significant semantic points of the story, in particular, the image of the devil and the psychological appearance of the main character, Pakhom. The general tendencies of the author's corrections should be considered the reduction of the mystical element from the first edition to the last, the change in the procedure for going around the field and the nuances of Pakhom's trip to the Bashkir steppe-all of them are aimed at strengthening the motif of the hero's loneliness, who is left alone with the elements at the culmination of the story. The peculiarity of the first editions of the story is studied: the differences in the edition of the magazine "Russkoye Bogatstvo", the collection of the publishing house "Posrednik" and in the 12(th) volume of the collected works published by S.A. Tolstaya indicate that different manuscripts of the story were used as typesetting.
The article examines an example of the interaction of verse and prose in the context of artistic interpretation of physical reality. The chapter "The Moustache of the 'Land Surveyor' " from Andrei Voznesensky's book "Nostalgia for the Present" is taken as an object. This chapter is about the author's meeting with Giangiacobo Feltrinelli, about whom it is said: "A billionaire, a member of the Italian Communist Party, later the organizer of the 'Red Brigades' and a demon of terrorism, in Russia he was known as the publisher of 'Doctor Zhivago' ". When describing Feltrinelli's appearance, the main detail is his moustache; it appears more than once in different tropes and in different spatial coordinates throughout the chapter, and at the very beginning it is compared to caterpillars, which children call land surveyors. And this prose artistic comprehension of physical reality is intruded by a poetic text, created, according to the author, on a plane flying to Italy, immediately after Feltrinelli's death. Here, artistic prose, intentionally aimed at a memoir setting, that is, at transmitting the truth of life, interacts with a poetic artistic text based on an event from physical reality. In this interaction, there is a mutual semantic enrichment of prose and poetry. The poetic text is necessarily commented on by prose in almost all of its lines, literally explained; prose, thanks to the poem, is aesthetically enriched: an elementary comparison, concentrated in the poetic lines "How mysteriously his moustache darkened, // like a caterpillar-surveyor", compactly folds into itself all the meanings that in the prose segment were somehow involved in both the characterization of Signor Feltrinelli and in the projection of what happened to him onto what ultimately happened to the author, when, in a difficult time for himself, he suddenly saw a caterpillar-surveyor, which was supposed to promise good luck. As a result, it is concluded that in the general context of Andrei Voznesensky's book "Nostalgia for the Present", poetry and prose complement each other in terms of meaning: prose necessarily comments on the poetic trope, but also does this by artistic means, while poetry enriches prose aesthetically, by means accessible to poetry, creating a compact quintessence of all prose constructions.
In the prose of Leo Tolstoy and the comedies of Moli & egrave;re, a "pervasive" family plot unfolds through the dynamic of similar psychological and ideological positions, each giving rise to the other. A husband's jealousy towards his wife and fear of her infidelity lead him to religion, which initially serves as a means of controlling the family but ultimately leads him away from it due to a broader alienation from the world. However, unlike Moli & egrave;re, Tolstoy uses the trajectory of this psychological plot to contemplate the destinies of the world, framed by his own understanding of its ideal movement. Consequently, the logic driving these familial conflicts is evaluated by Tolstoy within sociocultural coordinates that were either foreign or unknown to Moli & egrave;re: the peasant-landowner harmony of co-being within nature; its religious core, inherent to Russia; as well as the new meanings of "nature" and "the people" established in the Age of Enlightenment by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Sturm und Drang movement led by Johann Gottfried Herder, respectively. The collapse of the manorial idyll in post-reform Russia, coupled with Tolstoy's so-called "existential crisis" of the 1880s (in part under the influence of Arthur Schopenhauer's ideas), led the writer to a sequential rejection of familial eros and the family as such. Based on this, in his novella The Kreutzer Sonata (1887-1889), he progressed to a virtual denial of the expediency of further human procreation. As a result, Moli & egrave;re's assessments of his negative characters and their behavioral strategies are reversed in the later Tolstoy. This, it would seem, demonstrates the logic governing the evolution of psychological universals within the dynamics of different sociocultural systems.
The article is devoted to the study of general and special characteristics of incarnation (embodiment) of meaning in works of literature and cinema. Thus, the hermeneutical problematics in the article is connected with the intermedia. By incarnation of meaning in the article is understood its implementation in the forms of the depicted in the work of being-the reality of the hero. Incarnation of meaning takes place only in the context of artistic communication (between the author, the hero and the reader) and determines the semantic difference between artistic and non-artistic texts. In this article, the general and specific characteristics of the incarnation of meaning are revealed through a comparative analysis of fragments from two works: Ivan Goncharov's novel "Oblomov" and Nikita Mikhalkov's film "A Few Days from Oblomov's Life". The common characteristics of the incarnation of meaning in these works are revealed (ontologization, integrity and representativeness, concreteness and visibility, personalization, continuity, and co-eventfulness). These characteristics, which can be found in both literature and cinema, indicate that, despite the semiotic differences between these types of artistic expression, there is a commonality in the actualization of meaning in these works as art phenomena. At the same time, the peculiarities of the manifestation of certain characteristics of semantic incarnation in literary works and films are revealed: the ontological multi-layeredness of cinema, the word as the central moment of the ontologization of meaning in literature, and the changing spatial form in cinema, as well as the different ratios of semantic generalization and concretization in literature and cinema. Thus, the inter-media relations between literature and cinema are determined not only by the origin or historical interaction of these arts, but also by the commonality of the way in which they actualize meaning.
The article examines the semantic function of quotations from the work of St. John of Sinai "The Ladder" in the spiritual letters of St. Ambrose of Optina addressed to laymen. The specificity of spiritual letters as a special genre of epistolary literature is determined by the purpose of both the author and the addressee, which is to resolve issues of spiritual life. The author's affiliation with the institution of eldership-a special type of holiness-is also important. In his letters, the elder relies on his ascetic experience, which is inseparable from the experience of the Church. The letters of St. Ambrose of Optina contain a large number of quotations from the Holy Scriptures and patristic literature, to which "The Ladder" of St. John of Sinai belongs. St. Ambrose took part in the work on the translation of the Ladder, knew this text well and quoted it mainly from memory, as a result of which the quotations are presented mainly in an indirect form-paraphrases, allusions, reminiscences. The addressees in most cases are private individuals-laymen of various social status and character; a number of letters are addressed to "everyone", intended for publication and have the character of interpretations or sermons. In his letters, St. Ambrose, referring to the "Ladder", strives to convey the thought and spirit of this creation. The main semantic function of the quotations is to convey the experience of ascetic practice aimed at fighting the passions, as well as to clarify or authoritatively confirm the main idea of the elder, instructing his addressee on the path of salvation of the soul. In general, in the letters of St. Ambrose, the idea of the Ladder is visible as a gradual ascent of man along the path of spiritual perfection, which is associated with man's overcoming of passions.
This study deals with the problem of the functioning of the Pushkin myth in Russian culture. The relevance of the research is connected with the further development of the Pushkin myth as the "main myth" of Russian culture. The study is based on the poems of Sergei Stratanovsky, which are directly related to the image of Pushkin. The novelty of the work lies in the fact that most of the texts included in the analysis have not yet been the subject of extensive literary analysis ("Shark Art Camera", "In the Pushkin Reserve", "Boldinsky's Reflections", "Yes, merciless, but not at all meaningless...", "The Great Pushkin is Ours..."). The study reveals the logic of the functioning of the Pushkin myth in poetry in 1980-2010. In the Soviet era, Pushkin's work became one of the ideological instruments through which the Soviet system ensured its legitimacy. Already in Stratanovsky's first poems dedicated to Pushkin, the subject of poetic reflection is not the image of the poet, but the existence of this image within the framework of Soviet ideology. In the post-Soviet period, the image of Pushkin as a free thinker, cultivated by the previous era, was replaced by the image of a poet inclined to philosophical and religious reflection. In the programme poem "Boldinsky Reflections" (2000), the problem of the correlation between culture and religion, which is the most important for the "history of the Russian state & raquo;, is raised. In the 2010s, another transformation of the Pushkin myth took place, which is reflected in Stratanovsky's later work. The image of Pushkin as a poet of the empire is developed in such poems as "Yes, merciless, but not at all meaningless...", "The great Pushkin is ours...". The study concludes that the viability of the Pushkin myth is ensured by its ability to be integrated into any, sometimes opposing, ideological systems.
The article examines a fragment of the novel "A Clockwork Orange" by A. Burgess (Part II, Chapter 4) and its translations into Czech, Serbian, and Croatian. The article focuses on the linguistic devices used to create the effect of so-called "cinematic effect" - i.e. formation of a dynamic observation situation within the text. This effect is realized at the level of vocabulary, grammar, and textual composition. Key techniques used to achieve this effect in the novel are examined. These include the use of perceptual vocabulary (verbs of sight and hearing, onomatopoeia) and strategies for shifting focalization through person and tense. These techniques are retained to varying degrees in all translations of the novel. The temporal organization of the translations largely corresponds to the original, with its contrast between the present and the past. The Serbian text, however, makes extensive use of the aorist to discursively highlight key and unexpected events, while the Croatian translation omits the opposition between aorist and perfect. The Czech and Croatian translations retain, as much as possible, constructions with the second-person pronoun, corresponding to the English you, activating the narrator's dialogue with the reader, while in the Serbian translation these constructions are often replaced by are often replaced by indefinite-personal constructions, which diminishes the immediacy of interaction with the reader. Thus, in the translations of the text into Slavic languages, we observe either adherence to the author's strategy (e.g., in contrasting the temporal planes of the past and present or in shifting the vantage point) or the introduction of alternative oppositions relevant only to the translated narrative (in the Serbian translation, this is the opposition between the aorist and perfect in the past).
This article examines the poetics of I.A. Brodsky's poems for children. In the artistic world of the poet's "children's" poems, there are features characteristic of his "adult" poetics: a metaphysical plan, language play, "elongated" lines, enjambment, parenthetical constructions, reminiscences, the use of "lists" and other features. One of the main techniques of Brodsky's "children's" lyrics is irony, the source of which is the "multidimensional nature" of these poetic texts, their "two-level" (as noted by J. Klotz) address. Irony in Brodsky's "children's" poems can be considered as a response of a free consciousness to reality, a commentary on its absurdity, a way of realizing the poet's non-authoritarian consciousness ("Lev Skokov hochet poletet' na Lunu...", "Rabochaya azbuka"); in addition, irony becomes a way of playing with the reader ("Kto otkryl Ameriku"). Also in I.A. Brodsky's poems for children, a self-portrait of the poet himself is presented in an ironic light; some facts of his biography turn out to be recognizable-the apartment "in the alley near the church", leaving school, lack of work ("Samson, domashniy kot"). The article pays special attention to the image of cats as one of the most frequent in Brodsky's "children's" lyrics: male and female cats turn out to be symbols of independence and inner freedom ("Samson...", "Slon i Marus'ka", "Ariya koshek"). The study also considers the inclusion of a "metaphysical" plane in "children's" poems ("500 odeyal", "Chistoe utro"). An analysis of these works allows us to conclude that Brodsky's poems for children are not peripheral texts, but an important and organic part of his creative heritage.
The article examines an unexplored case of literary interactions between the works of Paul Verlaine and F.M. Dostoevsky, which arose in the book by the French poet Charles Morice about Verlaine, that was the first study of Verlaine's life and work to be published as a separate edition. Eugene-Melchior de Vogue, the author of the famous book "The Russian Novel", was one of the first translators of Dostoevsky's work, and the young rebel Morice became imbued with the ideas of Russian classics interpreted by Eugene-Melchior de Vogue, and projected them onto the work of Verlaine. This is happening against the background of the evolution of the creative relationship between Morice and Verlaine, as well as the dramatic history of Morice's translation of Russian classics with Ilya Halperine-Kaminsky. One of the earliest direct indications of the influence of Russian literature on Morice was his assertion in "The Literature of Today" (1889) that Russian literature was a "natural ally" for French literature, realizing some of its cherished dreams and offering it "a lesson in simplicity and intense power". Morice's acquaintance with the Russian world proved to be not an ephemeral episode, but part of his complex worldview, evolving toward a kind of modernist traditionalism, which became quite evident later, in the 1910s, when Morice finally returned to the bosom of the Catholic Church. In Morice's book "Paul Verlaine" (1888), associations with the Russia and the Dostoevsky's works form a kind of background against which a portrait of Verlaine emerges, associated with "the power of the earth", with Mitya Karamazov's reflections on beauty and the Madonna, with images of fallen women from various works by Dostoevsky, etc. The study outlines new ways to explore Verlaine's work, as well as Dostoevsky's first reception in France in the 1880s.
