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Vol 84, No 5 (2025)
Articles
The Main Myth in Thomas Mann's Novel Doctor Faustus (On the 150th Anniversary of the Writer's Birth)
Abstract
The ideational structure of “Doctor Faustus” is examined in the article amid the humanism crisis problem, which came to a head during the fascist dictatorship period. The saving of humanism was conceived by Thomas Mann and his contemporaries as a cultural task solution that was outlined but not solved by either the Renaissance or the era of Goethe: overcoming the gap between cultural creativity and socio-political practice. The author includes T. Mann’s novel in the field of anti-fascist humanistic discourse of the twentieth century’s thirties and forties, proving that the correlation between the tragedy of the hero’s life and the tragedy of Germany does not mean their equivalence, their identicalness. The novel dual temporal structure, which ensures the two plot lines connection – the biography of the artist and the history of Germany – finds its correspondence in the doubling of the mythological hyperplot: the counterpoint of the hero’s theme and the theme of Germany is incorporated by T. Mann into the semantic space of the Faustian myth of German literature, which, in turn, is actualized in the light of the myth of the “third humanism” aesthetic culture. In the utopian perspective of total synthesis (of God and the world, spirit and life, art and politics, individuality and society), fascism is metaphorized in the image of world’s evil, and the hero’s alliance with the demonic forces of hell appears as a negative phase of the apocalyptic “outcast–chosen” dialectic and a redemptive sacrifice in the name of saving Germany and humanity.
The Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Studies in Literature and Language. 2025;84(5):5–14
5–14
Visionary Fiction and Posthumous Narration: Similarities and Differences
Abstract
The article considers the problem of genesis and evolution of the modern posthumous narration, i.e. the narration of a character who, in the conventional reality of the inner world of the work, is represented as a dead person. The question is raised about how the genre of vision, which is close to the narrative from beyond the grave in a number of respects, relates to it. Structural similarities and differences between vision and posthumous narrative are revealed. It is established that three fundamental characteristics of the posthumous narrative are only partially inherent to visions: in this genre there is also a description of the “other” world, albeit fragmented, but the subject of vision goes there without dying or while being in an uncertain position between life and death, and most importantly, the narration is not transmitted to this person in its totality (and if in the rarest cases it is transmitted, then the subject of vision is not dead, but alive). The extreme cases of the convergence of vision with posthumous narrative as such are noted when the narration in the vision is characterized by rudiments of the syncretism of the subject and fragments of the story are told by the visionary himself, who at that moment has not yet been resurrected. The limit to such a convergence is set by the fact that, according to the laws of the genre, the visionary is ultimately resurrected, which does not happen in posthumous narrative, and the “transfer” of the narrative to a dead person is not an artistically conscious device, but an extremely “tenacious” rudiment of the syncretic stage of the evolution of poetics.
The Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Studies in Literature and Language. 2025;84(5):15-24
15-24
Child-Directed Speech and Early Acquisition of Personality
Abstract
This study explores the first year of personality (the category of person) acquisition in the Russian language, based on spontaneous “adult—child” dialogue, represented by two longitudinal data corpora (over 50 hours of audio and video recordings containing approximately 14 000 utterances). Verb-based utterances with personal pronouns and nouns in the subject position (nominative case) are analyzed in both the input — child-directed speech — and the child speech. The analysis also includes utterances in which the personal pronoun is omitted (pro-drop). The study revealed that the frequency of subject expression, the variability of the means of expression, and their distribution in “adult—child” dyads have both similarities and differences. Meanwhile, the frequency of the representation of personal-number semantics of pronouns is comparable, thereby demonstrating the priority of semantics over form. The presence / absence of connections between input and child speech correlates with the development of the child’s communicative competence and the pronominal density of the corpora.
The Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Studies in Literature and Language. 2025;84(5):25–51
25–51
Anti-Theatricality in the 17th Century French Salon: On the Question of Maxim 81 of the Marquise de Sablé
Abstract
This article is devoted to the analysis of aphorism 81 from the collection “Maxims” by Marquise de Sablé (1678), which offers a critique of the theatre. In the course of the research, we demonstrate that one of the versions of this maxim turns out to be identical to a fragment from B. Pascal’s “Thoughts”. The analysis examines the origins of the anti-theatricality of this salon that was adjacent to F. de La Rochefoucauld and J. Esprit, in the context of the controversy surrounding theater in French intellectual culture of the 17th century. Along with the statement about the depravity of human nature striving for spectacle Sablé and Pascal use quite possibly under the influence of La Rochefoucauld appeals to the “amour-propre” as a human quality that is incompatible with catharsis in its traditional Aristotelian understanding.
The Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Studies in Literature and Language. 2025;84(5):52–58
52–58
Genitive Case Singular Forms of the 3rd Person Feminine Pronoun in the Russian Literary Language of the 18th–19th Centuries and Modern Russian Dialects
Abstract
The article examines the use of genitive singular feminine forms neyo (‘her’) and ney (‘her’) in the works of Russian writers of the second half of the 18th–19th centuries and in modern Russian dialects. First of all, the mechanism of the emergence in the history of the Russian language of the genitive form yey / ney, different from the accusative form yeyo / neyo, is described. The main material of the study is prose texts collected in the National Corpus of the Russian Language (ruscorpora.ru). In the middle – second half of the 18th century, the form ney was acceptable in literary language, and different authors had different preferences regarding it. The connection of this form with certain prepositions has not yet appeared. Writers born in the late 18th – first third of the 19th century used the form ney quite actively, but it was mainly used only (or almost only) with the preposition u. At the same time, most authors preferred the combination u ney to the combination u neyo. We see the highest percentage of use of the form ney in the works of Ivan Goncharov, Ivan Turgenev and Fyodor Dostoevsky. In the language of writers born in the third quarter of the 19th century, the use of the form ney, including its use with the preposition u, is generally reduced to a minimum, and subsequently it disappears from the literary language. But in modern dialects, the genitive form ney in combination with the preposition u is extremely widespread. Apparently, the widespread use of the combination u ney arose as a result of the fact that the set of meanings characteristic of the genitive case with the preposition u at some point began to be also marked by a special form ney. The same tendency was also present in the literary language, mainly in the first half of the 19th century.
The Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Studies in Literature and Language. 2025;84(5):59–69
59–69
“Russian” and “Soviet” in Claude Simon’s Novel “The Invitation” (1986): The Reception of the USSR in the French “New Novel”
Abstract
The article analyzes Claude Simon’s novel “The Invitation” (1987) in the historical and literary context associated with the writer’s trip to the USSR for the Issyk-Kul Forum. Simon is a 1985 Nobel Prize laureate, an outstanding representative of the French “new novel”. The subject of the study is the image of tsarist and Soviet Russia, images of former splendor and deterioration and anachronism of the Soviet regime. The theme of farewell to Soviet Russia appears in the episodes of the novel describing the meeting of the guests invited to the Forum with the head of state M.S. Gorbachev, and also in the final episode of the changing of the guard at the Mausoleum and a visit to Red Square and burials at the Kremlin wall. The motif of youth and the new Russia is carried out in the descriptions of the General Secretary, who personifies the change in the USSR’s policy. The novel is written in an impersonal manner, without names, but all the participants are recognizable due to the vivid imagery and metaphorical nature of the narrative. An important theme in Simon’s novel is the opposition between the natural life of nature and the vanity of human society. The theme of genuine and inauthentic life reaches its culmination in the episode of the compilation of the Statement of the Forum participants, which Simon refused to sign because of its obvious utopianism. Simon’s novel is a unique attempt at artistic reception of the phenomenon of the USSR in the “new novel”.
The Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Studies in Literature and Language. 2025;84(5):70–77
70–77
On the Problem of Creating an Empirical Basis for a Normative Explanatory Dictionary
Abstract
The article draws a line around the problematics associated with the issue of creating an empirical basis for a dictionary. Being considered in the perspectives of lexicographic history and theory, the empirical basis of the modern normative explanatory dictionary appears as a corpus of texts organized against the dialectical unity of the principles of representativeness and trustworthiness of the dictionary sources. The author characterizes the quantitative and the qualitative parameters of the dictionary corpus and outlines the problems and possibilities of its creation at the contemporary stage of scientific and technological development. Special attention is paid to the correlation between the empirical basis of a dictionary and the model of the literary language differentiation taken in its historical dynamics. The issue of using fiction texts as sources for a normative dictionary is also discussed. The author concludes by describing the future research and practice directions in this field.
The Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Studies in Literature and Language. 2025;84(5):78–98
78–98
Verbs of the Semantic Field of ‘Mixing’ in Shughni
Abstract
The article presents a system of verbs of the semantic field of ‘mixing’ in Shughni. Based on dictionary data and the results of speaker interviews using a typological questionnaire, we show that there are about 13 verbs in this semantic field, including both simple and complex verbs. The paper considers the peculiarities of use of each of the selected lexemes. We show that, in general, the distribution of these words in the semantic field of mixing corresponds to already known typological regularities (lexically contrasting different types of objects and different phases of the event). At the same time, some features of the Shughni data (e.g., the extension of the initial phase designation to the whole event) stand out against the general typological background; their analysis allows us to clarify and supplement our theoretical ideas about the principles of verb colexification in general and in this semantic zone in particular.
The Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Studies in Literature and Language. 2025;84(5):99–111
99–111
Chaucer and Langland’s “Poor Widow”: Symbolism and Context
Abstract
The article analyzes the image of a poor widow in the works of J. Chaucer and W. Langland. The works of both authors fell on the second half — the end of the fourteenth century, and in them, despite the difference in plots, themes and genres, both the general literary and religious context of the era and the current problems that worried contemporaries were reflected. Among such problems is poverty and attitudes towards it. In England, after the plague epidemic, during the socio-economic crisis, the number of beggars increased sharply, which required a rethinking of the usual ideas about charity; the uprising of 1381 and the situation preceding it, in particular the Statutes of Laborers, made the image of a patient poor person especially in demand. A needy widow becomes a symbol of weakness, honest poverty, which is worthy of help; and this image is of particular interest in the era when widows really begin to lose the economic independence inherent in them before the plague and turn into a socially unprotected group.
The Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Studies in Literature and Language. 2025;84(5):112-116
112-116
Which Source did Küchelbecker Use to Translate Calderón? An Episode of the Reception History of Spanish Drama in Russia
Abstract
The article deals with a little-known work by a Russian Romantic poet and Decembrist revolutionary Wilhelm Küchelbecker, ‘Love beyond the Grave, or the Grenadian Moors’. It was not published during the poet’s lifetime, although Küchelbecker showed the manuscript to his friends, notably Prince Pyotr Vyazemsky. It was published for the first and only time in 1989. Contrary to a paper that appeared in 2019, which claims that the manuscript of this text has been lost, it is still preserved in the Manuscripts Department of the Institute of Russian Literature (known as The Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. ‘Love beyond the Grave’ was conceived as an opera libretto for a Russian composer Alexey Verstovsky; even before the work was published, researchers already knew that the piece was derived from Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s drama Amar después de la muerte, and it was obvious that Küchelbecker could not translate directly from the Spanish original. German and French have been suggested as intermediary languages; this paper argues that the French translation by Victor Moïse Anglivel de La Beaumelle (1772–1831) served as a direct source for Küchelbecker. This allows us to narrow the suggested date of the libretto’s composition to the first half of 1823. We discuss the reaction of the French press to La Beaumelle’s translation, as well as other literature on Calderón (August Wilhelm Schlegel, Jean de Sismondi) that may have served as a stimulus for the writing of the libretto, analyse some features of Küchelbecker’s text, and present preliminary observations on the place of ‘Love to the Grave’ in the reception history of Calderón in Russia.
The Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Studies in Literature and Language. 2025;84(5):117–132
117–132
Zinaida Volkonskaya and J.-P.-F. Théard’s “A Picture of Three Eras”
Abstract
This article publishes a previously unexplored autograph from the Moscow archive of Princess Zinaida Volkonskaya, shedding light on her intellectual pursuits and reading circle. It concerns excerpts from the book “A Picture of Three Eras. Philosophers Before, During, and After the Revolution” (1829) by Jean-Pierre-François Théard, which was not translated into Russian. Volkonskaya transcribed a political prophecy from the book about the reign of the Pope and the “Great Monarch” during the Restoration. It is hypothesized that the ideas presented in this literature may have indirectly influenced Volkonskaya’s decision to change her religious denomination and reflect the views of the social group she interacted with in France and Italy.
The Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Studies in Literature and Language. 2025;84(5):133–139
133–139
Chronicles
International Scholarly Conference “Isaac Babel in the Context of Russian and World Culture”
The Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Studies in Literature and Language. 2025;84(5):140–147
140–147