Vol 5, No 2 (2023)

December 2023 marks the 210th anniversary of the birth of Nikolai Platonovich Ogaryov (Ogarev, 1813–1877), whose life and work are written like a red thread in the annals of Russian culture. For a long time he was perceived only as a friend of A.I. Herzen, however, from the middle of the 20th century he began to reveal himself to us as a thinker, scientist, philosopher, economist, publicist, poet, composer, experimenter-entrepreneur, chemist, physician, teacher, mathematician and as a person. Through the prism of studying the fate of the Russian nobleman, we read the intellectual history of Russia and consider in a specific situation the state of history and man (spirituality, character of being, self-awareness, worldview, creativity, charity and patronage, the creation of a “model of the ideal world” of a nobleman, in which he realized himself as and a poet, philosopher, and as a connoisseur of art, and as an economist, entrepreneur- businessman). An article that examines the spiritual reality of N.P. Ogaryov as a cultural phenomenon, as the state of history and man in the mid-nineteenth century, expands the database of his life and work.

The article provides an overview of activities carried out in 2022–2003 in Saransk on the basis of the Mordovia Republican Museum of Fine Arts named after S.D. Erzia (MRMFA) and

M.M. Bakhtin Center in N.P. Ogarev National Research Mordovia State University within the framework of the project “Erzia-Bakhtin Reading: Text, Image, Art Today.” The initiator of the project was the Cultural and Exhibition Center of the State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg), opened at the MRMFA in 2018. Reading is aimed at attracting a youth audience to the museum with the aim of introducing them to the Russian art and philosophy, of searching for meanings relevant for the development of creative environment in Saransk. The peculiarity of the Erzia-Bakhtin reading lies in the comparative reading of philosophical (M.M. Bakhtin) and sculptural (S.D. Erzia) texts. During the implementation of the project, regular meetings of the reading group were held, which included representatives of the youth in Saransk: pupils of schools, students and graduate students of N.P. Ogarev Mordovia State University, young representatives of creative professions.

The publication presents a fragment of lectures by M.M. Bakhtin, read at the Mordovian State Pedagogical Institute (now N.P. Ogarev Mordovia State University) in the second semester of the 1936/37 academic year and recorded by a Moksha-Mordovian writer, one of the founders of professional Mordovian literature, at that time a student of the Faculty of Literature M.A. Beban (Byabin). The fragment examines the history of the Spanish literature of the XVI–XVII centuries. The topic of the Portuguese literature of the aforementioned period is also touched upon (the work of L. de Camões is briefly analyzed). The features of the development of the main types and genres of the Spanish literature are revealed: epic (the novel – knight, picaresque, pastoral) and dramaturgy. The main attention is paid to the works of M. de Cervantes, F. Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, P. Calderon.