Vol 1, No 2 (2019)

The present paper discusses some theoretical and practical problems of intertextuality as a specific textual category for the theory and practice of translation and factors that influence the comprehension of intertextual elements. The author is going to show that the translation strategies are aimed at generating a specific intertextual «third» space to facilitate in- tercultural communication. Material for the study has been supplied by the translations of Russian Literature into Italian and Italian Literature into Russian.

M.M. Bakhtin didn’t wrote about cinema but his works and those signed by his friends P.N. Medvedev and V.N. Voloshinov would be later read as a source of inspiration to think of cinema as language in a new way, both by studies dealing with cinema semiotics itself and also by those exploring the links between cinema and literature through the analysis of adaptations (as we will see in the last years the study of cinematic adaptations of literary works has developed into a whole discipline of its own and Bakhtin ideas were pivotal in helping scholars of this discipline to go beyond the dilemmas about “fidelity”). We will sketch here these two developments in two separate parts, although some of the scholars involved in both discussions might be the same. By examining this debates we will find new evidence of the potential of the Bakhtin circle’s theories to understand not only literary texts but any cultural process.

December 17, 2018 at M.M. Bakhtin Center at N.P. Ogarev Mordovia State University there was held an online meeting with the Head of the Department of the History of Russian Literature and Theory of Literature at Donetsk National University, one of the founders of “Donetsk Philological School”, doctor of philology, professor V.V. Fedorov. He answered questions from the Center’s staff, shared his memories of his meetings with M.M. Bakhtin in Saransk and Moscow. Conversations with an outstanding thinker became significant events in Fyodorov’s life and determined the direction of his scientific searches.

Basikhin Yuri Fedoseevich (1930–1988) studied with M.M. Bakhtin as a student, graduate student at the Faculty of Philology, then worked at the Department of Russian and Foreign Literature of Mordovia State University. Excerpts from his memoirs of Bakhtin were first published in 1978 with large reductions. The full text of Basikhin’s memoirs is stored in the Mordovian Republican United Regional Museum named after I.D. Voronin and is published for the first time. It contains a characteristic of Bakhtin as an organizer of the educational process, a lecturer, a mentor, and features the attitude of students towards him.

The paper presents a decoded and commented fragment of M.M. Bakhtin's lectures as he read at the Mordovia State Pedagogical Institute (now N.P. Ogarev Mordovia State University) in the second semester of the academic year 1936/37. It was recorded by M.A. Beban – a Moksha-Mordovian writer, one of the founders of the professional Mordovian literature, that days – a student of the Faculty of Literature. The fragment includes the consideration of the themes: “Latin literature in the Middle Ages”, “The heroic folk epic”, “Chivalric literature”. Entries are dated February – March 1937. The annex contains scanned pages of the original document.