Translated material
Study #1
Natalia Kochetkova
Russian modernism. Problems of textual criticism: Collection of articles. - St. Petersburg: Aletheia, 2001. - 310 p.
The starting point from which textual criticism began to think of itself as a separate science can be called 1912. This year the book by V.N. Peretz “From lectures on the methodology of the history of Russian literature” 1 is being published , which contains an episode devoted to a description of working with sources. Over its almost century-long existence, textual criticism has managed to develop a fairly wide methodological spectrum. If Peretz, as a medievalist, still saw textual criticism as an applied science and was not inclined to theorize, then subsequent textual critics built a solid theoretical base. It flourished in the 20s and 30s. This phenomenon can be explained by the situation in the country. The young Soviet state wanted to assert itself in all spheres, including literature. On the one hand, it is necessary to show everyone that the USSR respects the previous cultural tradition and knows how to appreciate its achievements. On the other hand, the idea of “learning from the classics” arises. All this leads to the fact that active work begins on the preparation of academic or simply fairly complete collected works of writers of the 19th century. Based on works Pushkin , Lermontov , Gogol , Tolstoy , the basic editorial techniques were worked out.
It should be noted that nothing particularly new has been proposed since then. Until now, when publishing texts, we use the methodological apparatus of the first half of the 20th century. There is no need to talk about the fact that new problems arise that require solutions. This is mainly due to the fact that methodological strategies were developed on the basis of material from the 19th century. Literature of the 20th century, on the one hand, uses ready-made editorial models and techniques, on the other, it requires new approaches. From this point of view, a collection of articles devoted to the problems of textual criticism of Russian modernism is an important step forward.
The collection is organized as follows: first there are articles devoted to the textual criticism of lyrical works (3), then there are articles on dramaturgy (also 3) and the last, most extensive part (10 articles) is prose. In our conversation, I would like to move away from the system proposed by the collection and combine articles according to the methodology used in them and the tasks set by scientists.
The main task of practical textual criticism is the publication of texts. Often a textual critic is faced with quite difficult problems. Then the story of working with an abundance of editions and options or, on the contrary, the search for one single source begins to resemble a detective story. Traditionally, when publishing the text of a work, a scientist is guided by the author’s last will. But what to do if the will is imposed from the outside, or we are talking about auto-censorship, or the edit was not completed due to the death of the author? This question was answered in different ways. V.N. Peretz considered the most complete version of the manuscript to be the most representative. The Pushkinist M.L. Hoffman adhered to the author’s last will with legal precision, ignoring the circumstances that could influence this will. G.O. Vinokur, B.V. Tomashevsky, S.M. Bondi considered the preparation of the text as a type of critical act, therefore, it was proposed to first understand the author’s intention and only then choose from the variety of sources the most adequate to this idea.
Articles by V.N. Bystrov, N.V. are devoted to the problems of publishing in general and academic collected works in particular. Loschinskaya about lyrics, E.V. Ivanova about Blok’s prose, G.V. Obatnin about Vyach. Ivanov. Traditionally, collected works combine chronological and genre principles for publishing works. Often this approach turns out to be unsatisfactory. This may be at odds with how the author himself saw the organization of his texts. The cases that scientists are considering really do not fit into the known framework and deserve special attention.
Modern editorial practice, unlike the previous one, tends towards the most complete reflection of the author's will not only within the framework of an individual work, but also within the framework of the publication as a whole. This becomes especially relevant when it comes to literature of the 20th century. After all, this is the author’s way of positioning himself. Therefore, V.A. Bystrov and E.V. Ivanova abandon the chronological principle when publishing Blok’s works and appeal to the will of the author, for whom the structuring of his works was equal to the creation of a new work. It is necessary to remember Blok’s reflection on his work, his constant desire to organize and build his works into some specific scheme (“Lyrical Trilogy”). Thus, “Blok thought of his own lyrics as a single “novel in verse”, which had a certain cross-cutting plot developing over the course of three volumes of his lyrics.” 2 In a sense, this is a return to Hoffmann’s concept of the author’s final will, only in this case the application of the method is dictated by the material itself.
In general, the situation with the publication of modernist texts is complex. The fact is that, as one of the researchers notes, “the text itself of the modernist writer resists the rational academic approach and some techniques and methods must necessarily be changed.” 3 Symbolists are characterized by “increased attention to the appearance of publications and the general “pattern” of the text, which changes when varying stanzas, shifting individual lines, using different fonts, italics, various combinations of “large” and “small” letters, everything that determines the visual perception". 4 All this should also be taken into account when preparing an academic collection of works. Loschinskaya pays special attention to the publication of Blok's notebooks. Previously, there was a tradition of publishing them in the “Editions and Variations” section in an abbreviated form. The researcher proposes to “give the full text of the notebooks” 5 , although he imagines the difficulties of representation. Such an action may be useful, but what immediately comes to mind is V.S. Nepomnyashchy’s unsuccessfully implemented idea to publish Pushkin’s texts in strictly chronological order. 6 Of course, Blok’s notebooks are not an artificial creation, but as a result, with an inept approach, the result may be a publication that means nothing to anyone.
Related to the problem of the publication’s appearance is the story with Remizov’s texts. It is known that the writer also paid great attention to the external side of the text, improvised with calligraphy, and drew illustrations. 7 From this point of view, typing text in a regular typographic font will not correspond to the author's intention.
G.V.Obatnin in his article raises the problem of publishing the so-called “mediumistic” texts of Vyach. Ivanova. The question of attribution arises in connection with these texts. The handwriting differs from “normal” and the works are signed with the name of the one who “dictated” them to the poet. Formally, there are two possible ways here: placing them in the Dubia or “Collective” section, which will mean that the text was written “co-authored”. This question is relevant because... Similar texts are found among many symbolists. However, no rule has yet been developed that prescribes what to do with such texts. Obatnin proposes to place them in facsimile in a separate volume and accompany them with textual references without commentary.
As I already said, the material often dictates the methodology. Thus, A.V. Lavrov’s article “Textological Features of the Poetic Heritage of Andrei Bely,” which opens the collection, is close to the textual concept that became widespread in the 1930s. Its supporters were N.K. Gudziy, S.N. Durylin, G.I. Chulkov 8 and some others. This school paid special attention to the psychology of creativity. Lavrov in his article analyzes the principles of Bely’s creative work. It is known that the poet, “editing” his poems, could change them beyond recognition. In this regard, the question rightfully arises: what are we dealing with? Do we have before us another version or edition - or just another work? Lavrov gives Bely’s main techniques for processing poetry. Obviously, this requires a special approach, different from the traditional publication of lyrics.
Three articles devoted to the work of Remizov (A.M. Gracheva, N.Yu. Gryakalova and S.N. Dotsenko) used methods based on the study of the creative history of the work 9 , which is again determined by the material. Remizov’s manner of rethinking, re-creating, rewriting and adding to other people’s texts, “pronouncing someone else’s song as his own” is an integral part of his work. Therefore, as researchers show us, it is impossible to understand the text without knowing the history of its creation, all the circumstances that could influence the turn of the author’s thought. We see the same method in the article by N.A. Bogomolov, who gives a reconstruction of the plans of M.A. Kuzmin, conditioned by the biography of the writer. Of course, without this, any work on the story “Beautiful Serge” will be incomplete.
The situation with modernist texts is truly new and interesting. For example, such problems as genre transpositions of the text (see the article by Yu.K. Gerasimov about F. Sologub) and the publication of a play with two endings (see the article by S.Yu. Yasensky about the drama “Human Life” by L. Andreev) researchers have to decide for the first time. From this point of view, the presented collection focuses on the discussion of new methods of textual criticism, the need for which is already ripe.
Finally, I would like to talk about the technical side. A good selection of articles loses significantly on the quality of the publication. The abundance of blunders and typos is striking. Some of them are downright infernal in nature. Thus, Lavrov’s article on Bely (p. 11) provides a bibliography of poetic cycles. Due to the oversight of the proofreaders, the cycle “Stanzas” ended up being published in the fifth issue of the magazine “Demons” (sic!) for 1908. One can question the need for publication as part of a collection of “appendices” with descriptions of various layers of editing (autographs of Bely’s poem “First Date” from the archive of Ivanov-Razumnik, a draft edition of the drama “Summoning the Beast” by F. Sologub). This, of course, gives some clarity, but still does not at all reflect the real appearance of the source. From this point of view, the facsimile reproduction of the sources given in the “Illustrations” section is much more useful. Many of them are published for the first time.
To summarize, we can say that the undoubted advantage of the collection is the set of methods that researchers offer to solve pressing problems in textual criticism related to the literature of the 20th century, although, of course, the ideas still require discussion and refinement.
Notes:
1 Peretz V.N. From lectures on the methodology of the history of Russian literature." Kyiv, 1912.
2 Ivanova E.V. On the principles of publishing Blok’s prose // Russian modernism... P. 170.
3 Loschinskaya N.V. On the originality of textual problems of the academic edition of A. A. Blok’s lyrics // Russian modernism... P. 75.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid. P. 80.
6 Collected works. Artistic works, critical and journalistic works, letters, drawings, notes and business papers, placed in chronological order / Under the general editorship. V.S. Nepomnyashchy; comp. V.A.Kozhevnikova; note V.A. Kozhevnikov and V.S. Nepomnyashchiy; responsible editor I.Z.Surat.M.: IMLI RAS; Heritage, 2000. T. 1: 1809-1819.
7 See Illustrations // Russian modernism. Problems of textual criticism: Collection of articles. - St. Petersburg, 2001.
8 See, for example: Gudziy N.K. How Tolstoy worked. M., 1936; Durylin S.N. How Lermontov worked. M. 1934; Chulkov G.I. How Dostoevsky worked. M., 1939.
9 See, for example: Piksanov N.K. Creative history "Woe from Wit" M.;L., 1928.
Dmitry Zuev
Brian Boyd. Vladimir Nabokov: Russian years: Biography / Trans. from English - M.: Publishing House Nezavisimaya Gazeta; St. Petersburg: "Symposium", 2001. - 695 pp., ill. - (Series "Biographies")
A biographer of Nabokov is doomed to face many serious problems. First of all, these are the features of the artistic thinking of the writer, who gives his heroes everything that is most precious - feelings, thoughts, situations that he himself once experienced. In many of Nabokov's heroes one can discern the features of the author himself, but as soon as the reader is ready to form a complete portrait of the writer using familiar signs, everything suddenly falls apart, turning out to be just a creative game. There is no “authentic” portrait of him in any of Nabokov’s books. Even three autobiographies - Russian, “Other Shores”, and two English, “Speak Memory” and “Conclusive Evidence” - cannot be taken as frank evidence of the author’s past. Even Nabokov constructs them using techniques characteristic of novels or stories, leaving absolute truth and reliability beyond the possibility of knowledge. The question of whether it is possible to create a comprehensive picture of someone's life was always resolved in the same way. For Nabokov, this is only possible in a “novelized biography,” where the actions of his heroes are attributed to the author. In reality, all this is just fiction. Nabokov develops this theme both in works of art (“The True Life of Sebastian Knight”) and in articles, for example, in “Pushkin, or Truth and Verisimilitude.” “Is it possible to completely realistically imagine the life of another, to resurrect it in one’s imagination in an inviolable form, to reflect it flawlessly on paper? I doubt it; I think that thought itself, directing its ray to the history of a person’s life, inevitably distorts it. All this will be plausible , not the truth we feel." 1
But in playing with his own biography, Nabokov is not limited only to the sphere of literature. He continues this game in life itself, which he succeeds in less successfully. It is enough to recall only the endless conversations about the influence of other authors on him, which the writer most often unconditionally rejected, or Nabokov’s statements that he was always aloof from any literary organizations, etc. This desire to “organize biography” began to manifest itself especially in later years, in America, and then in Switzerland. In part, this tendency was the reason for the breakdown in relations with his first biographer, Andrew Field, to whom Nabokov imposed completely draconian conditions, to the point that Field should not publish anything that Nabokov himself would not consider necessary to publish. (However, to some extent, Field himself was to blame for this, as he offered mind-blowing interpretations of some events and fictionalized his text, which Nabokov could not stand.)
All these problems faced Brian Boyd, the author of the internationally recognized biography of Nabokov, the first volume of which has finally appeared in Russian (the entire work is two volumes and almost fifteen hundred pages, the second volume is called “The American Years”). This book, already recognized as a classic of science, is the fruit of painstaking work with many archival materials, including Nabokov’s personal archive, where access to mere mortals is denied for at least another twenty-five years. Boyd's precise factualization is an indispensable foundation for any serious student of Nabokov. Boyd's Russian edition included some amendments, the need for which became obvious after the publication of the English-language edition. In addition, the book is equipped with an alphabetical index and detailed notes.
Based on factual accuracy, Boyd successfully puts into place real life events and their literary reflections, restores the connections that hold them together, sometimes not entirely obvious. Perhaps even such risky statements of the researcher as, for example, deserve trust: “If Nabokov had been single, he would not have been able to write either Mashenka or The Return of Chorba: he needed to feel the reliability of his love for Vera in order to part with Lyusya Shulgina in “Mashenka”, to experience fear for Vera in order to charge “The Return of Chorb” with an acute sense of helplessness in the face of time and the losses that it can bring." 2 The maxim, at first glance too obsessively connecting the facts of life and literature, quickly loses this shade, precisely thanks to factual materials that allow Boyd to look quite deeply into the sphere of Nabokov’s personal experiences, which the writer himself always considered unacceptable. But Nabokov has nothing to worry about - Boyd has nothing even the slightest bit compromising about him. Even the love story of Nabokov and Irina Guadanini (simply a treasure for a lover of sensations), which was made public by Boyd, is designed in strict, correct tones.
But a stickler for facts, Boyd also makes mistakes. Here's a funny example: the author describes little Vladimir's stay with his parents in Nice in 1903. One morning a boy melts sealing wax, enjoying the tints of color and the wonderful smell; a drop falls on his hand, bringing unbearable pain. The mother and governess come running to the screams. Following Nabokov, who describes all this in detail in “Other Shores,” Boyd says that this experiment was caused by the desire for a creative transformation of the world that had already begun to develop in the future writer. 3 Here Boyd lets into his world of precise and verified facts an example of another reality. In “Other Shores,” the development of the author’s creative talent is one of the cross-cutting themes, but in the strict reality of Boyd’s book, all this looks alien.
But if this can be considered an accidental mistake by the author, then his interpretation of very many events produces a completely different impression. Despite the fact that Boyd's biography is neither official nor authorized, as the author writes at the end of the book , 4 the Nabokov that he tried to present himself as clearly appears behind many of Boyd's conclusions. He creates an almost mirror-clean biography of Nabokov, carefully - though not always skillfully - avoiding many controversial issues.
In the introduction, the author defines the purpose of his research and points out the angle from which he considers it necessary to view the figure of Nabokov: “However, Nabokov was always a loner, and any story about his life should focus on the mystery of his personality and how it manifests itself in art. " 5 As a result, in Boyd's book all attention is focused on Nabokov, around whom all his contemporaries revolve, since fate destined them to be born in the same era as them. Names such as Joyce, Proust or Kafka, whose influence on Nabokov has been discussed many times by researchers, are mentioned in this book more as facts of Nabokov’s personal biography than as facts of his creative development: Nabokov read Proust and Joyce and considered them great artists, he read Kafka much later, after he wrote “Invitation to Execution,” which notes the influence of this writer, and even then - using double text, because he could hardly get through the original; he never knew the German language well enough ( the fact is rather dubious and goes back exclusively to Nabokov himself). Roll calls also remain unaffected Nabokov and Dostoevsky , who are noticeable in the same “Invitation to Execution”. Boyd actually follows Nabokov here, who rejected the possible influence on his work of this, in his words, the author of vulgar sentimental novels. Thus, in the context of Nabokov’s work, Dostoevsky never manages to overcome this role. All this greatly simplifies and makes the interpretation of “Invitation to Execution” and some of Nabokov’s other works less interesting. Apart from Pushkin and Gogol (with whom the writer always willingly admitted his kinship), only Bely, perhaps, received what he deserved from Boyd. Nabokov repeatedly mentioned his influence on his early poetic experiments.
In this regard, another Nabokov biography is interesting, published almost simultaneously with Boyd (M., “The Young Guard”; series “The Life of Remarkable People”). Its author, Alexei Zverev, considers his hero against the backdrop of world literature of the twentieth century (not forgetting, of course, the exceptionalism of Nabokov). The first lines of this book are characteristic, where, together with the birth of Nabokov, the birth of two other significant figures of Russian literature of the twentieth century, Olesha and Platonov, who were born in the same 1899, is described. In this book, the impeccable Boydian figure of Nabokov is brought closer to all the worries of everyday life in twentieth-century literature.
The picture of the life of Russian emigration in Europe in the 20-40s, presented in Boyd’s book, is also largely focused on Nabokov himself; everything that, to one degree or another, came into contact with the fate of this writer is presented here. And here we see (a fact is a fact) that Nabokov was not always such a loner, but took an active part in the cultural life of the Russian diaspora. One of the most noticeable phenomena of Nabokov’s emigrant life in Europe is the polemic with Georgiy Adamovich, by that time a leading critic, about creativity in general and about the work of Nabokov-Sirin in particular. This dispute was long. Adamovich, an adherent in literature of what is commonly called the “human document,” advocated the purity and spontaneity of the expression of feelings and against the doneness, precision and accuracy of a work of art, which were defended by Vladislav Khodasevich and his younger ally Nabokov. One can hardly agree with Boyd's characterization of this conflict. “Nabokov did not like much about Adamovich and his views: the attempt to decree the correct reaction to “our era”, the denial of formal mastery, obligatory pessimism, group spirit. He was disgusted by the unhealthy atmosphere of Montparnasse, drugs, homosexuality and, above all, an extremely biased, flattering attitude towards “our own,” which excluded the objectivity of literary assessments.” 6 Boyd here very sharply casts shadows, dividing Nabokov, invariably reserved, masterfully acting out in his artistic works (Christopher Mortus in The Gift, a hoax associated with the poet Vasily Shishkov), and Adamovich, an extremely biased and narrow-minded critic. It is unlikely that Adamovich was driven simply by personal hostility or envy in relation to Nabokov. He later recognized Nabokov as a great artist, although Nabokov did not fall into the orbit of the critic’s literary predilections. Here Boyd, it seems, places emphasis not very successfully, unnecessarily demonizing Adamovich and praising Nabokov, whose behavior in this dispute was also not always correct. Here are just some fragments of the overall canvas, where there are quite a lot of contrasting colors. The same can be said about Nabokov’s personal qualities, which are not always as clear-cut as they appear in Boyd’s description.
Nabokov's work of the European period, in Boyd's interpretation, can be represented as a movement from the foot of a mountain to its top, a difficult path, with many inevitable stops and even descents, but ultimately steadily striving towards the goal. This goal within the framework of the Russian period is “The Gift” (we will limit ourselves to novels), the pinnacle of all Russian-language, and perhaps all of Nabokov’s work, at the foot of which is the novel “Mashenka”, in which Nabokov, according to Boyd, unconsciously followed literary cliches, to which the writer has given a structure that is too orderly and obvious, easily exposing itself.
In this, as in many other constructions of Boyd, some artificiality is seen. It seems that in some places the researcher even unwittingly clouds the clarity of the facts he presents. What can we say about some conclusions that are shaky against their background. Well, a fact is a fact - let's be content with the facts!
Notes:
1 Pushkin, or truth and verisimilitude // Nabokov V. Lectures on Russian literature, M., 1996, P. 415.
2 Boyd Brian Vladimir Nabokov: Russian years, M.; St. Petersburg, 2001, p. 294.
3 Ibid., p. 63.
4 Ibid., p. 605.
5 Ibid., p. 13.
6 Ibid., p. 402.
Anna Nemzer
Pushkin Conference at Stanford, 1999: Materials and Research (Materials and Research on the History of Russian Culture. Issue 7). - M.: O.G.I., 2001. - 512s.
The collection of articles became a logical outcome of the Pushkin Conference at Stanford, dedicated to the “significant date” (1999), and brought together a variety of researchers living in different countries and belonging to different generations. The researchers who presented their work are called Pushkinists in the abstract, although there are not so many Pushkinists “in their pure form” among them. Apparently, Pushkin-centrism has now become a rather rare phenomenon. Each author chooses for analysis an issue that is at the intersection of Pushkin studies and some related topic of interest to him. (So in the article by B.A. Katz, Pushkin’s text becomes a kind of auxiliary material through which the subtle intertextual play of the poems of Blok and Akhmatova is read.) Each researcher looks at Pushkin from his own methodological position, through the prism of his perception of the historical and literary process, which, Of course, it helps create an interesting and “multi-color” picture.
The collection opens with an article by A.A. Dolinin, which, of course, is a conceptually correct compositional solution. Dolinin is a researcher who works with equal success in both the 20th and 19th centuries. In the article “From the investigations around “Anchar”” he manages to combine several methodological strategies at once. Dolinin finds a harmonious balance between the analysis of the text, the identification of complex intertextual connections, on the one hand, and the study of the context, the “semantic aura of the legend” (about the poisonous tree, Anchar) , on the other hand. It is precisely this combination of approaches that seems to be a necessary condition for a brilliant resolution of the literary/historical riddle. Such a methodological solution turns out to be relevant for many authors of the collection. Thus, E. O. Larionova in the article “The Unrealized Collection of Pushkin’s Poems in 1836” convincingly proves that behind the strict principle of genre construction of the collection of Pushkin's poems there is a sharp polemic with the "Bulgarin" tendencies in the literary process. As an example of a combination of text studies, pictorial text and historical context, one can cite the article by A.L. Ospovat: "From the commentary to the "Captain daughter." Popular pictures." The astute reader recalls M.O. Gershenzon's work on popular prints in "The Station Warden." However, if in Gershenzon pictures served as the key to deciphering the riddle of the text, then in Ospovat's article it is the historical analysis of pictorial subjects that makes it possible to identify some hidden patterns of development events in "The Captain's Daughter".
The methodological contradiction between the study of text and context has developed in literary studies for a very long time. We can probably talk about the desire that arises among researchers to find the arithmetic mean in this opposition, to see certain events in the author’s life behind the literary text, and vice versa - to consider/read any non-literary spheres of life as a work of art. This approach is declared in O.A. Proskurin’s latest book “Literary scandals of the Pushkin era”, M., “OGI”, 2000). A similar principle, it seems, is guided by N.N. Mazur, who considers in the article “Pushkin and the “Moscow youths”: around the problem of genius” the complex system of relations between the poet and the circle of the “Moscow Vestnik” (the term “Moscow youths” is specially specified in the article) and the reflection of this “plot” in Pushkin’s work - in the play “Mozart and Salieri” . Knowledge of the context and life circumstances allows the reader/researcher to better understand the specifics of the text, and the text, in turn, clarifies much in the complex vicissitudes of human relationships. The question of primacy in this case is not entirely relevant (like the similar question of the primacy of the chicken and the egg); the study of the problem seems to be most productive precisely in the key of the mutual influence of historical realities and works of art.
research The subject of K.Yu. Rogov’s also becomes the situation that developed in 1826-27. around Moskovsky Vestnik. But, unlike N.N. Mazur, the author focuses on the problems of relations between Pushkin and Vyazemsky - against the backdrop of stories with the above-mentioned printed organ. Rogov is interested in the real background of the divergence of friends-poets in the autumn-winter of 1826-27. An attempt to get to the bottom of the truth, to clarify some dark, not fully studied plots from Pushkin’s life (that is, focusing on historical facts) becomes the cornerstone on which Rogov’s article is built. And this same incentive is fundamental for a number of articles in the collection.
Thus, L.N. Kiseleva, analyzing a number of sources, discovers the most important points of ideological rapprochement between Pushkin and Zhukovsky. These observations allow her to continue and develop N.Ya. Eidelman’s idea about the special role that the defeated teacher played in the formation of the life principles and creative attitudes of his victorious student. A similar problem in appearance is posed by Yu.V. Mann, who reconstructs the situation (the relationship between Pushkin and Gogol in 1836), which, in his opinion, until now has been assessed incorrectly by researchers.
V.A. Milchina’s article “Why did Pushkin choose Alphonse Carr over Balzac?” fits remarkably into this trend. We are talking about decoding and explaining Pushkin's dislike for Balzac, the poet's perception of the French writer as a competitor, and his sympathy - albeit very distant - for the cynical Alphonse Carr. The method used in the article could be called anti-intertextual: Milchina talks about the significant absence of borrowings, imitations or polemics. For Pushkin, the novel “Under the Linden Trees” turns out to be much closer to the works of Balzac precisely because of its deliberate “foreignness.”
The collection also contains works based on the analysis of intertextual connections. Here it is necessary to note the articles by S.A. Fomichev “Onegin stanza”, Kirill Ospovat “On Pushkin’s “odic diptych”: “Stanzas” and “Friends” (materials for an intertextual commentary)”, Daniela Rizzi “The Station Agent” by Pushkin and “Old World Landowners” "Gogol", A.P. Chudakova "Ruslan and Lyudmila" and "Eugene Onegin". The latter writes about the emergence of some specific artistic techniques characteristic of the novel already in Pushkin’s early work. It is interesting to compare the findings of the researchers. S.A. Fomichev and Kirill Ospovat see in Pushkin’s work a clear orientation towards the traditions of the 18th century, and A.P. Chudakov, on the contrary, speaks of the “explosion of classicist aesthetics”, that this process largely predetermined and outstripped “new opportunities” and the paths of narration... which Russian literature embarked on only towards the end of the century." But, however, such a range of opinions is obviously not worth considering as a contradiction, and the conclusions that arise after reading the articles are extremely banal: about full responsiveness, about the fact that each researcher has his own Pushkin, in which one can always find an echo of his own theme.
Another thing is interesting. A conference on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Pushkin's birth inevitably sets the speakers in a certain mood and provokes - to a greater or lesser extent - the tone of summing up. The result is a large number of “showdowns” on the pages of the collection. Almost every article is a revision of a problem that has already been studied, and almost every article contains attacks on predecessor researchers. In almost all cases this is natural and justified, but on the whole it still gives the impression of a large-scale action to overthrow authorities. In this light, two “duet” articles are especially noteworthy: K.G. Bolenko, N.V. Samover “The Supreme Criminal Court of 1826: the Decembrist version in the historiographic tradition” and I.G. Dobrodomov, I.A. Pilshchikov “From notes about the vocabulary and phraseology of "Eugene Onegin". In the first work, the "subject" is, first of all, a sharp condemnation of scientists who, according to the authors, formed an incorrect version of the events of 1826. In the second article, the researchers aim exclusively to refute the thesis of V.V. Vinogradov, obviously continuing the old dispute with the academician. Unfortunately, this approach often leads to a shift in emphasis; behind the polemical emphasis, Pushkin (or, as in the case of Bolenko and Samover, other figures in the historical process) turns out to be somewhat forgotten.
The collection closes with the work of V.E. Vatsuro “The First Russian Translator of “The Knight in the Skin of a Tiger”. Such a conclusion - just like the opening of the volume with Dolinin’s article - turns out to be, of course, a winner. Vatsuro , of course, does not argue with anyone, no one does not ardently condemn. He reveals the hitherto unknown phenomenon of the translator Bartdinsky, narrates the grandiose and obviously doomed to failure attempt to translate the Georgian epic poem, and thereby restores the peace and balance necessary for any ending.
It is not possible to list all articles within the review. There are almost three dozen of them, they can cause the most contradictory judgments among readers: they can delight with discoveries or provoke some new (or forgotten old) polemics and disputes. The Stanford collection is interesting, among other things, for its heterogeneity. The set of articles makes it possible to imagine the state of modern literary studies (not only Pushkin studies) in all its diversity, with all the current topics and methodological trends. This is a clear illustration of that “slice of science” that, over time, will most likely become history.