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This paper presents unified solutions for elastic–plastic expansion analysis of a cylindrical or spherical cavity in an infinite medium, adopting a flow theory of strain gradient plasticity. Previous cavity expansion analyses incorporating strain gradient effects have mostly focused on explaining the strain localization phenomenon and/or size effects during infinitesimal expansions. This paper is however concerned with the size-dependent behaviour of a cavity during finite quasi-static expansions. To account for the non-local influence of underlying microstructures to the macroscopic behaviour of granular materials, the conventional Mohr–Coulomb yield criterion is modified by including a second-order strain gradient. Thus the quasi-static cavity expansion problem is converted into a second-order ordinary differential equation system. In the continuous cavity expansion analysis, the resulting governing equations are solved numerically with Cauchy boundary conditions by simple iterations. Furthermore, a simplified method without iterations is proposed for calculating the size-dependent limit pressure of a cavity expanding to a given final radius. By neglecting the elastic strain increments in the plastic zone, approximate analytical size-dependent solutions are also derived. It is shown that the strain gradient effect mainly concentrates in a close vicinity of the inner cavity. Evident size-strengthening effects associated with the sand particle size and the cavity radius in the localized deformation zone is captured by the newly developed solutions presented in this paper. The strain gradient effect will vanish when the intrinsic material length is negligible compared to the instantaneous cavity size, and then the conventional elastic perfectly-plastic solutions can be recovered exactly. The present solutions can provide a theoretical method for modeling the size effect that is often observed in small-sized sand-structure interaction problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the paper is to compare Nikolai Leskov's debut short story ‘A Case That Was Dropped’ (1862) and its second redaction, published in 1869 and titled ‘The Drought’. Comparative analysis covers major text elements, such as the title, motto, composition, time and place of the action, characters, etc. Special attention is paid to the central figure of the story, i.e. the rural priest, and the changes to his image introduced in the second version of the text in which Leskov emphasized his significance and elaborated his psychological profile. As the paper suggests, the writer also examined the most acute ecclesiastical problems of the 1860s, including peasant superstitions and the attempts to eradicate them, as well as the low social status of the clergymen, and the disdainful attitude of the Russian nobility towards Church ministers. The paper concludes with the assessment that the second redaction of the story exposes the evolution of Leskov's talent and his journey towards making a priest the lead character of the novel The Cathedral Clergy . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paradox as a method of contrasting alternative ideas is one of the crucial principles of the avant-garde. The article proposes to call such a way of organization of artistic reality, which is somewhat similar to Gilles Deleuze's “disjunctive synthesis”, the “irremovable contradiction” principle. The paper analyses the systems of art of two neo-avant-garde poets: Gennadii Aigi and Viktor Sosnora. Their works stand for the two poles of contemporary avant-garde. The various antinomic structural and grammatical categories are present in their art, ranging from bigger bodies of texts (books, strophoids, ultra-long lines) to the smaller language units (discursive interjections, sounds, punctuation marks). The paper argues that the poets' simultaneous immersion into the wholeness of a book and the fragmentarity of a draft raises the issue of “processual” localization of the subject. The subject bridges the gap between word and reality, as well as between body and text. The article sets out the different principles and traditions of creating ultra-long lines in the works of both Aigi and Sosnora. Sosnora was interested in the ancient aesthetics and metrics, whereas Aigi's inclination was towards prosaization. Experiments with ultra-short lines as another pole of non-standard line format constitute a distinctive feature of Aigi's poetics. Sosnora seldom used single lines and preferred to combine them according to the principle of contrast with large text fragments within the borders of poetic cycles. Finally, the article shows the development of this tendency to minimalization, which is expressed in the division of words into verbal atoms. It is common for Sosnora to use minimal discursive words that undergo optional reduction and “indexical and symbolical interjection”, whereas Aigi aims at maximum atomization of the word that revitalizes the primal sound and the process of its creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature and magic: how did these two entities coexist with each other during various periods of human history? What is magic? How was it ritually perceived in Europe? Which theoretical and scholarly approaches might assist us in devising its historical scope and literary ambiance? The introductory essay helps positioning a number of major conceptual issues regarding magic and its role in cultural and literary studies with special attention paid to Russian literature, spells, the supernatural and folklore. The essay offers a detailed historical overview of the main hermeneutical trends regarding magic, proceeding to Russian literature with special attention to Russian Symbolism (Aleksandr Blok and Valerii Briusov) and Russian Avant-Garde (Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksei Kruchenykh). The introduction also positions the special volume’s papers within the broader context of magic and supernatural. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconstructs the biography of poet, publisher and political activist Sergei A. Sokolov, also known as Sergei Krechetov (1878–1936). Special attention is paid to Sokolov's relations with Ivan Bunin. The publication includes material from numerous letters written by Sokolov to Bunin. A substantial part of this contribution focuses on Sokolov's activities in the Russian White Movement and its military arm, the White Guardsmen of the Volunteer Army. Sokolov worked in the propaganda unit of the Army, which was known as OSVAG (Osvedomitelnoe Agentstvo). The publication touches upon a number of further aspects of the cultural life of the Russian environment in Berlin during the twenties and discusses the mysterious “Fraternity of Russian Truth”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the theatrical and performative poetry project Citizen Poet created by Dmitrii Bykov, Andrei Vasil’ev and Mikhail Efremov. This project satirically reflects Russia as it was in the turbulent years 2011–2012. In particular, it deals with the Russian protest movements known as the “Snow revolution”. The essay analyses the reasons for the project’s popularity against the background of the relevant history of the genre of Russian parody. Bykov’s mocking poetical satire is analysed with a view to existing scholarship focusing on parody and irony, including Russian stiob . The Russian literary canon emerges as an important issue in this respect. The complex views expressed in the various performed texts of Citizen Poet lead us into a debate of Dmitrii Bykov’s poetical attitudes and opinions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper considers sex and gender issues underlying Mikhail Kuzmin’s longer poem ‘The Trout Breaks the Ice’. In the Russian literary canon, Kuzmin has not obtained the high status he deserves because his openly gay writings are not acceptable either under homophobic Soviet law or by today’s official anti-LGBT Russian mindset. Interestingly, despite the poet’s notorious reputation, the homosexual core of ‘The Trout’ has been consistently ignored in most critical analyses. Nor has the other side of Kuzmin’s homosexuality, his misogynism – also an important part of ‘The Trout’ – been discussed so far. Dissolved in rich intertextuality, symbols and rhetoric, it is responsible for the ambivalent portrayal of the heroine. She is a Psyche who patronizes the love between the two male protagonists but also a femme fatale who drives one of them, who becomes her lover, to death. Women were avenged later, in Anna Akhmatova’s ‘Poem without a Hero’, a tribute to her 1920s romance with Ol’ga Glebova-Sudeikina, which was inspired literarily by a rivalry with Kuzmin, especially his ‘Trout’. The poetess’ inherent Lesbian agenda led to a covert reworking of Kuzmin’s gay poetics, which was programmatically open about homosexual love being more rewarding and less tragic than heterosexual love. As the ‘Poem’s hidden real message has been ignored even by scholars for fear of diminishing Akhmatova’s reputation, ‘The Poem’ succeeded in eclipsing Kuzmin’s more genuine and artistically daring portrayal of bisexual triangular love that flourished in the Silver Age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the poetics of the everyday as a common thread between Derzhavin and Pasternak. It shows how Pasternak revives Derzhavin's tradition of poeticizing everyday life and the material world. I discuss the everyday in three aspects: visibility of the everyday, feasting and everyday as a refuge. Contemplation, feasting, household form the semantic field of the primitive, based on the instincts of existence. These instincts protect and lead the individual in everyday experience. Pleasure from the everyday, an abundance of household objects and feasting are transformed into an aesthetic pleasure and spiritual food. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is devoted to the influence that the experience of emigration had on the poetics of Khodasevich's book European Night ( Evropeiskaia noch' ). Till the spring of 1925 Khodasevich thought that he had the possibility to return to the Soviet Union. This state of mind determined the pragmatic meaning of the poems that Khodasevich wrote in the period between 1922 and 1925, i.e. the time in which he emigrated to Europe and yet did not feel himself a “real” emigrant. These poems are characterized by a satirical orientation as well as by a radical rejection of emigration. On the other hand, the texts that were written between 1925 and 1927 (when Khodasevich formed his self-identification as an emigrant) radically changed the pragmatics of European Night : In this way it becomes a book expressing a deep existential despair. This inner crisis includes the Russian space as well as the space of emigration. In our study we also analyse the way in which Khodasevich mitigates the satirical orientation of the first version of the book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper considers the philosophical aspects of repetition in Gennadii Aigi's poetic texts. The author concludes that repetition in Aigi's works is of a non-numerical nature. Unlike the quantitative parameters of repetition, their non-numerical ability to correspond to the entire poetic text is of major importance. In this regard, repetition manifests itself as a structure that reminds a fractal. The cornerstone of Aigi's repetitions is a cyclic model of time that is impossible to describe in terms of evolution and memory. Repetitions accumulate nothing: topics and ideas do not grow from each other, but rather grow into each other forming the general poetic unity. Repetitions in Aigi's poetry constitute a non-communicative phenomenon that is not associated with imitation and mimesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article proposes an inquiry into the work of Aigi as a religious poet and mystic of the metaphysical mould, manifesting in his poetic experience an attitude of attaining the essence of being. In his works, Aigi advocates for Poetry in its original sense – as a sacrament. He understands the poetic word as the Word the Creator (St. John's Logos ), adhering to the logos principle and believing that silence can only be created by the Word. The paper discusses some issues of poetology, semiotics and linguistics, relevant for the interpretation of Aigi's poetry and its place in linguistic poetics and philosophy of creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the tight relation between “art” and “immortality” in Boris Pasternak's author's ideology on the basis of a newly found letter to his second wife Zinaida Nikolaevna Neigauz, written in the beginning of 1931. This letter, preserved only in a copy, sheds new light upon one of the most important points of the author's ideology. In this document, Pasternak explains his views on the unacceptability of suicide. The letter is closely related to his autobiographical work Safe Conduct , the final part of which was written soon after the suicide of Vladimir Maiakovskii. It is possible to draw a line from the letter to the novel Doctor Zhivago . The ends of two protagonists' lives, Iurii Zhivago and his antipode Pavel Antipov-Strelnikov, are compared. The main protagonist dies, leaving behind his poetry. For Pasternak, it is the way of continuation, “life after death”, and the symbol of creative immortality of a poet. On the contrary, Antipov committed suicide, an end consistent with his life position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emil Medtner is important to Russian culture not only as a theorist of Symbolism, but also as a patient and friend of Carl Gustav Jung and one of the first Russian supporters of psychoanalysis. Here Medtner as a person is of particular interest. Complex and morbid, even in its most extreme expressions his personality reflects the spirit of the Silver Age. The first part of the present paper traces patterns in Medtner's private life as manifested in a series of love triangles. The second part briefly analyzes a dream about two sisters which Medtner discussed with both Freud and Jung and which demonstrates the specific features of his split psyche. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]