Search

This article deals with the collective myth of the generation of Russian intellectuals in the 1880s. This generation inherits the myth from Enlightenment and Romanticism about the hero Prometheus, the Christian martyr created in the “civil poetry” and journalism of the 1840s–1860s. The hero resists the surrounding “darkness” of social passivity and a repressive regime. The socially passive outsider becomes his antipode. The 1880s generation embodies a similar collision, with an active heroic nucleus standing out (the Narodnaya Volya radicals, “torches”) and the periphery that sympathises with them (passive, reflective, “children of the night” from Merezhkovsky’s allegory). The self-immolator Grachevsky became a symbolic figure for the former, and the poet Nadson for the latter. Nadson’s influence extends far beyond his era, forming a system of clichés for expressing the depressive moods of the Russian intelligentsia. These two dimensions of a generation in the literature of the 1880s are represented, respectively, by metaphors of the “fiery myth” and an unprecedented variety of the “night myth” in the lyrical poetry of the poets of “civil sorrow” and later romantics. Both myths are united by the situation of collective trauma, premature death, and the role of the intellectual as a martyr. In poetry, the allegory of the “extinguished torch” in the lyrical poetry of Nadson, Fofanov, and Merezhkovsky mediates between these worldviews. Russian poetry returns to the symbolism of fire in the early twentieth century, during the revolution of 1905–1907, and in the post-revolutionary era of the 1920s.

This article analyses the functioning of the concepts of “epoch”, “period”, and “generation” in nineteenth-century literature, criticism, and literature studies. The concept of “epoch” presupposes a linear stage understanding and interpretation of history, and “period” can also be used within other concepts of historical development. The “epoch”, sometimes replaced by the “century”, and the “period” were traditionally used as measurement units of literature and culture history (cf. works of A. Bestuzhev, I. Kireevsky, V. Belinsky, etc.). One of the first periodisations of the history of Russian literature which employed these concepts was given by I. M. Born. The concept of “generation” in its meaning contains a biological, natural connotation, and therefore is not necessarily associated with the linear stage understanding of historical time. As S. N. Zenkin puts it, “a generation is time embodied in people, in their dramatic destiny”. The concept of “generation” is often used in periods of historical time which require a person to comprehend themselves and their place in history. A good example is Romanticism in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Another factor that actualises generational problems is the influence of biological and naturalistic ideas when a community motif of people doomed to be born and live with this influence “in their blood” emerges in this quite unfavorable time. This situation is considered by the author of this paper regarding the functioning of the “generation” concept in A. P. Chekhov’s works, who actively marked himself as belonging to the eighties’ “artel” (generation) in the 1880s. This concept as a subject of his characters’ argument subsequently recurs in Chekhov’s works of fiction. All the concepts mentioned are also analysed in the History of the Russian Literature of the 19th Century (1908–1911, ed. D. N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky), which summed up the achievements of the nineteenth-century cultural and historical school. The author emphasises how this book (History...) develops a method of working with these concepts, and this method later comes in demand with the twentieth-century humanities.

In this article, the authors consider the work of Ágota Kristóf (1935–2011), a writer who fled from Hungary after the events of 1956 and began to write in French, as a cultural and literary phenomenon of Hungarian emigration, and, more particularly, the part of it that is directly related to the Budapest uprising and the reaction period that followed it. In addition, Kristóf’s famous trilogy about twins (The Notebook, 1986; The Proof, 1988; The Third Lie, 1991), where politics and psychologism, history and auto-documentalism, acute social, existential, and philosophical aspects are organically intertwined, has all the signs of a European émigré novel of the twentieth century and correlates not only with the works of Hungarian émigré writers, but also with the literary heritage of the Russian, German, and Czech emigration of the twentieth century. The authors polemise with numerous statements by critics, literary critics and journalists, saying that Kristóf’s prose is deprived of a socio-political background, and the writer herself “turns her back upon reality”. The analysis of Kristóf’s three novels leads the authors to conclude that all the values that underlie her plot and compositional constructions have relevance to her only when they are placed against a background of a concrete, quite recognisable historical reality. Each novel has two substantial layers: psychological (philosophical) and socio-political. The first is deeper, more elaborate, but also more unstable, because it includes everything that is related to the sphere of feelings, thoughts, and emotions. The second layer is more external, directly related to the movement of historical time, but it is this layer that determines the types of the main characters, endows the mythological space of existential experiences with concrete recognisable features, and gives the books an inner backbone, making the fragile world of their storyline integral and quite stable.

The logic of this article comes from the research of the intricate “crossing of destinies” in the life and creative journey of Anna Akhmatova and in the life of three generations which she witnessed and shared. The study demonstrates that the deflection of the three epochs in Akhmatova’s biography and creative work, which made her image emblematical, is integral to historicism as a dominant feature of her poetical world perception. The authors distinguish and characterise three personal signatures of the poet demanded by the time: a lunar maiden, sorceress, and prophetess of the Silver Age; a mourner, mother, and wife who took up the mission of praying for those who died in prisons and camps during the war between the 1930s and 1940s; a classic of Russian poetry, who became an authentic incarnation of the link of times for the young generation of poets in the 1960s. It is represented in the multiplicity of Akhmatova’s “imperial” signatures-insignias, which she created in her Notebooks, and her contemporaries reflected in their memoirs (sometimes with the participation of the poet). Additionally, they were realised in the visual code, namely portraits and photographs, dating back to different decades. It is important that having been reflected in the mirrors of various epochs, the poet’s image lets time itself be reflected in “Akhmatova’s mirrors”. The most dramatic moments of “not what the calendars say, but the real Twentieth Century” are mostly the parts of her private and poetic life, as her destiny was the embodiment of the “tragic symphony” of her generation. Special attention is paid in the article to the self-designation of sacral nature, which Akhmatova intends not for time, but for eternity, it is a unique secret code, which can be decoded only by poets and poetry itself.

В конце XX века в оппозиции к постмодернистской литературе появился новый реализм как литературное направление. Представители нового реализма в своих манифестах и критических работах определяли себя как одно поколение с одинаковыми эстетическими и идеологическими принципами. Антология «Новая русская критика» под редакцией Романа Сенчина является яркой демонстрацией этой сообщности. В своей работе я рассматриваю процесс становления группового сознания новых реалистов и состав их культурной идентичности. Мной делается попытка ответить на вопрос, можем ли мы действительно говорить о расцвете и обновлении критического мышления, как утверждает Роман Сенчин в предисловии к сборнику.

The paper studies the personal aspect of literary emigration to Latin American countries as a part of the Russian world. Referring to the life and creative work of poet V. F. Pereleshin, writers P. P. Shostakovsky and Yu. G. Slepukhin that represent the Latin American branch of the Russian emigration of the 20th century, the author analyses human destiny in the context of the generation’s fate, its literary life, behavioural and artistic strategies. The writers in question belonged to different waves of emigration, but demonstrated a link between generations and at the same time an ability to integrate into the culture of the country of residence, as well as to make a transition to another language and to realise themselves in it. Being involved in the process of intercultural dialogue with the Ibero-American world, the representatives of different generations of Russian artistic intelligentsia solved the problem of keeping in touch with their homeland through culture and the printed word. They managed to preserve the national cultural values and at the same time to make them accessible for people of another culture. It is also important that the cultural works of the Russian people in exile were saved for Russia, as the authors themselves lived long enough to see their work return to their homeland.

The article is devoted to the phenomenon of the stilyagi in the literature of 1990s—2000s. Referring to works by V. Slavkin, A. Kozlov, and G. Litvinov, the author explores the representations of the stilyagi counterculture. The author provides a thorough analysis of The Monument to the Unknown Stilyaga by V. Slavkin that is one of the first textual memoirs that intends to interpret the phenomenon of the stilyagi as a generational group. The book analysis as a unity reveals two conflicting trends. The first one mythologises the stilyagi as a “special generation”, while the second one deconstructs the myth about the romantic figure of the future representative of the 1960s deceived by history. In A. Kozlov’s memoirs (Kozel Playing the Sax) the stilyagi are treated as “people of his generation”. At the same time the author is interested in the stilyagi as in “jazz fans”, and that is why they are included in the history of musical styles. G. Litvinov’s book (Stilyagi: How It Happened) refers to the Monument to the Unknown Stilyaga and attempts to encyclopedically describe the phenomenon as a subculture. The book contains phrases of former stilyagi, illustrations and photos. The ensemble structure of the book creates a dissonance effect between the author’s efforts to finalise the phenomenon and conflicting and living testimonies of the epoch. Overall, the literary representations of the stilyagi indicate that it is impossible to describe their story as a collective / common destiny.