№ 4 (2025)

The history of the creation of Pushkin's poem «There Once Lived a Poor Knight» has been interpreted differently by various researchers, since the four existing autographs (a rough draft and three clean copies) were introduced into academic circulation with intervals of decades. Pushkin intended twice to publish the poem in the Northern Flowers almanac, but nally gave up the idea, presumably for censorship reasons. In the summer of 1835, a shortened and revised text of the poem was included in his un nished . By dating each of the autographs and examining the iterations, we identi ed three versions of the poem «There Once Lived a Poor Knight».

The article analyzes the new memoir narratives discovered in the writer's archive. Thematically and stylistically, they carry on the tradition of Remizov's 1950s essays on the Dead Souls, based on the literary analysis of the classic's style as construed in Andrei Bely's book Gogol's Mastership (1934). In both essays, a hyperbolized symbol, representing the «grain» of the character's image, forms a lyrical plot that shapes itself around it. The drafts of the essays about N. Berdyaev and V. Lebedev preserved in the writer's notebooks testify to the beginning of a new stage of Remizov's creative career as a memoirist.

The article examines discrepancies found in the copies of the 1835 editions of Mirgorod. It reviews the theories proposed by N. L. Stepanov, I. A. Vinogradov, E. G. Paderina regarding the origins of these discrepancies, including the probability of censorship interference and typographical errors. In addition to the previously identi ed «special» copy of Mirgorod discovered by N. L. Stepanov in the Library of the Academy of Sciences in the 1930s, two other previously overlooked «special» copies are analyzed: one from the Prague Scienti c Library and another from the A.V. Nikitenko Library in Tomsk, each exhibiting unique features. Notable inconsistences include: the presence of a preface to the story «How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich» in both the Library of the Academy of Sciences (BAN) and Nikitenko Library copies; the absence of the nal scene in «Viy» in the BAN copy, while the Nikitenko copy features both this scene and the preface; a duplicated note in «Viy», labeled as an «Error» but unrelated to the story's content, suggesting a metatextual play with the reader. These ndings challenge the exiting hypotheses, including the previously accepted chronology of Gogol's revisions of Mirgorod during the typesetting stage, prompting further scholarly inquiry.

The article introduces fteen letters of A. A. Fet to K. N. Leontiev, discovered in 2021 and currently preserved in a private collection in Russia. Until recently, it was believed that Fet's part of eight-year the fairly regular correspondence had been almost entirely lost. This exceptional discovery restores the epistolary dialogue between Fet and Leontiev in almost the whole of its diversity, shedding new light on the history of the relationship between the poet and the «Optina Hermit».

The article deals with particular issues of the creative history of the second edition of Paul Verlain's translations by F. K. Sologub, published in 1923. The data from the Sologub Papers lead to believe that the edition was shaped step by step; the reasons why the number of the revised translations from the rst edition turned out to be more than planned are discussed.

The article publishers and analyzes V. N. Orlov’s review of the manuscript of F. K. Sologub’s Poems, prepared for the Small series of Poet’s Library by O. V. Tsekhnovitzer. The review suggests what the initial version of the book looked like and which principles the editors were expected to apply to this academic edition. The notes by Orlov, who was deeply immersed in the epoch, transformed the volume that, for a long while, remained to be the only reissue of Sologub’s poetic legacy.

The article focuses on the memoirs about Gulag produced by the amateur writers in the 1960s - mid-1980s. The theoretical framework for the study is the clari cation of the relationship between the poetics of the memoirs and the artistic structure of the Soviet novel. While the authors working on their manuscripts during the Thaw were strongly in uenced by the of cial discourses and tended to use the literary models of Socialist Realism, those writing in the 1970s-1980s chose the narrative strategies close to 'labor camp prose' and autobiographical narratives of the dissidents.

This article analyzes the documentary and literary sources of the renowned play Ten Days that Shook the World. It looks into the poetics of the play which manifests the special features of the dramaturgy of the 1920s-1930s, including the experience of collective authorship. The previously unpublished archival data are used. The term "dramaturgical experience" is proposed.

The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell turned out to be the last translation of Yu. D. Levin. This work is held in high esteem both by the writer’s compatriots and by all the students of English cultural history. The major part of the translation has been preserved, the work was to be incorporated into the fundamental three-volume edition of Johnson’s works Biographies of the Renowned English Poets and Critical Reviews of their Works (Moscow, 2023), prepared by N. I. Reyngold and T. A. Gu revich for the Literary Monuments series. Boswell’s work is important for analyzing the genre of biography and autobiography both in the European and Russian literature. The translation begins with Boswell’s description of Johnson’s early years and ends with the description of his meeting with King George III in 1767. The text was annotated by N. I. Reyngold who had supplied the edition with copious notes. The poems by Johnson in Yu. D. Levin’s translations are included into the commentaries that introduce the reader to various versions of the texts. Yu. D. Levin’s transliterations of the names of the English writers, based on the Russian 18^th-century tradition, have been preserved.

[Review:] Dagli archivi romani agli archivi pietroburghesi / A cura di Giuseppina Giuliano, Andrej Shishkin = Ot rimskikh arkhivov k arkhivam peterburgskim. Novye materialy / Pod red. Dzhuzeppiny Dzhuliano, Andreia Shishkina. Roma: Valore Italiano Editore, 2024. 480 p., ill. (Correnti d'incontro tra Russia ed Europa; vol. 02/2024).

[Review:] Codex manuscriptus. M.: IMLI RAN, 2019-2024. Vyp. 1-5. 411, 320, 640, 384 i 560 s.