This article is about the study of approaches to the category of meaning in the notes and extracts of M.M. Bakhtin in the 60s – early 70s. The problematics of meaning are directly discussed in the 2nd and 4th notebooks of notes and extracts, as well as in a number of scattered sheets. The content of the category of meaning in Bakhtin’s notes has not previously been specifically considered. It remains uncertain and requires special study. The significance of the study of the category of meaning in notes and extracts is determined by the fact that it allows clarifying the place of the category in the context of Bakhtin’s holistic philosophical and scientific worldview. The study’s purpose is to clarify the content of the category of meaning in the records and extracts of Bakhtin of the 60s – early 70s and, in general, in the late work of the scientist and thinker. As a result of analyzing the texts of working records, four main aspects of Bakhtin’s consideration and use of the category of meaning in those texts, which are firmly related to the context of his philosophical and scientific activity, are revealed: 1) meaning is understood personalistically; 2) meaning is realized only through the word (statement); 3) meaning is universal, linked to the category of the symbol; 4) meaning is dialogic.

The article aims mostly to define terminologically the lyrical situation as one of the main components of the lyrical plot. To achieve the intent, the article addresses the following objectives. First, analyzing the earlier writings on the subject, from “Aesthetics” by Hegel to modern works on the plotology and poetics of lyricism (B.V. Tomashevsky, V.M. Zhirmunsky, L.Ya. Ginzburg, T.I. Silman, Yu. Lotman, V. Grechnev, V.I. Tiupa, N.D. Tamarchenko and others). Secondly, formulating our own definition of the lyrical situation as a static state of the inner world of a lyric verse. Third, showing the relationship of the situation with other important components of the lyrical plot. It is a spatiotemporal structure, which largely determines the lyrical situation, as well as the category of event, which is connected (or opposed) to the situation on the principle of dynamics / statics. Fourth, proving the correlation between the lyrical situation and the title of the poem. Finally, conclusions are drawn about the place of the lyrical situation in the lyrical plot of the poem, understood as a system of event-situational elements of the lyrical work, given from the position of the lyrical subject in the process of his reflection deployment.

The article provides a comparative analysis of 24 chapters of the Russian Chronograph of 1617 and the “stories” from the Swedish book Centuria Historiarum (Stockholm, 1646) addressing to the events of the Trojan War. The reasons for the absence of plots about Medea’s revenge, the Trojan horse, and the Palladium abduction in the Russian text are named and explained, which are separated into separate “stories” in the Swedish book, and significantly abridged in the Chronicle of Martin Belsky – the source of the specified chapter of the Chronograph.

 This article considers the context created by three of Anton Chekhov’s stories (“A Drama,” “Ionych,” and “Sleepy”). This contextualization is based on the resonances between the texts that reveal the author’s attitude towards women’s artistic creation and the situation of a murder caused by the desire to sleep. Analysis shows that the contexts formed by Chekhov’s separate texts, the parallels between which can be seen over different parameters, give depth to meanings that in the texts taken separately are not always perceptible.

The article analyzes the religious subjectivity of A.A. Blok of the 1900s as a representative of “mythopoetic symbolism” in the aspect of his attitude to sexual love. The sources of Blok’s “erotic utopia” are indicated: the doctrine of “true love” by V.S. Solovyov, the concept of “Christian falling in love” by Z.N. Gippius, the Nietzschean myth of Apollo and Dionysus in its solar-lunar modification. In their light, the collections “Poems about a Beautiful Lady”, “Unexpected Joy”, “Earth in the Snow” are considered, some ego-documents are involved. The conclusion is made about the ambiguity of the concept of “falling in love” in the work of Blok and about its opposition to the “message of Love” by Solovyov.

The article highlights the activities of N.I. Petrovskaya as a translator and critic of French literature. It emphasizes the role of V.Y. Brusov in the formation of the creative personality of the translator and critic.The provided biographical information helps to realize what could play a role in her selection of books for translations and reviews. The analysis of Petrovskaya’s assessment of French authors is given, which helped the perception of their work in Russia.

The article is about the study of I. Zdanevich’s futuristic play “LidantU phAram”. Experts studied the abstruse language (zaum’) in which the play is written. The author of the article mainly analyzes its political context. The play “LidantU phAram” symbolically indicates the end of the First World War and the end of the whole old world.

The philosopher V.S. Bibler, relying on Khlebnikov, elaborated on the duality of verbal semantics: indication of formal action and performative production of action. The poetic etymology helped to distinguish the unchanging core of the indication of the properties of the thing and the changeable elements of performativity. But such a specific understanding of the social performativity of the verb was developed not so much by Khlebnikov as by Nikolai Aseev in his doctrine of the change of names, which gives examples that coincide with those of Bibler. Bibler places Aseev and other futurists in the shadow of Pasternak because of the extension of the doctrine of double action to the history of thought, making a number of hypotheses about the specifics of the development of twentieth-century Russian thought. We may speak of the poetic history of thought as an invention of Biebler. Bibler’s idea is prolific for philological analysis because it permits us, along with the syntagmaticity of the utterance, to single out the paradigmaticity of performative techniques, which facilitates a consistent analysis of both the Russian avant-garde poetry and the later poetry.

Based on the theory of the author’s outsideness of M. Bakhtin, the author of the article studies the syntactic influence of the poetics of Arseny Tarkovsky on the poetics of Yuri Kazarin through the analysis of an actively semantized boundary. Kazarin both accepts the influence of Tarkovsky and opposes it, especially at the syntactic level. Of the obvious differences in their lyrics, Yuri Kazarin’s interest in the enjambement, reduced in Arseny Tarkovsky, comes to the fore. If in Tarkovsky the boundary of the verse and syntactic series is not overloaded and the intensification of the gap in this boundary can serve as a signal for the finale of the poem, then in Kazarin the load on the boundary appears already at the beginning of the poem. For Tarkovsky, the actively semantized boundary is rather a minus device, the poet often demonstrates the power of the lexical coloring of the word in the middle of the verse. Kazarin practices the emphasis on the clause, experimenting with changing rhyme, while Tarkovsky uses rhyme as a discrete means of active text semantization.

A. Chudakov’s novel “A Gloom descends upon the Ancient Steps” combines the features of the poetics of the “book” and those of the novel. The paper proves that by analyzing in the context of the novel one of the chapters – “The Cooperative Horse Boy, or Napoleon’s Turtle”. The chapter, as a part, contains fragments independent of the structure of the whole. “The book” generally as a form is perceived as “an object serious, credible, unquestionable” (expression by A. Tvardovsky) because of the high importance of the plot and the digressions. “Seriousness and reliability” are combined with paradoxes. The integrity of the chapter is formed by the juxtaposition of dissimilar elements. Reassuring pictures of economic activity are correlated with descriptions of harsh socio-economic conditions. Reflections on death and immortality are associated with the longevity of things, with the longevity of heroes – humans and animals – and with the immortal glory of Napoleon.The themes and motives of a separate chapter are also developed in other chapters. It is common for the novel to develop themes and images throughout.

Thus, in different chapters, household chores, socio-political concerns of the Soviet period are thoroughly covered, and images of animal heroes are created.

The themes of old age, death and postmortem also hold together a narrative that combines features of the poetics of the “book” and those of the novel.

The article analyzes the history of the ‘eternal spring’ formula before Yegor Letov, as well as the reception of the video for that song in Dmitry Danilov’s poem “Eternal Spring in Solitary Confinement”. The author for the first time in Russian literature analyzes the history and content of the ‘eternal spring’ image, dating back to Ovid, and clarifies the stable semantics of this formula as a designation of the topos of the earthly Paradise (or the time of the Golden Age). The author also considers the reception of Letov’s song “Eternal Spring” in an intermedial aspect: based on a fan clip (2010), edited from Artur Aristakisyan’s film Ladoni (Palms, 1994), and a poem by Dmitry Danilov (2014), in which the clip, and the song became starting points for thinking about the Russian people. The title of Danilov’s text, “Eternal Spring in Solitary Confinement”, emphasizes the semantics of imprisonment, which will be fully realized in the novel Sasha, privet! (Sasha, hello!, 2021). Thus, the history of the use and rethinking of the ‘eternal spring’ formula from Ovid (characteristic of the Golden Age) to Danilov (characteristic of the Russian people) is traced.

In the Universe, there are various facts and events that are beyond human understanding, and a person does not have a special tool and the ability to cognize them, therefore, to express and describe them, he uses an innovative tool called a symbol. Symbols are present in all aspects of human life, especially in literature, art, culture and human beliefs. The use of animal symbols in past works is more popular than other symbols.

The article analyzes functioning of the category of theatricality in Thomas Mann’s novel “Confessions of Felix Krull”. The article also considers the embodiment of the formal and informative aspects of this category. The authors pay close attention to the image of the main character, whose characteristic feature becomes proteanism: throughout the narrative, he appears before the reader in different roles and guises. The image of Felix Krull combines both actor’s and director’s types of the theatricality presented in the novel, which allows the author to maintain the conflict between the illusory festivity of a theatricalized life and the grayness of reality. For the main character of the novel, theatricality becomes the main way to comprehend the world, while innate talent for transformation, skillful play, and techniques of enchanting the audience are the basis of his behavior. The functioning of the category of theatricality at different levels of the text and the use of various theatrical techniques in the novel promote disclosure of the concept of the artist in the writer’s work. Mann’s novel about the artist is conjugated with a liminal, borderline world perception. The opposition of spirit (art) / life (burgher), gradually turning into correlation, is the main path for evolution of his artistic world.

The name of Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961), one of the key figures of modernist literature, is little known in the Russian-speaking world. It is connected with the fact that her texts simply did not reach the Soviet reader, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union most of her poetry and prose was never translated into Russian. At the same time, for Western literary studies Doolittle is a poet of the first row, a recognized master of the word, whose high status is confirmed not only by the assessments of her contemporaries (among whom, we note, were Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, D.G. Lawrence, Richard Aldington), but also by a number of literary prizes. In Russian Anglistics, however, the degree of study of Doolittle’s role in the historical and literary context of the twentieth century is insufficient for the reasons mentioned above. The paper attempts to consider one of the main features of Doolittle’s individual poetics – the mythologism that emerges in her texts both on a superficial (thematic) level and on a deeper level, bordering on myth-making and the creation of autobiographical myth.

The review considers the monograph by H.N. Petukhova “About Chekhov. Continuation of the conversation”. It is shown that Petukhova’s monograph reflects the trends of modern studies оf Chekhov’s works, presents various aspects of the analysis of his literary texts using mainly typological and comparative methods. The special value of the book lies in the fact that, thanks to the comparative analysis and involvement of a wide range of material from both the pre-Chekhov era and modern literature, the continuity of the literary process in its dynamics is shown in it.

This review considers the collective monograph “Memory as History and Imagination”. It demonstrates the book significance both in terms of theoretically going deeper into understanding the functioning of the memory category in art, and in concrete-analytical terms.