The article studies the device of defamiliarization (ostranenie) in the context of its connection not with excess but with deficiency. Having not only an aesthetic but also a social dimension defamiliarization emerges as a response to the exhaustion of forms, their decay and loss of expressiveness. Avdotya Panayeva, describing the mechanics of theatrical illusion from an insider’s rather than spectator’s perspective, anticipates Tolstoy’s exposure of artificiality. Ballet appears as a space of dual evaluation: on one hand, it can be perceived allegorically, while on the other, it becomes subject to social critique O. Sedakova, S. Žižek and P. Bojanić, developing this line of Tolstoy’s dual evaluation, offer divergent interpretations: while Žižek sees in ballet’s artificiality a perversion of experience, and Bojanić discerns a master-slave dialectic, Sedakova draws parallels between ballet and the limitations of realistic religious painting. Panayeva’s insider description of ballet reveals not only its mechanical nature but also the ethical issues of subjugation. In cinema, according to Shklovsky, defamiliarization loses its social pathos, becoming a tool of formal innovation. Yet by returning to Panayeva’s perspective, defamiliarization can be seen not merely as a literary device but as a means of ideological critique.

A work of verbal art is the unity of the visible compositional and invisible architectonic system. The first system is the external level, the second is the internal. Often the external speech structure of a prose work is associated with a comic folk laughter carnivalized beginning (one of the main features of a novel according to Bakhtin), and the internal one is associated with a deeply personal theological beginning. The first part of the article deals with to the description of a holistic model of the hero’s salvation, which is manifested in the parable basis of the work. The second part reveals the living basis of the hero’s personality – the value center of architectonics – and is associated with the commedia dell’arte embodied in the work. The disclosure of the living personality of the hero occurs in the work in four phases and ends with the heroine’s phrase “I have brought the real one”. The carnival principle is a gradually manifested polyphonic principle in a person in his loving desire for another.

The material of ‘Provincial Letters about Our Literature’ is used in the article as a basis for considering the literary position of V. Porechnikov (pseudonym of N.D. Khvoshchinskaya) as a critic. Eight letters are not simply concerned with the actual domestic literature but allow to reveal the whole of Khvoshchinskaya’s views on the urgent tasks of literature and their realization. The critic writes either about what is not to be found in literature, or what should not be: excessive denunciation and entertainment, blind copying of reality (daguerreotyping), excessive fascination with the past, etc. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that all the works considered in ‘Provincial Letters’ correlate with the speculatively existing model of the realistic novel, when compared to which the critic does not favour anyone: neither famous writers (A.K. Tolstoy), nor women writers (A.Ya. Panaeva et al.). Thus, according to Khvoshchinskaya, realism in the literature of the first half of the 1860s remains a largely imaginary construct.

The article deals with analyzing the work of the writer- Sixtier, teacher G. Potanin, an author, who is today completely unknown, but mean-while, for example, highly appreciated by N. Nekrasov. Special attention in the article is paid to the themes of teaching and educational institutions, which worried the writer-educator Potanin throughout his life. The novel “The old grows old, the young grows young”, as well as the novels “Year of Life” and “The Staff Caretaker” by Potanin are considered in the context of Russian raznochinskaya (commoner’s) prose about educational institutions: N. Pomyalovsky’s “Sketches of the Bursa”, A. Scheller-Mikhailov’s “Rotten Swamps” and A. Sokolov’s “Theatrical Swamps”. Although Potanin’s works reproduce many topoi inherent in the tradition of depicting schools of the mid-nineteenth century (teachers’ ignorance, students’ pranks, punishments, etc.), as well as direct indications of the author’s inheritance to Pomialovsky, the focus of the image in the texts under study shifts from students to teachers, which manifests the writer’s own teaching experience. Another feature of Potanin’s work is the social status of the protagonist: apparently, in the novel “The Old Grows Old, the Young Grows Young” (and partly in the story “The Year of Life”, which logically continues it) we first encounter the depiction of the growing up of a serf.

The article deals with the study of the polyphony of dramaturgical characters, as an exposer in A.P. Chekhov’s play “Uncle Vanya” based on the theory of polyphony by M.M. Bakhtin. A.P. Chekhov inherited the tradition of the 19^th century novel, he infused the feature of polyphony into the work of the play “Uncle Vanya”. Despite the fact that the play “Uncle Vanya” by A.P. Chekhov has repeatedly become the research material of scientific works, but at present, the formed polyphony of Chekhov’s plays is little studied, taking into account M.M. Bakhtin’s theory of polyphony. In our opinion, the voices of condemnation in the multiple texts of the exposers formed the polyphony in Anton Chekhov’s play “Uncle Vanya”, which reflects the innovation of Chekhov’s play. It is especially worth paying attention to the fact that we have made an attempt to present that the novelty method of combining M.M. Bakhtin’s theory of polyphony and linguistics can be used for interdisciplinary research of Chekhov’s play. In the article, we examined emotional and evaluative statements with the key lexemes: of order, it’s been a while, it’s not good and a phraseological unit: to upset the routine, which built the main melody of the exposers’ polyphony. Meanwhile, our research will contribute to the analysis of Chekhov’s plays using an interdisciplinary method and increase interest in the formation of polyphony in Chekhov’s plays.

The play “The Cherry Orchard” reflects the principles of conventional theater – theatricality and puppetry, which are associated with the creative searches of innovators in drama and stage art and, in particular, with the early one-act plays for puppets by M. Maeterlinck. Chekhov’s last play is considered in the context of the philosophical and aesthetic concepts of the new drama, on rethinking the understanding of the tragic at the turn of the eras. Although Vs. Meyerhold caught new techniques and rhythms in the play “The Cherry Orchard”, he carried out his first experiment with the use of puppets two years later in the production of A. Blok’s play “The Little Fair Farce”, and in the article “The Fair Farce” (1912) he theoretically generalized practical experience. We will focus on Alexander Yanushkevich’s production of “The Garden” (2018) on the stage of the Petrozavodsk Puppet Theater, in which, more than a hundred years later, an attempt was made to overcome, according to the director, “certain cliches associated with Chekhov’s dramaturgy”. People play puppets, the grotesque exposes the tragic in the notional symbolist theater of Alexander Yanushkevich.

The article is an analysis of the key image of Death in V. Bryusov’s poem “Dance of Death”. The research is focused on the figurative and subjective structure, composition, and plot of the poem. These elements reveal the connection to the visual sources of the poem, They are precisely what allow one to trace the connection with the visual primary sources of the poem – the series of engravings by Hans Holbein the Younger and the Medieval tradition of the Dance of Death. The changes Bryusov made to Holbein’s engravings are not incidental; they serve their specific artistic purpose. Thus, the poem features a transgression of perspective combined with neo-syncretism, as well as the use of a composite and universal “we”. It allows for an artistic expression from the perspective of Death itself, and also draws the reader into the dance,endowing him with a transgressive vision and transforming into another participant in the circle. The plot unfolds not only within the Dance, but also the well-known motif of the Triumph of Death. Finally, the image of Death sheds its allegorical details and appears before the reader-as-viewer as a skeleton in a black robe. All that allow for making the conclusion on specifics of Bryusov’s adaptation of the memento mori concept, which gained renewed popularity among both poets and artists at the turn of the century.

The article considers the development of free verse in the translation work of K.D. Balmont, starting with the first attempts to make renditions for the poems of W. Blake and W. Whitman and ending with the translations of Czech poets completed in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The 1909 book “Calls of Antiquity” is considered a particularly important phenomenon in that series; the second enlarged edition of which was published in Berlin in 1923. A typology of transitional forms of free verse implemented by Balmont in his arrangements is outlined; the path from transitional experiments to the pure form of Russian free verse is shown.

The phenomenon of the Silver Age is a complex conglomerate of aesthetic, ethical and behavioral components, as well as an environment for the functioning of such cultural mechanisms as play, mystification, etc. As long as at least one of these mechanisms continues to operate organically and without interruptions, it can be argued that the phenomenon has not exhausted itself and remains relevant.

The article deals with the self-reflection of the work by rock poet Alexander Bashlachev from the point of view of the author’s assessment of his own songs’ lyrics. The objective of the article is to reveal how exactly Bashlachev perceived his own songs, and whether that perception changed from work to work. The article raises a number of issues, such as Bashlachev’s attitude to the traditional theme of the monument in Russian literature, the specifics of the author’s perception of himself as a rock poet, and the issue of mutual understanding with others. The study revealed that Bashlachev always understood himself as a singing person, and therefore, throughout his short creative career, he attached a great value to his own songs, feeling their necessity for the time in which he lived. His song lyrics contain works dedicated to holistic lyrics (songs about songs), as well as those in which the issue of self-reflection interacts with other life matters. Bashlachev recognizes the difficulty and painfulness of the songwriting process, while not perceiving his works as reference and deserving of eternity. For him, their truthfulness and usefulness are more important here and now. Using the dialog form in the song lyrics, the author comes to a conclusion about the responsibility of the singing poet for how his work is perceived by different listeners, the public, and the people. In the songs, the theme of anticipating the early departure of the lyrical subject from life recurs more than once, but it is not dramatized by the rock poet, highlighting the overriding importance of fulfilling his mission on the Earth, when compared to longer living.

The article considers the Pushkin and Lermontov myths in the book “The Bachelor Party” by M. Korshunov, created in collaboration with V. Terekhova. It analyzes the complex generic nature of the book, which exists on the borderline of documentary writing and fairy tale. The study attempts to correlate the work with such concepts as “uchronia”, “metabiography”, and “biomythography”, and raises the question of the text’s scholarly legitimacy. In order to situate the book within the cultural context of the time of its creation, the article employs the concepts of “lightning” and “rainbow” (B. Ostanin, A. Kobak), parallels are drawn with the tradition of conjugating the fates of Pushkin and Lermontov among poets of the Thaw era. “The Bachelor Party” is structured like a “chorus” of narrators’ voices, each with their own perception of the poets. They are: tour guides, museum workers, children, and teenagers. The lyricism of those voices, along with the boldness of the hypotheses, enables the authors – researchers-neophytes – to produce a captivating, youthfully romantic narrative that gives rise to a new mythology.

Yulia Voznesenskaya’s trilogy about the adventures of teenage twins Yulia and Anya is a narrative based on accurately depicted Russia of the late 1990s and early 2000s, featuring the spread of occult practices. Alongside the visible events it shows, the actions of angels and demons accompanying the heroes. That technique reveals the deeper meaning of the events. The differences in the perspectives of various characters repeatedly create a comic effect. The dialogue with J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series in the story ‘Juliana, or Dangerous Games’ (2005) addresses two issues: the craze for book series, which, becoming a constant of public opinion, deprives the reader of the freedom of judgement, and the influence of the magical community, in which, according to the metaphorical meaning of the word ‘witch’, hostility and malice are inevitable. The dialogue between the works of J. Rowling and Yu. Voznesenskaya is based on similar poetic features. The artistic world of ‘Harry Potter’ and the world of Yu. Voznesenskaya’s prose is profoundly structured. In the works of both authors, time, space and the character system are depicted as open, which encourages broad interest from readers of all ages in stories about children. As the characters grow up, they realise that the universe is not limited to its visible part. The theme of love as a force that decisively affects the characters and the course of events defines the humanistic tone of the works.

The article deals with studying the “Moscow text” in the poetry of E. Blazheevsky, a significant poet of the last quarter of the 20th century, whose work remains little studied. The aim of the study is to identify the specifics of urban space in Moscow as a central element of the author’s poetic world. Focusing on the spatial imagery in his poetry, we have attempted to study the spatial levels (the world, Russia, the city) and the characteristics of their interaction with the emotional state of the lyrical hero. The results reveal that Moscow in E. Blazheevsky’s poems emerges as a multifaceted topos. The city may serve a backdrop for philosophical reflections or it may unfold as a full-fledged hero of the poem. Special attention is given to motifs of cold, homelessness, and nocturnal landscapes, which shape the unique image of the capital in works of E. Blazheevsky. The novelty of the research lies in in the study of the urban chronotope in the context of the author’s artistic space as well as in comparing Blazheevsky’s Moscow (as an image, topos, and chronotope) with the traditions of the “Moscow text” in Russian literature. The article contributes to the study of local texts, enhancing the understanding of their role in 20th-century poetry.

The article considers a fragment from Nadya Alekseeva’s novel “Belgrade” (2024), which is related to A.P. Chekhov’s comedy “The Cherry Orchard”. It is a novel about a novel (meta-novel) and includes elements of an inserted text – a book created by the main character about Chekhov’s life, about his love with Olga Knipper. But references to the classic’s work are intricately woven into the biographical plot, resulting in the formation of a real-fictional world in which Chekhov’s last play occupies a special place. In the novel of a modern author, some possibilities for interaction between classical and modern texts, dramatic and epic, purely artistic and real-fictional worlds are thus realized. Such interaction enriches both the source text and the recipient text in terms of meaning; therefore, a modern artistic approach to a classical text, and through that to the personality of its author, to some extent corrects the established ideas about both Chekhov and his work.

The article considers European (primarily Russian and Swedish) poetic victory panegyrics of the 17th – early 18th centuries, whose authors present a recently occurred battle as a fight of wild beasts. A special group of military panegyrics consists of works containing a narrative about the confrontation (the Swedish “triumphal song” of 1677) or alliance (the Russian poems of the Poltava cycle) of the lion and the wolf. That animal pair is found in the works of ancient and modern authors, and among the possible reasons for its appearance in Russian and Swedish victory panegyrics one can mention the consonance of the names of both animals (lupus “derives from leopus”, “lion’s paw”), noted by Isidore of Seville and undoubtedly known to European poets. It is assumed that, for the panegyrists, the wolf, possessing only a single lion’s trait, is seen as a “diminished”, “lesser”, and necessarily defeated lion.

Throughout the course of historical development, the image of the bear has intertwined with various religions and myths. Due to the cultural differences between Russia and China, their understanding of the bear also differs. The article compares and analyzes the similarities and differences in the perception of bears in Russia and China from three aspects: proverbs and sayings, literary works, and folklore, revealing the differences between them.

The article considers linguocultural strategies of translation (domestication, foreignization and deformation), defines their theoretical significance in the context of literary translation. It is established that translation strategies make a significant contribution to defining translation studies as an interdisciplinary scientific direction. Literary translation is considered as a product of intercultural communication. The novelty is in studying the translation strategies within the framework of the concept of synchrony and diachrony. The material of the study is the novel by Ch. Brontë “Jane Eyre”.

The article considers several short stories by O. Henry, where he uses a fantastic assumption and which stand out from the purely realistic work of the author. They reflected O. Henry’s creative situation: adventure and melodramatic plots lost their former appeal for him, and he tried to move away from the developed plot models that had turned into clichés. Using the example of the considered short stories, one can trace the general evolution of the short story genre in the work of O. Henry, to see how the vector of the author’s attitude is changing towards his heroes, to the short story plot, to the conflict typical for the genre.

The article goes into how the Catalan writer of the twentieth century Salvador Espriu changes the images of the key characters of the “Book of Esther”, which is part of the Old Testament. An important place of the work is the study of the biblical myth. The questions are being raised about what the specifics are in the author’s interpretation of the ancient text, on which features the main emphasis is placed in the images of the characters and also how the dramatic events of the Iberian Peninsula of the 30–40s are understood through reference to the Old Testament plot. The description of the historical context of the play “The Story of Esther” allows us to conclude that in the second third of the twentieth century, due to the aggravated crisis of ideological ideals and the writer’s pessimistic attitude to human nature, the images of Artaxerxes, Haman, Mordecai and Esther acquire a new interpretation: having lost the ontological basis of life, like S. Espriu’s contemporaries, they find themselves in the center of the merciless vortex of history, they feel the chaotic movement of time. The main purpose of the article is to identify the techniques by which the images of the main characters are changed and the Old Testament myth is incorporated into the modern context.

The article considers how the text of Chekhov’s play “Three Sisters” is interpreted and transformed in the novel “One Night with Chekhov” (2015) by Greek writer Victoria Makri. Through an analysis of Victoria Makri’s novel, the study demonstrates how Chekhov’s text, when interacting with contemporary narrative in a new cultural and temporal context, becomes a tool for reflecting on timeless existential issues – ideals, happiness, love, and identity. The author draws on the researches of M.M. Bakhtin, J. Kristeva, and Y.M. Lotman in the fields of intertextuality and cultural dialogue.

The article considers the history of translations of A.P. Chekhov’s comedy “The Cherry Orchard” in Iran and provides a comparative analysis of three of the most important translations (by Bozorg Alavi, 1950; Seruzh Stepanian, 1995; Zahra Bakhtiari, 2018). Information is provided on all existing translations of Chekhov’s play into Farsi (a total of 13 translations from 1950 to 2023) and the topic of using an intermediary language in translation (French, German and English) is touched upon. The article analyzes the correspondence of translations to the Russian original and evaluates the ability of translators to develop a commentary for a foreign reader. As a result, it is proved that Stepanian’s translation is the most accurate, providing the highly detailed commentary that helps the Iranian audience understand the realities of Russian life and culture unknown to them.

The present article is aimed at highlighting the key features of the realia, idioms and proverbs translation in the film “Brother” by A. Balabanov. An abundance of translation options performed by professionals, as well as amateurs, testifies to the interest in the Russian film-maker’s creative products felt by Western cinematography lovers. Besides, it gives food for thought to translators and teachers of foreign languages. The authors compare two variants of the film translation into English. They account for the choice of the research material and give a complex definition of “realia” in its linguistic meaning. The methods of translating realities are analyzed, as well as the appropriateness or inappropriateness of omitting some of them. The researchers compare both translated equivalents of idioms, drawing conclusions about their adequacy in English and detecting errors and inaccuracies in the translators’ work. They offer their own translation options. The study involved the method of continuous sampling, alongside with the comparative one. Finally a conclusion is drawn about the strategies (foreignisation or domestication) that were more often used in subtitling, based on the replacement of cultural references with functional equivalents, their omission, or, conversely, their retention. The authors also provide the rationale for the general accuracy of proverb translation and select the most effective translation strategy for the case in question.

The review сonsiders the teaching aid by Anton Aleksandrovich Tkachenko “Literature lessons and theatre: possibilities of the digital age”. It concludes that this book is important both for literary school education and for deepening the understanding of the dramaturgic text theory in its literary and stage formats and for the history of drama and theatre.