Taking into consideration the voluminosity (multi-dimensionality) of a literary work, it is better to apply the terms “beginning” and“ending” to the wording (verbal content) of the work, rather than to the work as a whole. The whole work of high artistic merit is distinguished by the depth which is created by the subject-object and space-time transitions, the syntax and graphic façade, owing to the special rhythm of the readers’ reception with its segments on various flats, such as in sculpture. The voluminosity (multi-dimensionality) of a literary work helps develop the verbal and extra-verbal spheres in it, allowing us to talk of the “extra-verbal” category along with the “pre-verbal” and “post-verbal” categories.

The article provides an overview of the literature on the subject and determines principal trends. The author comes to a conclusion that the use of such term as “a detective story” should be renounced and it’s necessary to study the separate genres of crime fiction for the implementation of scientific approach.

The article is devoted to the concept of the power in an axiological system that was formed in Russian bylina. Its features are researched on the extensive material (with a focus on the cycle about Ilya Muromets as the most representative one) and in contrast to ancient heroic epos, where problems of the honor and power are solved in another way. The most significant difference noted by the author is the fact that the power in the ancient epos is primarily away to achieve glory while the bylina’s character gets the power for the special mission of compassion. There is one more important detail: in the first case the power is used to be constant, that given tohero once and for all, in the second case finding and the possible loss of the power depends on character’s behavior: if he retreats from his mission or not.

The article considers a meaning of the term “sapphire” as perceived in pre-Petrine Russia. The study reveals the discrepancy between the sapphire as contemporary defined, the mythical gemstone termed alike and the undetermined stone in question. It is discovered that this word, although it was well known, was extremely bookish and not associated with any of real stones. The author argues that in ancient Russia the sapphire stone as mentioned in literary sources was deemed to be red, according to the Slavonic translation of “on the Twelve Stones” by Saint Epiphanius of Salamis. In manuscripts there sometimes are met some other comments on the color of the stone called “sapphire”there, but being controversial one to another and met quite rarely, they seemed not to have been able to displace St. Epiphanius’ opinion at all then. The precious stone now called “sapphire” then was called “yakhont lazorev”. A wide and confident use of the word “sapphire” in the modern sense appears in Russia only in the second half of the XIX^th century.

The novels “Demons” and “The Brothers Karamazov” by F. Dostoevsky are often analyzed in philological researches, but mostly as two taken texts separately. The comparison of epigraphs, lexis, particular episodes and final parts of the novels, considered in this article, clarifies the necessity of comparative analysis between “Demons” and “The Brothers Karamazov”, the poetics of which has a significant interconnection between the real and mental, the material and spiritual.

The article is devoted to analysis of the sustainable image of the “chalise from the skull” in the poetic texts of such Silver age authors as V. Bryusov, N. Gumilev, M. Zenkevich, S. Esenin, V. Khlebnikov, V. Mayakovsky. The author briefly discusses the genesis of this poetic formula, which dates back to the ancient rituals, rites and to the cult of the head. Also first cases of fixation of the image of the “chalise from the skull” in Russian literature beginning of the XIXth century, namely in the works of A. Merzlyakov, K. Batiushkov, A. Rodzianko, K. Ryleev, A. Pushkin are identifies.

The article deals with one of the most famous texts of early Russian modernism - “Zlatotsvet” (golden daisy), a short novel by Zinaida Gippius. The author briefly describes literary and cultural context of the story and pays attention on some special techniques, that haven’t yet been analyzed. The article contains the results of textological analysis of two versions of the story; thus author comes to the conclusion, that Gippius corrected her text according to the new vision of relations and conflicts depicted in it.

In this article the formula “merry and scary” from Letov’s “Prevoskhodnaya pesnya” (“outstanding Song”) is examined in the context of a song by Vadim Kuz’min, Gennady Shpalikov’s film, and a poem by Oleg Grigor’ev. The analysis concludes that even externally simple formulas can acquire complex meanings when viewed in context and thereby express the precise limits of the author’s sense of the world.