This paper deals with the strategies of overcoming the ruin in the intelligentsia discourse of the Russian literature. Two conflicting ways of saving the intelligentsia - reemergence and self-identity (resistance to circumstances) - are analyzed using the example of penal servitude experience and its textual transformation by Dostoyevsky. Both ways had fundamental differences and coexisted in the state of permanent conflict. The ideas of reemergence and self-identity (resistance to circumstances) became the integral part of the intelligentsia discourse of the Russian writers in the XIX and XX centuries. Two ways of overcoming own death defined not only the views of writers on the intelligentsia, but the intelligentsia-related plots in the literature.

The article attempts to reveal the role of icon in the Christmas stories by N.S. Leskov, to show thematic connection with the content of the writer’s works, to reach further understanding in the author’s perception of religious images of Orthodoxy, to emphasize iconographic aspect of his artistic manner. Leskov’s creative method is conditioned by the conception of religious painting, the art of icon painting and capabilities of literary expression, and by religious world view of the writer, based on “ancient Orthodoxy”.

The article presents a comparative analysis of the titles of poetry books, series and poems by V. Brusov and A. Blok; it also educes their linguistic belonging and expression, cultural background, a way to reflect the contents of a lyrical collection, series or a poem; through the difference in approaches to entitling their works the difference between the two poetic systems (“senior” and “junior” symbolism) is analyzed.

The article deals with the range of poetic devices used by O. Mandelstam, which, as the analysis of his poem “To the German Tongue” shows, bear a striking resemblance to film editing techniques of the 1920s. It looks closely at the episodes of the poet’s life when he came into contact with the art of filmmaking, and then proceeds to the examination of similarities between the buildup of a film and the inner structure of Mandelstam’s poem. Special attention is given to the techniques resembling those of film splicing, as well as to the perception of the poem by the reader, which is similar to the perception of a film by the viewer. The research has shown that parallels can be drawn between the poetic devices used in the poem and the inner structure of early 20th century films.

The present article is a literary analysis of autobiographical essay by M. Bobrov (Solovyov). The peculiarity of his nonfiction and especially its artistic side has so far not been the subject of a separate study. It considers an outline of principal issues of the interaction of art and text in the genres of biography and autobiography, most vividly represented in this work. The author comes to a convincing conclusion that space and time in prose by M. Bobrov “are destined to” soften transitions between fiction and documentary narrative spheres.

The article aimed at the research of Petersburg text in rock poetry. Boris Grebenshchikov and Alexander Vasyliev are the authors whose work began at different stages of Russian rock formation and since then has continued to this day. That’s why a study in specific features of Petersburg texts of their works allows to show out a conclusion on the evolution of the thing at issue. Special focus in the article is made on the correspondence of something new and something traditional in creative work of both authors.

The article considers the subject structure of works included in the book of poems by M. Stepanova “Kireyevsky”. Movement of the forms from the narrator to the final lyrical “I” is detected. Certain subjective forms are dominated in parts (cycles) of the book. Dynamics of change in the subject are the basis of the book composition.

The present article concentrates on a part of the plot about the Swan-Knight dedicated to his birth. An epic plot is based on a lost folk tale, in which we could have found a motive about children turning into swans. We conclude that in a fairly tale this transformation resulted in a mother-in-law’s curse. Whereas in a literature example the transformation was caused by chains taken away from the children. This kind of the plot reveals the existence of a motive about wonderful birth of children with chains on their necks. The transformation shows the change in a function of a wonder. It signifies authors’ desire to present literary events as a proof to the divine birth of the Swan-Knight, who was supposed to be an ancestor to Godfrey of Bouillon.

The article is a study in the role of allusions, reminiscences and quotations, which go back to the ancient culture and the Gospel and are connected to themes of sacrifice, suicide. All these themes are considered in the context of heroes’ attitude to the ancient culture. As it is shown in the article thanks to the “stranger word” (allusions and quotations) the system of motifs appears in the text. These motifs may have different interpretation - both parodical and tragic.

The paper is devoted to one of strategic aspects of narrative discourse and belongs to the field of innovative narratological researches. Developing the concept of narrative “intrigue” proposed and proved by Paul Ricoeur, the author presents the category of rhetorical “ethos” for the typological characteristics of various phenomena in narrative art writing.

The author of the article, proceeding from the famous poets’ opinion (Osip Mandelstam, in the first instance), advances a hypothesis of the way the lyric verse is born. Creating a poem, a poet hears it inside himself and garments it in words both for himself and for the reader, for the life of the opus outside the poet himself. Inside the poet, the poem initially sounds without any words, but as one whole piece (this process is not entirely perceived by the author’s consciousness); then - with words, in parts. Paradoxically, a lyric poem is born, at a time, in its entirety (“internal image”) and in parts (which we shall call tentatively, using a metaphor, “corporal words”). When a poet writes down (pronounces) the first word of his poem, this poem is already entirely born as an image sounding without words. The feeling of an opus image inside oneself is a process on the border between the unconscious and the conscious; however, the unconscious dominates in it. The creation of a verbal “envelope” of an opus also takes place at the confluence of the conscious and the unconscious, but here the conscious prevails. For a poet, the silence, the NON-creation of the unnecessary, is especially valuable. The silence is an important phase of a creative work, at which the word matures. The poet withdraws into silence, keens his hearing in order to imprint the “internal” image of a poem, born already in the back of his mind. The author of the article does not insist that the described theory of the birth of the lyric verse is the only one, and lets the other theories exist.

The article analyses texts which have the tautological genre indicator “legend” in their title. The texts are considered as the nucleus of the genre due to the authors’ explicit intention. The article points out the legend’s steady features, typical of all the texts, and variable ones, not related to the legend’s formative attributes.

The article is aimed at finding solutions to English translation difficulties of Russian proper names based on works by V. Pelevin. The article covers the question of translation of proper names with complex connotations which are typical for postmodern literature and have great importance for comprehension and adequate translation of postmodern works of literature. The article outlines main characteristics of proper names (“Charactonyms”, “Literary names”, “Symbolic names”), their functions in the text, most frequent difficulties of their English translation and errors that occur because of wrong translation of connotative meanings. Translation difficulties are illustrated by examples from available English translations of V. Pelevin’s works and by translation solutions suggested by the authors of the article.

The paper describes the system of nomination of the process of physical perception (visual and acoustic) as reflected in oral mythological narratives and as connected to and bearing certain relation to items of different semantic fields. Also it reveals the system of semantic characteristics expressed by perceptual words and its correlations with the semiotics and pragmatics of the genre. The analysis proved that the use of this lexical system is determined by the content of the text (and first of all by the type of percipient).