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The article examines the notion of Czech (Czechoslovak) 'osmichki' in the novels of a famous writer Milan Kundera. The Czech (Czechoslovak) history (inclusive of 'osmichki' of 1968) is shown in the author's literary work not only as a historical and political but an ethical category. It is connected with the problem of national identity and forms the inner world of the characters in Kundera's novels and that of the author himself (the interpenetration of the character's life story and real history). The author views the world and man in this world through the realm of existential and post-modern philosophy trying to understand the drama of a nation along with a man's daily drama in history. The 'past-present-future' triad is interpreted by the writer though the Past as the starting and the turning point. In this view the motif of memory and forgetting gains a particular impact in the early works by Kundera. The choice between memory and forgetting determines the evaluation of both fictional and real historical character as well as the author's view. It provides a peculiar interpretation of history, man in history, national and personal identity through the history of daily routine.

Poetics of the game in the M.A. Bulgakov's novel "Master and Margarita": the image of cat Begemoth Ключевые слова: код, игра, Ганс Сакс, буффонадность, сатира, «ключ» к шифру, каламбур Abstract: The article deals with the question of the functioning of the game code of M. Bulgakov's novel "Master and Margarita". The focus of the researcher is the image of the cat Begemoth, one of the members of the Woland suite. The article explores the connection between the image of the cat and the figure of Hans Sachs, a well-known representative of the German Renaissance. Principles of game conjugation of two figures are buffoonery, carnival, satire. At the same time, the three hypostases of the cat Begemoth (the cat -fat man -a boy with a knight (pazh) refer the reader to the figure of Leo Taxil (the French writer Gabriel Zhogan Pazhes), the punning allusion which is found in the last chapters of the novel and is determined by the writer's position in depicting the religious question.

The aim of the article is to reveal peculiarities of implementation of the theme and the image of the "little" person in the stories by Tatyana Tolstaya, show artistic form of interaction with Gogol and Gogol's images according to the particular aesthetics of the writer. Playing with Gogol's characters -Bashmachkin, old-world landowners, using Gogol's chronotope, the composition, the writer translates the classic theme in ironic-parody plan. Neo-romantic orientation of Tolstaya's texts leads to the existence of a particular philosophical component. Postmodern dominant determines the game with "word": citations, intertextuality. Special aesthetic game with the classics allows the writer to convey the nature of the modern era, the cynicism and absurdity.

The article considers some features of artistic functioning of the European cultural code in certain works by A.I. Solzhenitsyn (the story "Matryona's Place" and the novel "The First Circle"). Consistency of the writer's reference to a medieval Western code, despite its traditional character and close interaction with the Russian classical tradition, is determined by the special outlook of the author, poetics of his creative work and the tasks facing the writer in artistic realization of each concrete work. The theme of Russia (authentic, "nutryanaya"), vividly presented in the story "Matryona's Place" through the symbolic image of Matryona, is a connecting thread not only with the Russian classical tradition and Biblical imagery, but also with the medieval novel about Tristan and Isolde which enables the writer to expressively highlight the opposition "true -false", including the level of implication, to strengthen the realization of the "vice versa" principle and the principle of "false mirrors". The camp theme stated in the novel "The First Circle" logically leads the writer to Dante's "Divine Comedy", to "Dante's" code, forming not only ideological and symbolic value of the novel, but also its architectonics. The symbolics of a circle organizes the chronotopes of the novel, Stalin's hell circles and the horizontal of Non-freedom. The knightly code through the writer's reference to the Grail symbolics and his symbolic search, which is transformed into the search of Truth and Verity in a totalitarian state, forms a moral and philosophical core of the work, a special symbolics -the symbol of a ladder, the way of the knight up to the Grail Castle, which forms a symbolic vertical of Freedom and turns the motive complex of the novel (first of all -the motives of nativity, resurrection, lavation, moral rebirth, etc.) into special moral and philosophical integrity. The genuine "Russianness" of the writer solving in his creative work not only concrete historical problems, but also the problems of moral and philosophical character in search of universal human values, the Truth, the Verity, the Perfection, brings him to a wide field of the West European culture, in particular, of the medieval one.