The results of a historical and cultural commentary on a previously unknown inscription by S. A. Yesenin, made by him in 1921 on a piece of paper, which was subsequently pasted into the book “Triptych” (Berlin: Publishing House “Scythians”, 1920), are presented. The scientific study of writers' dedicatory inscriptions as a separate area in domestic literary criticism is currently at the stage of its formation, which determines the relevance of the proposed study. It is proved that the addressee of Yesenin's dedication inscription is his elder friend and mentor in poetry Nikolai Alekseevich Klyuev (1884—1937) and it was made by the poet in December 1921 simultaneously with a short letter also addressed to Klyuev after a twoyear break in their creative communication. It is pointed out that Klyuev’s nickname “deacon Kolya” in Yesenin's script does not have negative connotations and serves as a playful, gentle definition of Klyuev’s mentoring role in Yesenin's poetic fate. An analysis of the structural and semantic connections of Yesenin's texts of the dedicatory inscription and letter makes it possible to establish that the inscription contains an implicit personal message for the renewal of former friendly relations between poets who have drifted away from each other due to creative differences. On the basis of Klyuev's reply message from Vytegra (January 28, 1922), it was established that Yesenin, at the end of December 1921, along with a letter, gave him his new books (including the “Triptych” containing poems of 1917) through Nikolai Ilyich Arkhipov (1887—1967) (a Vytegorsk acquaintance of Klyuev), who came to Moscow as a delegate to the IX All-Russian Congress of Soviets (December 23—28, 1921). It is put forward and substantiated that Yesenin, not being able to make a dedication to Klyuev on the book, sent an autographed sheet with Arkhipov for its subsequent pasting into the book. The authors of the article do not rule out that the pasting of Yesenin's inscription on the title page of the Berlin edition may have a later character. However, even so, it has an undoubted symbolic meaning, appealing to the Scythian philosophy, which united the poets in 1915—1917, being one of the signs of their spiritual kinship, the feeling of which Yesenin will carry through his entire creative life.
This article analyses the Preface for the second edition of A Hero of Our Time by M. Yu. Lermontov written in the spring of 1841, which has not yet become the subject of a special study. The logic of the study is based on one of the provisions of V. G. Belinsky’s critical work on Lermontov’s novel postulating the principles of “interlinear” reading of the Preface, which, according to the critic, can only contribute to the correct understanding of the author’s intention of this text. The article pays special attention to the figurative and symbolic structure of the final paragraph of the Preface, potentially containing references to the texts of the Holy Scripture. The authors provide arguments about the conscious orientation of Lermontov’s thought to biblical sources, which is caused by the writer’s reaction to the first critical responses about the novel, where an important role belongs to the review of S. O. Burachok, as well as a deep creative understanding of “religious disputes” with V. F. Odoevsky, which took place at the time of Lermontov’s work on the Preface to the second edition of the book. The conceptual nature of the statement “people have been fed enough with sweets; their stomachs have deteriorated because of this: bitter medicines, caustic truths are needed” is notable in the dialogic discourse of the author’s Preface. This phrase actualises the reader’s different-quality perception of a literary work and implements the semantics of likening a book to an edible thing and is an obvious reminiscence from chapter 10 of The Revelation of Saint John the Theologian. The phenomenological approach based on this study within the framework of hermeneutic and biographical methods makes it possible to establish that the purpose of Lermontov’s book as a “bitter medicine”, which goes back to the symbolism of bitterness in the Apostolic Revelation, is directly related to the author’s intention. It prompts the reader to realise the illusory “sweetness” of his moral superiority over the hero, the perception of the value meanings of the novel as a single spiritual principle, in which both the world of the hero and the world of the reader exist. In conclusion, the article points to the metatextual unity of the Preface of A Hero of Our Time and the poem Prophet, whose marker is reminiscences from the Revelation of Saint John the Theologian, which makes it possible to speak about the poet’s book as a prophetic novel.
The article examines the artistic and functional status of the image of a dog’s motive in Yesenin’s lyrics in the context of the idea of an organic unity of art and life, which largely determines the poet’s creative philosophy. Three poems are considered in which the image of a dog is the central figure of the text and the constructive basis of its ideological and artistic content: “Song of the Dog” (1915), “Son of a Bitch” (1924), and “Kachalov’s Dog” (1925). The analysis of the subject-figurative structure of each of the poems is carried out, while they selectively comment on individual elements of the poetics of the text, which contributes to a detailed understanding of the role of the studied image. In the analysis of “Songs about a Dog”, attention is drawn to the peculiarities of interaction in the text of image and expression plans, cinematography as the main extra-subjective form of author’s consciousness in the poem, and also to the functional heterogeneity of the lyrical narrative. When considering the work “Son of a bitch”, the emphasis is on the specifics of the space-time structure of the text, namely on the special movement of time initiated by the subject of speech - from an uncertain future to a certain past. When studying the poem “The Dog of Kachalov”, attention is focused on the distinctive features of his genre solution, which is characterized by a synthesis of various genre elements of lyrics: dedication, message, elegy, confession. It is argued that in all three poems the image of a dog serves as a mediator (guide), the semantic variations of which depend on the poetic context and come from the ontological relationship of the world of everyday ideas and the world of spiritual revelations of a person, which determines the main content of Yesenin's artistic philosophy.
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