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This article studies reader’s experience of A. I. Solzhenitsyn a means of characterizing the consciousness and behavior of the characters in the story Cancer Ward. Different researchers have already paid attention to the role of a book, reading, and a person reading verbal and artistic texts in the artistic world (Don Quixote by Cervantes, Eugene Onegin by A. S. Pushkin, Poor Folk by F. M. Dostoevsky, Madame Bovary by G. Flaubert); however, these works were fragmentary. The relevant aspects of 20th century literature, including Solzhenitsyn’s texts, have been studied even less. The author of this article shows that the appeal to the reader’s experience of the characters is an essential facet of the objective world of the story Cancer Ward. The analysis focuses on the question how a book which has been read becomes a part of a character’s existential and cultural experience, evidence of either their insights, discoveries, or delusions, dead ends. The article substantiates the discussion of the book in the depiction of Solzhenitsyn’s characters from the point of view of cultural anthropology, which studies the relationship of a person with cultural tradition and society, and psychological — with its interest in forms of thinking and communication. Experiences in interpreting what Solzhenitsyn’s characters read are important not only for characterizing individual characters, but also for society as a whole. This article emphasizes that the cultural problems of the Soviet era were due to the “archaeological” type of hermeneutics, which alienated a person from the classical tradition, which is enduringly valuable for the self-determination of a person. There are two types of eventfulness in the narrative organization of the text: plot and existential. A special place in the overall picture belongs to a semi-autobiographical character — Oleg Kostoglotov, whose path from death to resurrection includes the experience of reading and comprehending reality through artistic and philosophical texts. The methodological foundation of the work includes the approaches developed by comparative literature, intertext theory, as well as anthropological, historical, and cultural studies.

The article is devoted to the analysis and interpretation of the myth of “devilry” in the works of the modern Russian poet T. Yu. Kibirov. The myth of “devilry”, which goes back to the poem “Demons” by Alexander Pushkin (1830), has a special place in the history of Russian literature of the 19th and 21st centuries. V. A. Grekhnev identified its main components, and D. M. Magomedova traced the path of myth in post-Pushkin literature, from M. Yu. Lermontov to M. A. Bulgakov. At the same time, the life of the Pushkin-Dostoyevsky myth of “demo­nic” in post-symbolist literature, in independent Russian literature of the 20th century and modern literature remains unexplored. The author of the article, referring to the material of T. Yu. Kibirov’s “Message to Lev Rubinstein” (1989), “Give me a deconstruction! Gave…”, “Good for Chesterton — he lived in England”, “Historiosophical centon”, “We did not sell Christ”, “Happy New Year” etc., the poem “Kara-Baras”, dramatic experiments “The night before and after Christmas”, “Victory over Phoebus”, the chronicles “Lada, or Joy”, reveals elements of similarity with the traditions of A. S. Pushkin and F. M. Dostoevsky: images of empty darkness and chaos, loss of the path, value orientations, an appeal to the symbolism of the ballad genre, presented in a serious, playful, ironic tone. The classical tradition contains important keys and values for understanding new reality and becomes an integral part of the artistic language of its description. At the same time, fidelity to the classics is devoid of a sense of exclusivity, loud pathos, moralism, often includes idyllic, sentimental, humorous tones. The poet’s return to the classical literary tradition occurs after oblivion or denial of its values in Soviet times, which gave rise to the cultural problems of the post-Soviet period. In the course of the work, the methods of comparative literary criticism, intertextual analysis, mythopoetic and historical and cultural studies were used.