2009 Issue №8

This article considers the realisation of the Enlightenment landscape utopia on the example of the analysis of the evolution of utopian ideas by Andrei Bolotov in his autobiographical work “Life and Adventures”. The author of the article outlines the destruction of ‘natural state’ of a human being by the realities of the ‘Iron Age’ that followed the Enlightenment.

The article analyses the important cultural universal my means of the oppositions: home — peace; home — freedom, home — happiness in literary and historical context. This approach allows determining the affiliation of characters to the opposite axiological systems, which creates new opportunities for the interpretation of the denouement of the novel.

The article analyses the peculiarities of Rainer Maria Rilke’s “New Poems” in the context of mythological constructions of German Romanticism.
The author formulates the hypothesis of mythologisation as the expression of the sacred in poetry. The epiphany of the image of the Thing (das Ding) is reached by means of artistic representations, which allows stating the connection between the 'matter' of poetry and its higher source, as well as its inner mythological quality.

The article considers the interrelated images of the 'fruit' and the 'mirror' in poems by Rainer Maria Rilke and Boris Pasternak in the context of
their artistic worldviews. The author compares the function of both images in the oeuvre of the poets.

The article compares the existential motifs of 'historical' novel “The Inquisitors” by Jerzy Andrzejewski and the parable chapter “The Grand Inquisitor” from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's “The Brothers Karamazov”. The motif of temptation connected with the interpretation of the Gospel plays the key role in both texts.

The article considers the 20th century Russian history and the spiritual state of the society as the main subjects of the book. The author outlines the connection between the icon and the ancient and contemporary history of Russia, arguing that its function is to bring the mind of a Russian back to the Christian tradition.