2018 Issue №3

The authors analyse the complex genre specificity of the art report “Der Totenwald”, written by Ernst Wiechert after his imprisonment in Buchenwald concentration camp. Three basic intertextual links of this text with Dante’s “The Divine Comedy”, Dostoevsky’s “The House of the Dead” and “Revelation of John” are considered. The authors emphasize the issue of two disjunctive ontologies, forming two fundamental cultural codes of the artistic process in the culture of Germany and Russia.

The famous work by K.Ryleyev is analysed using an axiological approach that allows the authors to interpret its main conflict in a new way. K.Ryleyev pays special attention to an antithesis, showing that Prince Igor concedes to passions throughout his life whereas Princess Olga is always guided by a moral imperative. This antithesis is the main artistic means, and the cornerstone of the plot. The analysis of the main characters shows that Princess Olga, the ruler of the Russian land, is the epitome of the ideal Russian female character. The authors conclude that there are hagiographical references in depicting her image.

Having analyzed fifty-seven letters of the Polish poet Wladyslaw Broniewski and seven letters of Irena Gelman, the author explores the historical and cultural context as well as the poetic vision of the correspondents. Additionally, these letters bear testimony to their romatic feeling. The authors of the letters knew and appreciated Russian literature, which was one of the subject matters in their letters, and valued both classical Russian literature and the literatrure of the time. In their letters, both Broniewski and Gelman often used Russian words and phrases, which reinforced the context created by these reputable writers. The analysed letters of the 1930s are of particular interest because they contain little known biographical facts of the poet and translator Wladyslaw Broniewski.

The article contains an axiological analysis of the novel "The Prospector" by the French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio. The author of the novel employs a variety of artistic means to express the characters’ and his own value systems referring to the biblical myth of the knowledge tree of good and evil.