2025 Issue №1

The relevance of the problem addressed lies in the importance of studying the category of home, which actualizes essential spiritual and moral meanings, and its variant, the anti-home. Analyzing the spatial organization of V. G. Korolenko’s story Yashka reveals that the vertical and horizontal arrangement of prison cells forms the traditional oppositions of “top — bottom” and “right — left” characteristic of Slavic mythology. A corresponding character system is constructed: the protagonist, Yakov, who disturbs everyone with his loud, persistent knocking aimed at denouncing the authorities, is contrasted with other prisoners and wardens. The goal of Yakov’s relentless spiritual struggle, in which he overcomes pain and suffering, is to obstruct all dark forces, which he perceives as servants of the Antichrist. In the narrator’s perception, Yashka appears as an ascetic figure, whose underdeveloped intellect masks a genuine striving to comprehend the structure of the world and a tireless determination to fight evil. Identifying the mortal semantics of the prison topos allows for the conclusion that the prison is perceived by the protagonist and the narrator as an anti-home — “an alien, diabolical space, a place of temporary death” (Lotman). According to the conclusions, the central opposition in the story is “life — death”: the soul’s lifelessness, evident in many of the prison’s inhabitants, stands in stark contrast to Yashka’s restless and suffering soul, who suffers “for all people.” After the martyr-like hero is sent to an asylum, where he is doomed to certain death, the dark forces fully seize the prison topos, which exhibits all the characteristics of an anti-home.

The object of this study is the poem Such merriment it was... by V. A. Sosnora, one of the prominent writers of the second half of the 20th century. The article analyzes the poet’s creative process in working on the text. The study draws on the poem’s draft version, which has not previously been examined by researchers of V. A. Sosnora’s work, as well as versions presented in Soviet and post-Soviet publications. Changes introduced by the author into the work are documented and analyzed. Phonetic, lexical, and punctuation differences across all available versions of the text are explored. Hypotheses are proposed to explain the creative history of the text. Particular attention is paid to stanzas absent in earlier versions but appearing in collections published after 2001. The study confirms the hypothesis about the heightened significance of the phonetic level in V. A. Sosnora’s poetic texts, the semantic function of punctuation marks, and repetition as a device structuring the composition of the poem. A comparative analysis of drafts and all accessible versions of the poetic texts provides material that will enable the development of a model of V. A. Sosnora’s creative process, thereby contributing to a deeper understanding of the poet’s works.