«ГРАД ПЕТРОВ» И ЕГО СОВРЕМЕННЫЕ РЕПРЕЗЕНТАЦИИ: ОТ КАГАНА ДО ШОСТАКОВИЧА

Abstract

The subject of consideration is two outstanding cultural studies devoted to one city — St. Petersburg. Both works have become an event of modern humanitarianism, which makes it possible to understand what different problems urban studies are opening up today. The first book belongs to Professor M. S. Kagan: the monumental volume «The City of Petrov in Russian Culture» was republished in 2019 and supplemented with a special university textbook. Kagan's book is one of the business cards of the modern St. Petersburg University. Monograph of M. S. Kagan was awarded the Antsifer Prize, awarded for the best contemporary works dedicated to St. Petersburg. The mission and functions of the city in the development of Russian culture are at the center of the study. According to Kagan, the city on the Neva played a solo aesthetic and ideological role in the development of the entire national culture. The proposed article also examines another powerful humanitarian study, although unknown so widely, but also associated with new interpretations of urban culture. 3-volume «Shostakovich at the Leningrad Conservatory: 1913 1930», author of the project and compiler Professor L. G. Kovnatskaya intersects with the concepts of Professor Kagan. In the professional musicological environment, a giant archival database detailing the image of a young genius was appreciated. However, the hero of the study is not only composer Shostakovich, but also the city on the Neva. Often it appears not as elegant and aesthetic as in the book «The City of Petrov in the History of Russian culture». Kovnadskaya's three-volume collection examines the local period on the basis of the richest archival materials: the life of the city and the preservation of unique cultural institutions between the First and Second World War. Petersburg as «the place of Shostakovich» appears different from Petersburg in the book by M. S. Kagan. Another chronotope and heroes, another image of the city and the concept. If the illustrations for Kagan's book are famous paintings or artistic texts, then the book about Shostakovich's city is supplemented with authentic photographs that have not been published before. The purpose of the comparison of these scientific publications undertaken in this article was the problem of the multiplicity of representations of the city in modern humanities. Thus, the article compares two dissimilar and close worlds of St. Petersburg culture.