Russia and Europe: Dialogue of Cultures and Universal Values in Lidiya Chukovskaya’s Perception

Abstract

Objectives: The article aims at understanding of images of the German world in the Notes about Anna and analyzing the correspondence with her father Korney Chukovsky and the long-term friend, the poet David Samoilov. Methods: In the methodological plan, the research relies on the works in the field of the international literary relations, cross-cultural communication, and on the researches of a creative heritage of the Chukovskys, A.A. Akhmatova, D.S. Samoilov, etc. In the course of the analysis, social and cultural, biographic, comparative and historical, comparative and typological and concrete historical methods are used. Findings: In Notes about Anna German realities arise in direct correlation with the phenomena of the Russian reality, events in public, literary and cultural life, and also with circumstances of private life of the poetess Akhmatova and her biographer Chukovskaya, such as relationship with Punin, life in evacuation in Tashkent at the beginning of the World War II. Separate responses became the result of reading works of the Russian and German writers, getting acquainted with the work of the Russian translators of German literature. The correspondence with her father in the 1920-1960s deals with the presented, bought, read books of the German writers, the judgments about Marx and Engels, Tynyanov's activity as a translator of H. Heine, the ideas connected with preparation of transposition of Reynard the Fox by Goethe for children. Chukovskaya's correspondence with Samoilov reflected mutual interest in the new edition of Ekkerman's book Talks with Goethe in Declining Years of His Life and to the correspondence of Rilke, Pasternak and Tsvetaeva published in the Issues of Literature magazine. Novelty: The circle of images of the German world comprehended by Chukovskaya is wide and multidimensional, however at the same time it is considerably focused on a concrete Russian situation.