Unknown Article by B.A. Sadovsky “Philosophy of Marriage”: the Pushkinian Context

Abstract

This publication attempts to draw wide scholarly attention to an unpublished article by B.A. Sadovsky entitled “Philosophy of Marriage”. Written in 1923, in a very difficult for the author post-revolutionary period, it reveals his idea of the essence and components of a happy marriage. The defining thesis of the article is that tact is the most valuable of all the personal virtues of a woman entering into marriage. In this regard, the ideal wife, according to Sadovsky, is Tatyana from Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin&8j1;. An analysis of the metatextual connections of the article along with the biographical factor gives reason to conclude that the image of Pushkin’s heroine is conceptually important in terms of both aesthetic and everyday priorities of the author. To assist in the analysis of the text, letters from V.P. Uvarova to Sadovsky were used. Their relationship became one of the incentives for writing the “Philosophy of Marriage&8j1;.