Fyodor Sologub Research Articles

Duality of Personality in the Life and Work of Fyodor Sologub

Recently, there has been a lot of interest in the work of Fyodor Sologub, also known as Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov, one of the most prominent representatives of Russian symbolism. As a continuer of the traditions of classical Russian literature, first of all N. Gogol, F. Dostoevsky and A. Chekhov, F. Sologub developed his own approach to the issues of philosophy, aesthetics, religion, and poetics, creating a unique universe model. This article addresses the crisis of realism in the works of F. Sologub, expressed through the motif of gnoseological disorientation, i.e. destruction of consciousness. The feeling of loneliness provided Sologub with powerful incentives for the creative process. The topic of morbid relationship between his poetic personality and inner, individual self, the hero’s dissatisfaction with his own self and his worries regarding inadequate assessment of his creative capabilities ran like a red thread throughout his entire creative life. Crisis and “duality” in the work of F. Sologub is expressed through the motive of knowledge and delusion, loss of correct orientation, through the destruction of consciousness. The hero of F. Sologub is constantly immersed in a state of madness, frenzied detachment from reality, splitting and degeneration.

«Слово же есть человек, человек — соборность, соборность — София»: Гностический миф и конструирование автора в «Софии земной и горней» Л. П. Карсавина

«Sophia the earthly and the heavenly» was written by L.P. Karsavin during his transition from medievism to religious philosophy. The text was first published in the third issue of the almanac Sagittarius (1922). It represents a literary hoax: an «unknown» Gnostic treatise with parodic commentary «from the publisher». The basis of the work is an artistic translation of the chapters of the treatise Pistis Sophia with poetic inserts by Karsavin. The study offers an analysis of the structure of the author's self in the context of the Gnostic myth. The thematic connections of the work with the texts of other authors of the almanac, as well as with other «gnostic» texts by Karsavin are traced. The sources of mystification and principles of parody are revealed. The connections of the work with Alexei Remizov's stylisations («Russia in Letters»), S.P. Bobrov's hoax (a continuation of A.S. Pushkin's poem «Judith»), etc. are established. The connection of Karsavin's poetics with the abstruse language of the Futurists (Velimir Khlebnikov), the poetry of Symbolism (Vladimir Soloviev), and Acmeism («gnostic» poetry of Mikhail Kuzmin) is revealed. The Gnostic line in the works of other authors (Belenson, Kuzmin, Hollerbach, Rozanov) of the almanac helps to decipher the idea of «Sophia...» as the wandering of the soul in the aspect of eros mysticism. The latter theme is the leading one in «Noctes Petropolitanae» (1922), where in the image of Adam Kadmon Karsavin proposes the idea of the all-unified man as a symphony. The Sophia myth is continued in On Beginnings (1925). As a result, the structure of the text of «Sophia...» reveals an ensemble of authors, immanent and external to Karsavin's authorial self. All of them are connected in the multitudinous subject-author. Another meta-theme of the almanac is the Word: its creative power (Fyodor Sologub) and its mute impotence (Artur Lurie). In «Sophia...», in the idea of the Word as the Fullness of being and non-being, a synthesis is realised. For the authorial utterance Karsavin turns to the not-word, constructing from it his own-other multi-subjective self. The text of «Sophia...» is thus a laboratory of the author's multi-subject self, where the model of the symphonic personality is experimentally assembled and tested as the leading concept of Karsavin's subsequent doctrine of personality, in his ontology («On the Beginnings») and philosophy of history.

INTERPRETATION OF THE IMAGE OF GARDEN IN THE COLLECTION OF POEMS “EMBARCATION FOR CYTHERA” BY GEORGY IVANOV (1911)

The article describes the interpretation of the image of garden, presented in the first collection of poems “Embarcation for
 Cythera” by Georgy Ivanov. It is proved that in the context of this artistic unity, the garden archetype is a cross-cutting symbol
 and acts as one of its axiological dominants. It is shown that the semantics and poetics of Georgy Ivanov’s image of a garden
 is very multifaceted and is motivated by the author’s dialogue with the literary and mythological ancient tradition, refracted
 through the influence on the poet of the works by Antoine Watteau, Konstantin Somov, Alexandre Benoîs, Paul-Marie
 Verlaine, Innokenty Annensky, Mikhail Kuzmin, Igor Severyanin, Fyodor Sologub. The article notes that the structure of
 the image of the garden, created in the debut collection of Georgy Ivanov, includes both the archetype of the Water, inherited
 from East Slavic mythology, and the apocalyptic symbol of the “bloody moon”. For the semantic filling of the image of
 garden the motif of languor (tenderness), often found in the lyrics of poets of the turn of the century (I.Annensky, F.Sologub,
 M.Kuzmin, Nikolai Gumilyov), is of great importance. The semantic evolution of the garden archetype represents the idea
 of the path, which is significant for the examined poet, which is key for the artistic consciousness of not only the authors of
 the Fin de Siècle, but also for Russian literature as a whole. Getting used to the time and space of different and at the same
 time somewhat similar “gardens”, Georgy Ivanov outlines the vector of his own creative development, predicts the movement
 towards the collection “Gardens”. He outlines the concept of “wanderings” through different mythologies and cultures, which
 is relevant both for the aesthetics of Russian symbolists and acmeists.

THE IMAGE OF CHILDHOOD IN THE SHORT STORIES BY FYODOR SOLOGUB

The article analyzes the features of the artistic embodiment of the image of childhood in the short stories by Fedor Sologub, a Russian writer of the late XIX — early XX century. In his works, the author turned to the theme of the tragedy of human earthly existence and the image of a suffering child. The theme of childhood in Sologub’s creative quest is integrated in the context of the leading artistic and aesthetic trends, trends, styles of the turn-of-the-century period – symbolism, naturalism, decadence. In his short stories, which address children's images and destinies, Fyodor Sologub assigns a dominant role to symbols. The writer’s works about childhood contain numerous symbolic images that acquire unexpected forms and semantic content. The author delves into the world of children's consciousness, which is turned towards transcendental, supersensible knowledge. In this regard, Sologub’s short stories are saturated with images of death and motifs of a child’s altered consciousness. The essential features of Fyodor Sologub’s ideas of childhood are determined by the specifics of his philosophical beliefs. The writer’s creative path and his worldview are inextricably linked with the philosophical views of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. The author’s desire to embody the cult of beauty, death and madness in his works of fiction about children was the result of his fascination with the ideas of German philosophers. The theme of the child hero’s departure from the hardships of earthly reality into the world of dreams, art, beauty, madness, death was prioritized in the writer’s work. The saturation of texts with landscape and color images, which are often juxtaposed, contrasted, was an important setting of the artistic world of Sologub’s short stories about childhood. Color symbolism is extremely significant in the works of the writer, revealing the theme of childhood. The ambiguity and semantic saturation of color imagery endows the short stories about childhood with uniqueness and individuality. The principle of duality, the idea of the supra-world nature of the child-hero, the borderline of his inner worldview was expressed in the writer's prose devoted to the theme of childhood. The image of a child appearing in the short stories fully reflects the author’s belief in the mystery, uniqueness, and incomprehensibility of the inner world of a little person. The writer felt close to the theme of suffering and humiliation of a child, which first emerged and was fully shaped in the Russian literature of the XIX century.

The problem of physical punishment of a child in the family raised by Fyodor Sologub in his prose and journalism

The problem of physical punishment of a child in the family raised by Fyodor Sologub in his prose and journalism

АРХЕТИПЫ СТРАХА И ПРОБЛЕМА ТРАНСФОРМАЦИИ ГОТИЧЕСКОГО ХОРРОРА В СИМВОЛИСТСКОМ РОМАНЕ

The article is dedicated to the research of gothic tradition transformation in symbolist novels of Fyodor Sologub, Valery Bryusov, Andrei Bely, Aleksey Remizov, Aleksey Skaldin and others. Archetipical and symbolic images and motifs of abyss, chaos, labyrinth and circle are analyzed. They define the change of the functions of gothic horror. The study looks at the problem of representation of ritual-mythological “rite de passage”, images of “dance macabre”, visual and sound symbols that represent existential and metaphysic fear.

“The Star of Venusˮ in Russian poetry of the 20th century: mythopoetic symbolism

Being a part of the astronomical, temporal, anthropomorphic linguocultural codes, Venus as a celestial body has a significant place in the Russian verbal culture. This statement can be proved not only when analysing linguistic units, but also when referring to literary works, in particular to Russian lyric poetry. Twenty four poetic contexts, which include the image of Venus, have been analysed in the article (the works by Alexander Pushkin, Georgy Adamovich, Pavel Antokolsky, Leonid Martynov, Mikhail Zenkevich, Alexander Blok, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Nikolay Gumilyov, Marina Tsvetaeva, Fyodor Sologub, Mikhail Kuzmin, Georgy Shengeli, Ilya Selvinsky, Konstantin Simonov, Anatoliy Demyanov). The authors focus on the Russian 20th century lyric poetry because it is there that Venus appears as a star rather than a planet, and this corresponds to the archaic notions of this celestial body. Mercury and Mars are also called 'stars' in the 20th century poetry, but in a much smaller number of contexts than Venus. The authors come to the conclusion that Venus in Russian poets’ works can symbolise the onset of morning / evening, love, paradise, loneliness, fate, youth, old age, life journey. Moreover, Venus is included into poetic conceptions (it corresponds to the image of the Beautiful Lady in Alexander Blok’s poetry). The set of the above-mentioned symbolic meanings correlates with the archaic notions of Venus, widens them and makes the image of this celestial body mythopoetic.

The image of the “horror” world in the “Fin de siècle” prose (Mikhail Artsybashev, Fyodor Sologub, Leonid Andreyev)

The article examines the problem of typological features of the chronotope of the prose of the writers of the “Fin de siècleˮ, who defined the model of the world order in the image of the “horror worldˮ. The goal is analysis of the prose samples of the middle epic of Mikhail Artsybashev, Fyodor Sologub (Teternikov), Leonid Andreyev. Perversion, the corporeality of the depicted reality are the main chronotopic features found in all the literary texts involved for consideration. As we can conclude, the writers of the “Fin de siècleˮ really do make fear and horror a constantly sounding plot-forming motif. However, this constant motif for the literary process of the turn of the century sounds in a unique personal key. The writers offer their own architecture of the image of the “horrorˮ. Thus, the sound of the fear motif is an artistic characteristic of the text, it determines both the dominant of its poetics, and the worldview and attitude of the creator of the text.

„Уж храма Божьего бегу я…”. Федор Сологуб: от религиозного поэта к богоборцу

The article is an attempt to interpret selected works by Fyodor Sologub ( Церковь, В моей лампаде ясный свет..., Опять сияние в лампаде..., Моя верховная Воля), characterized by the lyrical I’s gradual departure, a turning away from God towards the forces of evil, deism and demonic solipsism. These works display the complex motifs typical of modernist aestheticism; inspired by the philosophical thought of A. Schopenhauer: his pessimism, disillusionment with the world, despair, existential emptiness, complete loneliness etc. The lyrical subject finds himself in a certain spiritual wilderness. His relationship with God undergoes a drastic change. The hitherto Christian figure of the merciful Father is replaced by the strict and cruel judge, the evil demiurge. The poet gives him the name of the Old Testament God – Adonai. However, by his actions (evil, insidious and vengeful), he rather resembles the Gnostic Jaldabaoth or Satan – the opponent of Christians. The interpreted texts also reveal the authorial lyrical speaker as fascinated with “the new genius” – Lucifer, whose image becomes positively redefined. He gains the status, as well as the features and powers traditionally ascribed to the Christian God.

Соперники в символизме

The article examines the reception of Western European modernism in Russia in the late 19 th — early 20th centuries, with the emphasis on the phenomenon of the “crooked mirror” of a different nation perception, which not only endows the work of a foreign author with new functions, but sometimes also gives it a new scale (as with Byron, Zola, some of whose novels were published in Russian translation earlier than in the original in France, the Parnassian poet Jose Maria de Heredia, who received real fame in Russia, in contrast to the very short recognition in his homeland). The subject of the analysis is the texts that are maximally indicative and convincing for the stated topic, above all the translations from Paul Verlaine by Fyodor Sologub, who, along with Bryusov, opened the French poet to the Russian reader, and his original poems, created in the course of and largely as a result of work on translations. The systematization of observations on specific texts makes it possible to conclude that Russian Symbolists, adhering to sometimes opposite views on art, relying on the authority of Baudelaire and Verlaine who are perceived in France more as predecessors of Symbolism than its representatives, walked alongside them, never meeting along the way, but recognizing the “other” as “equal”.

Новонайденный экспромт Федора Сологуба. Из дополнений к dubia

The article introduces A. V. Kartashev’s memoir note about Fyodor Sologub, which was published in the obscure magazine Fight for Russia (Paris, 1929) and thus missed by the researchers; Sologub’s anti-monarchical impromptu, recorded by the memoirist during the First Russian Revolution, is introduced to the academic community; it is correlated with the poet’s uncensored texts that circulated and were subsequently lost, such as the satirical cycle «The Royal Pastille» (1905).

ПОЕЗІЯ ФЕДОРА СОЛОГУБА І ФРАНЦУЗЬКИЙ СИМВОЛІЗМ

The article is devoted to a comparative analysis of the lyrics of Fyodor Sologub and his predecessors, French symbolist poets Paul Verlaine and Charles Baudelaire. The poetry of Sologub is considered in the context of the main provisions of symbolist aesthetics, set forth in the theoretical works of Jean Moréas and lectures of Dmitry Merezhkovsky. Fyodor Sologub became interested in poetry of the French Symbolists at the end of the 1880s and did not stop thereafter. The first significant poet for the Russian symbolist was Paul Verlaine, whose poems were so consonant with Sologub’s worldview that the latter considered them as an organic part of his work. The picturesqueness and musicality of Verlaine's poems, his methods of suggestion, mystical irony, as well as the highest level of verification became for Sologub a starting point and one of the most important guidelines in his work. Sologub enters into a poetic dialogue with Charles Baudelaire. The undertaken comparative analysis of their poems showed that, having common aesthetic features, aims and values (the idea of correspondences, the opposition of the sacred and profane worlds, the aestheticization of the ugly and death, the desire for infinity, theomachism, etc.) and using similar poetic techniques (cyclization, associations, suggestion, grammatical constructions, sound writing, etc.), each poet, however, creates a unique artistic world. In our opinion, the main thing that is the fundamental difference between Baudelaire’s worldview platform and Sologub’s position is the possibility (for Baudelaire) or impossibility (for Sologub) of liberating a person from an illusory and deceitful material world, in which a person is doomed to suffering, and achieving the desired Ideal. In other words, Baudelaire asks the reader riddles, the answer to which is difficult to find, but possible, and Sologub puts the reader face to face with the mystery of the universe, where each new answer is not final and produces more and more new questions.

«…В буквальном смысле слова пересоздать на другом языке»: к вопросу о специфике переводческой манеры Федора Сологуба

The article considers the specifi c features of the translation style of the greatest symbolist poet Fyodor Sologub (1863–1927), who was one of the best translators of the French Modernists, primarily Paul Verlaine, into Russian. The analysis of various versions of the translation of Verlaine’s poem «Bruxelles. Simples Fresques. I» demonstrates how Sologub was searching for the best way to render the rhythm, phonics, vocabulary, fi gurative structure of the original, achieving «accuracy» in the rendition of a particular level of the text, yet sometimes failing to preserve its main semantic dominant.

Декадентство Федора Сологуба и шизоанализ Виктора Ерофеева: проблемы связи и преемственности

The paper aims to reveal continuity of the Russian decadence and postmodernism by the example of Fyodor Sologub’s and Viktor Yerofeyev’s works. Scientific originality of the study lies in the fact that F. Sologub’s novel “The Little Demon” is analysed within the framework of the modern philosophical and literary paradigm, which allows identifying similarity of the decadent writer’s and the post-modernist author’s creative approaches: abandoning such a basic principle of the Russian classical and modernistic culture as “philosophy of hope”, choosing a pathologic personality as a main personage, “simulativization” of reality, tendency for gamification. The research findings are as follows: the author proves that decadence, which deviated from the mainstream of the Russian literature, is a forerunner of domestic postmodernism.

Understanding The Petty Demon Through the Perspective of Disability and Gender Theory

Fyodor Sologub's tale of crazed sinfulness, The Petty Demon, has remained in the heart of Russian culture since its introduction in 1907, leaving what can best be described as an appreciated scar. The greatest Byronic tales utilize the acceptance of decadence to create complex characters that allow audiences to peer into the darker side of humanity, and often themselves, while still maintaining some emotional connection to the antihero. While the depravity displayed in The Petty Demon is often the most prominent feature, the contrasted relationships of the characters Lyudmila and Peredonov reveal key insights toward understanding of the novel's thematic and socioemotional framing of women and the mentally ill. These patterns are analyzed in the context of the novel and compared to those in other works of the Russian canon with the help of papers by Hustis, Mills, and Greene. Lyudmilla's few unsatisfactory and foreign excuses for her perversion fail to help her escape the sexist symbolism she embodies as a female character, resulting in her solidification as a gossiping temptress with little room for reader empathy or a separation from the basic stereotypes women were already saddled with. Peredonov's escalating madness is contrasted against her evils in a manner that accentuates her follies while failing to separate many of his cruel actions from his mental illness. The resulting feelings coalesce to project the characters' worst qualities upon the innocent and underprivileged through the vehicles of familiar archetypes, contributing to the perpetuation of harmful cultural perspectives on such groups.

Fyodor Sologub’s Lecture Russia in Dreams and Expectations in the Urals (1916): With Reference to Archival Materials and Regional Press

In 1916, Fyodor Sologub visited the Urals as part of a tour with the lecture Russia in Dreams and Expectations . He came to Ufa and Chelyabinsk in February and to Yekaterinburg and Perm in October. The enthusiastic and patriotic lecture was dedicated to the providential role of symbolism in world history. It claimed that the existence of symbolism was essential and necessary, however, in view of the circumstances of war, the emphasis shifted towards emotional reflection on Russian messianism. This article restores the details of the tour, the organisation of local performances, and analyses the reaction of the provincial press to the lecture (newspapers Ufimskaia Zhizn’ , Zauralski Kray , Golos Priural’ia , Permskaia Zhizn’ , etc.). These materials are supplemented by documents kept in the Sologub archive of the Institute of Russian Literature of the RAS (letters, postcards, telegrams, lecture notes, and manuscripts of poems). Special attention is paid to newspaper articles, feuilletons, and detailed reactions to Sologub’s performances. Most of the authors considered Sologub’s thoughts to be untimely, irrelevant, and not related to military and pre-revolutionary reality. The lecture was an opportunity for them to explain their own points of view on “dreams and expectations” of Russia. The article contains previously unpublished excerpts from letters to Sologub from Sergey Vinogradov and Ivan Ushakin. In addition, it is established that one of Sologub’s poems was written in the Urals.

Дантовские мотивы в романе Ф. Сологуба «Мелкий бес»

Дантовские мотивы в романе Ф. Сологуба «Мелкий бес»

Верлен в подстрочниках и Верлен в переводе: творческая лаборатория Федора Сологуба

This article examines the development of the translation manner of Fyodor Sologub. The study of the poet’s archive makes it possible to highlight a number of preparatory materials for Sologub’s translations from Paul Verlaine, in particular, interlinear translations. Sologub’s experiments with interlinear translations, which in his case represent a hybrid genre (interlinear translations that include a large number of different dictionary variants of words) are of great importance for the theory, history, and practice of literary translation. Using specific examples, the essay demonstrates that Sologub worked not just with the original text, traditional interlinear translation, and written out words. He employed his “expanded” interlinear translation where he could freely navigate, choose and rearrange words, try their “sound” while seeking to keep their meaning. The authors argue that Sologub’s translating method consisted in selecting Russian words on the basis of the interlinear translation that not only conveyed the original but also made it possible to create a new lexical, grammatical, metric, phonetic, and emotional unity close to the translator’s worldview mindset and aesthetic views.

«Первый» или «неудачный»: о роли перевода стихотворения Поля Верлена «Le ciel est, par-dessus le toit…» в творческой биографии Федора Сологуба

The article analyses the translation of the poem "Le ciel est, par-dessus le toit..." by Paul Verlaine (collection Sagesse (Wisdom), 1880), which marked the beginning of Fyodor Sologub’s career as one of the most successful Russian translators of the French poet’s verse. The creative history of the translation is reconstructed, using the data from the Sologub Archive that document the history of the emergence of various versions of his text. Presumable reasons why the attention of Sologub the translator was attracted by this poem by Verlaine are considered in the context of Sologub’s original work.

Из материалов к биографии Вадима Баяна: письма к Федору Сологубу и Ан. Н. Чеботаревской (вступительная статья, подготовка текста и комментарии А. В. Крусанова и Т. В. Мисникевич)

The article presents the letters of the poet Vadim Bayan (Vladimir Ivanovich Sidorov; 1888–1966), remembered mostly in connection with the literary biography of V. V. Mayakovsky, to the prominent symbolist writer Fyodor Sologub and his wife An. N. Chebotarevskaya. The letters outline the psychological portrait of a provincial amateur writer, who tries to penetrate the circle of the metropolitan literary elite, as well as document the nuances of the relationships between the various lite rary groups in 1913–1914.