Queen Of Spades Research Articles

«Пиковая дама»: зоны молчания и призрак исторического романа

“The Queen of Spades” by Pushkin is considered in the article as two stories in one: the first is an exemplary, in the spirit of Hoffmann, fantastic story, very convincing from the point of view of the “poetics of expressiveness” and completely independent; the second is “analytical”, which contains the possibility of explaining a fantastic plot and, consequently, its “cancellation”. This “cancellation” itself has already been made by the author in another article, and this one is devoted to its consequences: filling in various kinds of omissions and omissions, the main one of which is the Paris episode. After the cancellation of the fantastic plot, it comes to the fore and poses many new mysteries to the reader. This story is structured as an analytical riddle with pre-given, incompatible answers to the question of what the secret of the three cards is (a chance, a fairy tale, powder cards, a joke). Since this secret is revealed three times in The Queen of Spades, it is possible to prove that all these answers are correct in relation to certain episodes of this story. The “cancellation” of the fantastic plot transforms both the events and the characters of this story. The heroine of the Paris episode turns out to be not a frivolous beauty who came to Paris to waste her life and her husband’s millions, but Catherine’s maid of honor and confidant. It was in this role that she was briefly acquainted with the Count of Saint-Germain, who helped her out with money by inventing the secret of three cards for her husband. The story of Chaplitsky, who lost a huge sum, “I remember, to Zorich,” that is, to Catherine’s favorite, also appears in a different light. Consideration of the historical context to which the formula “sixty years ago” refers allows us to see the Paris episode of “The Queen of Spades” as one of the fragments of a possible historical novel, a kind of double of “The Captain’s Daughter,” written by Pushkin three years later. The action of this unwritten novel could take place against the backdrop of the RussianTurkish war, Polish events, intrigues of European governments, the Pugachev rebellion – the whole complex of political circumstances in the life of Europe and Russia “sixty years ago.”

The effect of root fertilizing with organic mineral fertilizer BioEcoss on the vegetable pepper plants development in the central zone of the Krasnodar Territory

The article presents the results of studies conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of BioEcoss fertilizers in various concentrations in hot vegetable pepper cultivation. The experiment was conducted in 2022/2023 in a glazed winter greenhouse, geographically located in the Kuban State Agrarian University Botanical Garden, Krasnodar. The object of research is the variety of hot vegetable pepper “Pikovaya Dama” (“Queen of Spades”). It was found that the introduction of the studied organomineral fertilizer in any studied concentration (from 1% to 3%) accelerated the plants flowering onset and fruits biological ripeness compared with the control, increased productivity and average fruit weight. The highest fertilizer concentration in the experiment (3%) contributed to earlier fruit harvest dates (earlier than the control for 18 days), fruiting period extension, increase in fruits number on branches of the first and second order to 10 pieces (at the control – 7), fruits average weight increase. The yield in this variant of the experiment was 0.66 kg / m2, which was higher than the control by 0.42 kg / m2, other variants with the addition of a less concentrated solution – by 1.4-2.1 times. The use of fertilizers in any concentration contributed to 100% marketability of fruits.

Principles and Procedures of the Construction of Opera Scenarios

"The construction of opera scenarios involves the development of a dramatic and narrative framework upon which an opera is built. These scenarios serve as the foundation for the libretto, music, staging, and overall production of the opera. In this introduction, we will explore the principles and procedures that guide the creation of opera scenarios. In summary, constructing an opera scenario is a complex and collaborative process that involves the careful consideration of narrative, character, music, and cultural context. The principles and procedures outlined here provide a foundation for the creation of opera scenarios that can captivate audiences and convey the depth of human emotion through music and drama. Over time, the evolution of the singing voice follows a phenomenon of symbiosis between words and music. The intertwining of the act of speaking with that of singing is constantly found in the concerns of the creators in ancient monody, Greek declamation, Gregorian chant, in the polyphonic style, in the opera performance as well as in all the ramifications of the vocal genre. Keywords: opera scenario construction, musical drama, analysis of the libretto, Eugene Onegin, The Queen of Spades."

“The Specter of Drama in the Specter of Another Drama”: The Anamorphosis of the Singspiel and the Palimpsest Effect in Aspern by Salvatore Sciarrino

The article explores the early opera by Salvatore Sciarrino, based on Henry James’s novelette The Aspern Papers. Sciarrino’s Aspern has aroused considerable interest both in the aspect of the transposition of James’s prose into the musical sphere, and in terms of the formation of the poetics of musical theater and the principles of the composer’s dramatic thinking. The experimental character of the singspiel (in the author’s definition) was stipulated by the idea of representation as an act of composition. Rejecting the traditional format, Sciarrino and his co-author of the libretto Giorgio Marini created an intertextual connection between the novelette and the opera, having turned the reading of the text into an element of dramaturgy, along with other components — the singing, the music and the stage decorations. The protagonists of the story (the Narrator, Giuliana, Titta) dissolved in the recitations of various actors. The arias based on the texts of Lorenzo da Ponte from Le Nozze de Figaro, performed by one single singing protagonist, the Female Singer, offstage, created an ironic estrangement on the scenic (between the dramatic performance in spoken dialogues and the music) and the stylistic levels (between da Ponte’s text and Sciarrino’s music). The special optics of artistic imagination established this way, making it possible to view the one through the other, helped the “ghost” of Mozart, the musical equivalent of the “divine Aspern,” appear. Mozart’s “disturbing presence” also explains the unexpected genre-related definition given by the composer to his work. The singspiel becomes an object of anamorphosis, in which elements of the genre projected from the past acquire a strange oneiric form in the present. Reflecting on Sciarrino’s invitation to search for “music in the music and drama in the drama” in Aspern, the author of the article reveals the connections between the Italian maestro’s opera and Piotr Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades, set up by the palimpsest effect hidden in James’ original text. An important connecting link between the two operas is the figure of Mozart as the ideal of “the Composer”, who had managed to absorb and transform the traditions of different eras and national schools of composition. In this light, Sciarrino’s Aspern becomes a musical metaphor of the search for and the finding of oneself in the “traces” of others.

Dialogues with Pushkin: From Tchaikovsky to Stravinsky and The Rake’s Progress

A key feature of the study of Russian opera has been its interest in ‘page-tostage’ adaptation of canonical works of literature. Behind this research story, in many respects, there is only the fact that a significant number of Russian operas are really based on literary primary sources. The contribution of philologists who have studied this subject on a par with specialists in the history of music also played a role in its credibility. This logocentric approach overlooks, however, another tradition, one in which the libretto is the product of a negotiation between agents and where the relationship between the source text and operatic adaptation is attenuated. The work that most fully subverts the ‘pageto-stage’ tradition and fully incorporates the librettist as a co-creator of the finished composition is The Rake’s Progress, with music by Igor Stravinsky and words by Wystan Hugh Auden and Chester Kallman. It may seem eccentric to see The Rake’s Progress as a Russian opera, yet as this chapter argues, it is certainly an opera shaped by aspects of Stravinsky’s Russian origins, upbringing, and education, and somehow spoken ‘in translation’. In particular, it engages in a series of intertextual dialogues with the legacy of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades.

Опера П.И. Чайковского «Пиковая дама» в свете поэтики погребального обряда

Tchaikovsky's opera «The Queen of Spades» is considered in the context of the poetics of the funeral rite. The correspondences between the musical and ritual text can be traced at the level of the concept (comprehension of the phenomenon of death as a spatial displacement, transition from one's own to someone else's), and its embodiment. Parallels can be seen in the interpretation of the structure of texts (the unfolding of the opera's thanatalogical plot unfolds according to the rites de passage scheme: separation — intermediate period — joining), intra-textual structures (interpretations of the key form of dialogues representing the struggle of life and death, the idea of a difficult path), symbolic functions (one's own/life, someone else's/death, staying between one's own and someone else's). Special attention is paid to the analysis of the semantic motives of the opera, identical to the motives of the funeral rite at each of its stages (end, dying, farewell, alienation, omen — at the first, movement, transition — at the second, redistribution of the share — at the third). Consideration of the «Queen of Spades» in a mythopoetic perspective reveals the com­poser's composition in a new light.

Кинематографические приемы в оперном театре России 1920-х годов

The article examines cinematography’s influence on the Soviet opera theatre of the 1920s. By the beginning of this decade, cinema rapidly gained popularity and began being perceived as a serious competitor to theatre. Awareness and comprehension of the new “threat” reasonably led to appeals for upgrading theatrical language with the help of new technical means. There were several innovations in the operas on stage: the use of intense straight lighting with the help of floodlights, montage as a director’s technique, the use of film screen in opera productions. It all confirmed that the process of cinemafication of the theatre had also affected the opera stage. The new trends expressed themselves in the productions of Sergey Radlov (“Vozzek” by Alban Berg), Nikolay Smolich (“The Golden Cockerel” by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, “Johnny Plays” by Ernst Krenek), Iosif Lapitsky (“Salome” by Richard Strauss, “The Queen of Spades” by Petr Tchaikovsky). Thus, in his version of “The Golden Cockerel” (1923), the opera director N. Smolich used a film projection, and then, staging E. Kshenek’s opera “Johnny Plays” (1928), he used animation. In the “The Queen of Spades” (Experimental Theatre), I. Lapitsky while trying to make the action cinematically dynamic, divided it into forty small episodes. The influence of cinema can also be traced in opera performances of the 1920s. The most vivid example is Dmitry Shostakovich’s opera “The Nose” with his special montage style of action. Opera cinemafication didn’t reach such heights as in dramatic theatre and faced a different, not always approving, reaction from the musical press. The time of ambitious experiments ended in the 1930s with a change in the country’s cultural policy.

«ПИКОВАЯ ДАМА» ПУШКИНА: К ВОПРОСУ О ГЕНЕЗИСЕ ЖАНРА ПЕТЕРБУРГСКОЙ ПОВЕСТИ

The Petersburg Tale is a specific genre formation within the framework of the Petersburg text of Russian literature. “The Queen of Spades” is traditionally regarded by researchers as Pushkin’s second (after the poem “The Bronze Horseman”) Petersburg Tale. However, the receptive history of the text indicates that this reading only emerged at the beginning of the 20th century. In this article an attempt is made to trace changing of the correlation between the readers’ reception strategies and the narrative strategies of the text at different times, and to describe the mechanisms of readers’ interpretation, which resulted in the transformation of “The Queen of Spades” from a secular short story (close to The Belkin Cycle) into the Petersburg Tale.

ОПЕРА «ПИКОВАЯ ДАМА» П. И. ЧАЙКОВСКОГО КАК ЯЗЫКОВОЙ КОД РУССКИХ МЛАДОСИМВОЛИСТОВ (НА МАТЕРИАЛЕ МЕМУАРОВ А. БЕЛОГО)

The article considers the language code, which was constructed by the Younger generation of Russian Symbolists under the influence of Tchaikovsky’s opera “The Queen of Spades”. The author discovers and reveals the mechanisms which allow one to evaluate the surrounding reality through the use of images borrowed from the structure of the musical text. The material illustrating the phenomenon is the memoirs encoded in the language of “The Queen of Spades” from the memoirs of A. Bely. In them Tomsky’s opera ballad, the pastorale “The Shepherdess’s Sincerity”, the romance “It is already Evening”, the aria “And on rainy days they gathered” and the image of old countess perform the function of signifiers. The signified are disclosed with the help of structural-semiotic method. It is proved that references to the elements of the opera encode A. Bely’s reflection on the summer events of 1905 and the situation of A. G. Kovalenskaya. The novelty of the research is a significant expansion of the zone of influence of Tchaikovsky’s work on the Younger generation of Russian Symbolists.

О НЕКОТОРЫХ ПОДТЕКСТАХ «ЗАМЕТКИ О “ГРАФЕ НУЛИНЕ”» А. С. ПУШКИНА

The article explores the idea of quotation-allusion layer depth of Pushkin’s «Notes on “Count Nulin”». The article closely examines its resemblance to B. Pascal’s “thought” about “the Cleopatra’s nose”. The author demonstrates that it appears in similarities of the ways of thought, the nature of the relationship between small causes and global consequences as well as ironic modality of both notes. The article expresses and substantiates the idea that Pascal’s way of paradoxical convergence of heterogeneous phenomena is reflected in the composition of Pushkin’s madrigal-type poems, as well as in the nature of the development of events in “The Queen of Spades”.

Эмоция как феномен вокально-оперного искусства

The article examines the phenomenon of emotions as one of the leading patterns of creation of the vocal score of the singer-actor, the communicative intermediary between the composer, the librettist, the singer-actor and the listener-viewer. Opera as a synthetic art unites together music, poetry, production, scenography, the art of face-paint and costumes. By means of melody, its rhythmical and intonational texture builds up and ciphers those emotions which the singer must arouse from the listener-viewer. Frequently composers in the piano-vocal scores of their operas have provided descriptions of the stage settings, as well as nuances of stage motion and plastic, in order to bring out emotional colors to a greater degree by means of pantomime. In such situations it is important to research the means of operatic expression not merely from the point of view of musicology or theater studies. The phenomenon of opera requires study in a direct connection with psychology, physiology and sociology of culture. The authors of the article update the concept of the emotional score of the vocal parts of the operatic composition presenting a completed form from the positions of psycho-physiology of emotions and emphasizing the importance of its examination. The vocal part of Herman from Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades is chosen as the object of studies.

The concept of timbre-role in ukrainian opera: interpretation and development prospects

The concept of timbre-role in ukrainian opera: interpretation and development prospects

The Dictionary of the Author’s Language and Explanatory Dictionaries of the Literary Language: System and Quantitative Correlations

This article deals with the problem of the correlation of the vocabulary of explanatory dictionaries of the Russian language of different types by S.I. Ozhegov with the vocabulary presented in the author’s dictionary - the Dictionary of the Pushkin language. The system parameters of the ratio were revealed during the analysis of the Large Academic Dictionary, the Small Academic Dictionary, the Dictionary of the Pushkin Language and two pieces by A.S. PushkIn: “The Queen of Spades” and “The Captain’s Daughter”. It is shown that one of the effective methods of studying the system properties of probabilistic objects, such as the lexical composition of a language, is the calculation of the distribution. It is shown that the distribution of words by the number of meanings is one of the essential structural characteristics of vocabulary. The concept of a “semantic trigger” is introduced as a carrier of implicit semantic information that triggers a search for the relevant meaning of a polysemic word in the mind of a native speaker. The analysis of the relationship between the dictionary of the text, the consolidated dictionary of the author’s language and the general language dictionary according to the degree of polysemy of the vocabulary presented in them showed that a consistent increase in average characteristics in the text vocabulary up to maximum in Large Dictionary which is associated with the gradual accumulation of values realized in increasingly extensive text arrays, in increasingly diverse contexts. The observed strengthening of the zone of medium-polysemic words in the general language dictionary in comparison with the idiolect dictionary is a reflection of the fact that the most common, repeated for dictionaries of each of the private spheres (following the service words) are commonly used and broad-thematic words occupying the medium-polysemic zone.

Ballet «Queen Of Spades» by G. I. Banshchikov (to the Problem of Artistic Interpretation of the Story of A. S. Pushkin)

The focus of the article is the ballet «Lady Peak» by the modern St. Petersburg composer Gennady Ivanovich Banshchikov, which is an original artistic interpretation of the story of the Russian writer Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin «Queen of Spades». The relevance of the study is that, on the one hand, the composer’s creative heritage has not yet received a comprehensive understanding in musicology, many compositions are waiting for their researcher. On the other hand, the performance of G. Banshchikov presents an original interpretation of the semantic ideas laid down by the genius of the word in the story. The analysis of the ballet revealed the specifics of the author’s reading, which consists in the implementation at all levels of drama of the card atmosphere, the generation of which was Pushkin’s «Queen of Spades». The results of the study make it possible to attribute the ballet of G. Banshchikov to one of the bright artistic peaks in the history of musical and stage incarnations of the story. At the same time, through the prism of the literary source, the composer actualizes serious philosophical topics in «Queen of Spades», integrating into the leading trends in the development of domestic art of the late 20th century

ДЖЕРЕЛА ЦИТАЦІЙ ІЗ ДАНТЕ У ШЕВЧЕНКОВИХ ЛИСТАХ

In his works, Shevchenko repeatedly mentioned the name of the Italian poet of the Renaissance Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), used reminiscences and quotes from his work, which indicates a high level of knowledge of "The Divine Comedy" author's legacy (c. 1308–1321). Until now, it was believed that all such references to the poetry by the famous Italian have long been carefully considered and thoroughly studied. However, a closer examination revealed a lack of details about the sources of Shevchenko's acquaintance with the famous poem. The traditional methods of literary source studies and methods of philological analysis applied in this study made it possible in some cases to bring to light, with a high degree of probability, the translations Shevchenko read and the publications he used, although absolute accuracy cannot be achieved here. The author of the article argues that Shevchenko knew the aphorism from the Fifth song in "The Inferno" used in a letter to Osyp Bodians'kyi dated November 15, 1852, not in Avraam Norov's translation, but in Dmitrii Min's translation published in 1843 in the journal "Moskvitianin". It is still unclear where Shevchenko found a quote from the song XVII in "The Paradiso" he used in a letter to Bronisław Zaleski (in the second half of June 1856). It was possible to discover that the poet knew this aphorism, most likely through Alexander Pushkin's novel "The Queen of Spades" (1833), first published in the popular journal "Biblioteka dlia chteniia" in 1834. As a result, the author rejected as unconvincing a hypothesis offered previously by commentators that Shevchenko knew "The Inferno" in a Russian translation by Elizaveta Kologrivova, published for two years in six installments, which the Ukrainian poet most likely did not know. In addition, her translation did not relieve artistic flawlessness (tercins in the original are reproduced in prose). Most likely, Shevchenko heard a lot about "The Divine Comedy", especially about its first part, and read some fragments available in the periodicals, in particular, as it was proved, in a translation by Dmitrii Min.

And again reinterpretation of the "Queen of Spades" by A.S. Pushkin - P.I. Tchaikovsky on the stage of the Berlin Theater

And again reinterpretation of the "Queen of Spades" by A.S. Pushkin - P.I. Tchaikovsky on the stage of the Berlin Theater

Загадочная религиозность М.Ю. Лермонтова

The article reveals the characteristic features of the religious and philosophical worldview of M.Yu. Lermontov, first discovered by Russian thinkers of the Silver Age. Lermontov thinks that the divine principle of being lies in man and represents his deepest essence. A person who has managed to reveal his human essence to the fullest extent becomes a “higher personality”, a divine being with extraordinary power in relation to the world around him. The article shows that the main character of the novel “A Hero of Our Time” Pechorin is such a “higher personality”, he is able to rule over fate and over ordinary people. The special nature of Pechorin’s re­lationship with fate is clearly shown by Lermontov in the last part of the novel, called “The Fatalist”. A detailed analysis of this part of the novel allows us to assert that the dispute between Pechorin and the Serb Vulich essentially expresses the struggle of the wills of two heroes. It is Pechorin, as a more developed “higher personality”, with his will, with his almost divine power, who determines the fate of Vulich and directs him to inevitable death. The article shows that the idea of a person that is present in the novel “A Hero of Our Time” can be found in the story of A.S. Pushkin “The Queen of Spades”; later it becomes the basis of philosophical outlook of F.M. Dostoevsky. Like Lermontov, Dostoevsky believes that God is nothing but the true essence of man, and for the will of a person who has fully re­vealed his essence, there are no restrictions in the world.

СТРУКТУРА И СМЫСЛ ДРАМАТИЧЕСКОЙ МИНИАТЮРЫ А.С. ПУШКИНА «ЧЕРЕЗ НЕДЕЛЮ БУДУ В ПАРИЖЕ НЕПРЕМЕННО...»

Object of the article: Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin's dramatic essay “Cherez nedelyu budu v Parizhe nepremenno…” ("I will certainly be in Paris in a week...") (1834-35). Subject of the article: structure and meaning of Pushkin's text. Purpose of research: uncovering the hidden meaning of the essay. Research methods: methods of literary research, method of structural-semantic analysis. Results: The authors argue that a hidden motif of false rape allegation hints at a possible death of the hero. That motif is implied by the final scene of the story and separately is encoded by the anagram found in the name of the hero. Foreshadowing of Dorvil’s possible death is also conveyed through the motif of winking; similar use of the winking motif keeps recurring in Pushkin’s other works, in particular, in “Poltava”, “The Captain's Daughter” and “The Queen of Spades”. Field of application: literary criticism, teaching Russian literature of the 19th century. Conclusions: the theme of revenge and motif of duel between the lover and the heroine's husband prefigure the probable outcome of the story. Pushkin's essay belongs to a special type of literary texts that include 1) interrupted narration, 2) hidden meaning (implying the need for a virtual reconstruction of the background),3) possibility of reconstructing both the background and the outcome of the story that is left "behind the scenes".

Motives of Story “Queen of Spades” by Alexan der Pushkin in Novel “Bad Weather” by Alexander Ivanov

The novel by A. Pushkin “The Queen of Spades” and the novel by A. V. Ivanov “Bad weather” from the point of view of literary relationships is examined in the article, the method of intertextual analysis is used. The aim of the study is to identify parallels in the problematic, motivational structure and systems of images of these works. The article analyzes the relationship between the work of A. Ivanov and directly with the text of “The Queen of Spades”, and with the epigraph to it. The results of the research allow us to conclude that the image of bad weather as a background for the development of action connects the Pushkin story and the novel by A. V. Ivanov. It is noted that in both works the theme of the change of epochs is artistically realized, and the past is interpreted as a time much brighter and more meaningful than the present. The studied works are also united by the plot-forming motive of playing with fate, which, in turn, is associated with the theme of passion for money. In addi tion, commonality can be noted in the nature of the characters and the principles of their representation; to a certain extent, the fates and nature of women characters of the works are similar. Comparison with Pushkin's story helps to see deep philosophical problems in A. Ivanov’s novel “Bad Weather”.

Reading, Fast and Slow

AbstractReading literature is often contrasted to the use of digital media in terms of speed. While readers engage slowly with a book, they rush through digital environments at an ever faster pace. This article argues against a simple binary between slow/literary and fast/digital. This binary is in fact not native to the public debate about literature in the digital age but can be traced back from the digital revolution to modernist attitudes on literature, as they emerge in Viktor Shklovsky and Walter Benjamin. Drawing on results about reading speed in reading science and on current narrative theory, this article devises an alternative argument for literary reading as a process that unfolds over multiple time scales linked to different layers of meaning making. Reading literature, from this perspective, is not exclusively slow but, rather, works through a combination of both fast and slow processes. The article develops its argument through the example of Alexander Pushkin's classic novella “The Queen of Spades” and then applies this new theoretical account of multispeed literary reading to two novels engaging explicitly with the digital revolution.