Vol 27, No 2 (2022): THE RECEPTION OF SILVER AGE RUSSIAN LITERATURE ABROAD

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Modernist poetry is an intense stage in the development of Russian poetry, which builds a bridge between the poetry of the XIX century and that of the XX century. Russian modernist poetry in English-language anthologies has not yet become the subject of analysis. This article is one of the first attempts to narrow the gap. It reviews nine independent publishing projects, which record the poetic experience of modernists in a variety of ways. Almost each of them gives its own list of authors and their hierarchy, and the very concept of “modern Russian poetry” is understood differently in each instance. This selection is not intended to be exhaustive, but it allows us to draw certain conclusions on how the poetry of Russian modernism was introduced to English-speaking countries. Interest in Russian modernist poetry intensified in connection with certain historic events: the Russian Revolution and the first wave of emigration that followed it; World War II and the leading role of the USSR in the victory over fascism; and the 1960s and the “third wave” of emigration. Most of the reviewed anthologies were published during one of these periods. The biographies of the compilers and editors of these anthologies show that the English-speaking reader was introduced to Russian poetry either by emigrant scholars who were born and raised in Russia and who were native speakers of Russian (A. Yarmolinsky, D. Svyatopolk-Mirsky, D. Obolensky, V. Markov), or English and American Russophile enthusiasts who fell in love with the Russian language and literature while traveling around the country (M. Baring, J. Shelley, C.F. Coxwell, M.S. Bowra). Their efforts were so fruitful that they not only opened the world of Russian modernist poetry to English-speaking readers but also made them better acquainted with it than the Russian-speaking audiences, especially given that a lot of poets of the Modernist era were banned in Russia or consigned to oblivion.

Fedor Sologub entered British literary consciousness only after the onset of WWI. The British-Russian war alliance was auspicious for the translation of Russian literature, bringing about what John Cournos termed a “Russian Boom.” In 1915 alone, two translated collections of Sologub’s short stories appeared. This paper examines the British reception of Sologub, with a focus on John Cournos (1881-1966), one of Sologub’s earliest and most prolific translators, and the role played by Zinaida Vengerova (1867-1941) as mediator between translator and author. In her correspondence with Sologub, Vengerova promotes Cournos as translator. A more pressing concern for Vengerova was to convince Sologub to make Cournos his “authorized” translator. This paper also argues that the reception of Sologub in Britain must be contextualized in terms of war propaganda. Politically, the British government prioritized the promotion of brotherly feeling between the two allies and a positive opinion of Russia. Prior to the war alliance, the British public held a negative opinion of tsarist Russia, of its government and culture. The controversial nature of Sologub’s writing complicated his critical reception.

This article examines in detail the circumstances of the creation of all Gumilev’s French texts known today. The research focuses on Russian-French literary relations at the beginning of the 20th century, the chronological order of Gumilev’s Russian poems and their French versions, the textual features and particularities of the translations attributed to Gumilev and the history of their publication. Particular attention is paid to Gumilev’s desire to enter the circle of French writers, thanks to his acquaintance with René Ghil, and then to determine the perception of his work in France through his acquaintance, correspondence and subsequent cooperation with Jean Chuzeville. The article presents an analysis of the selection principle of poems, both those translated for the “Anthology” and those featured in Gumilev’s notebooks, as well as the approach to the translation of poems in verse or prose. In conclusion, possible explanations of why Nikolai Gumilev combined his (alleged) self-translations in a notebook just before his return from France to Russia are given.

This article aims to study the current status of the reception of Bakhtin’s thought in China. The choice of this period is explained by the fact that in recent decades Chinese researchers have begun to search for the origins of Bakhtin’s thought. While some have insisted on a Western origin of Bakhtin’s theories, most Chinese scholars have linked Bakhtin’s thought with the Slavic tradition and the Russian Orthodox Church, in particular, with the concept of “sobornost”. This opened up new opportunities for further research. In this article, the author gives an overview of the research on the relationship between Bakhtin’s thought and the Russian tradition, noting that Chinese scholars’ research in this area is focused on various aspects: some discuss the influence of the idea of “sobornost” on the creative consciousness of Dostoevsky, the structure of literary works and Bakhtin’s polyphonic thought; others write about the phenomenon of “carnival” as a Russian phenomenon in Bakhtin; while others talk about Christian anthropology and psychology in Bakhtin’s works, or make a comparative analysis of Bakhtin’s thought and Western philosophy. This article shows how M.M. Bakhtin was perceived from another perspective and cultural tradition, which enriched his ideas with new meanings and connotations. Based on the analysis, the author comes to the conclusion that the concept of “sobornost” has similarities with collectivism, which has historically developed as a traditional value of the Chinese people. Therefore, Chinese scholars easily understood the concept of “sobornost”.

The article is devoted to the early period of the work of the Anglo-American writer Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904). It mainly includes American articles in periodicals. The topic is poorly studied in the domestic research field, as well as Hearn’s works in general, which leads to scientific novelty. The study was carried out with the help of intertextual and motive analysis of newspaper articles in identifying common plots of the writer’s work and references to other authors. It is noted that although Hearn became famous thanks to his stories and legends collected in Japan, he was formed as a writer in America. The article examines the features of Hearn’s style as a journalist: author’s masks (detective, comical narrator, whistleblower), playful communications with the reader, the presence of Gothic elements, references to literary works of favorite authors, common vocabulary, and combination of real facts with fiction. Hearn’s role as a forerunner of whistle-blowing journalism and new journalism is noted, and a series of articles on the tannery murder are examined. There is a movement from sensational and shocking articles to more calm meditative observations, from external to internal. Journalistic experience, as the study showed, significantly influenced Hearn’s literary activity (brevity of form, mixing documentary and fiction, elements of a detective story, subjective position of the narrator).

This study proposes an effective development methodology for evaluating the creativity of journalism students. Within the framework of university education, it is proposed to focus the attention of teachers on creating a special educational environment (media park), where progressive forms and methods of teaching, game methods are used systematically, in the context of the ecology of media processes. The peculiarity of the methodology is that at the end of the educational process (the creation of a specific media product by the students), its effectiveness is measured by comparing the initial and final indicators of the creative competence of student journalists. The author proposes to use S. Mednik’s speech-thinking creativity test, which is based on an assessment of the level of development of the student’s thinking and speech in their relationship, which is extremely important for future journalists. The article presents the results of the practical application of this type of assessment. The relevance and novelty of the problematic are due to the following circumstances. On the one hand, active forms and methods of teaching, including project activities, are widely used in universities, on the other hand, the methodology for assessing the creative competence of students is currently not well developed and is practically not used in the curriculum. It should also be recognized that the assessment of this competence and the products of creativity in general, which, of course, includes a journalistic text, is complex and ambiguous, since it is influenced by a large number of subjective factors. This article proposes one of the ways to resolve this contradiction.

The article examines the semiotic features of the virtual narrative in the projects of RIA.Lab platform of the leading Russian news agency “Russia Today”. The aim is to analyze the structural, linguistic and iconic elements of the virtual narrative in relation to the projects of immersive journalism, highlighting their features, taking into account the multimodal nature of virtual reality and the simulative aspect of the sign system of immersive works. Virtual space is not only a narrative environment with special topos, chronotope and other narrative elements, but is itself a semiotic element, participating in the process of semiosis, the space of virtual “language game”. The thesis is put forward that VR, being an element of the multimodal information and communication universe, contains in its structure other modalities (TV, radio, cinema, print formats), and is multidimensional, a kind of “modus in modus”. The thesis on the priority of the modeling approach to the creation of immersive mass-media content over the simulative one and the necessity of observing the balance between modeling and simulation in immersive journalism are discussed. The specifics of conventional conditions of interpretation of simulacra signs in virtual space, which depend on the degree of their identity to the signs of real reality and the “rules of the virtual game”, set by the authors, are outlined. The directions of increasing the pragmatic efficiency of virtual narrative through the variability of its affords, the use of emphases, haptics (tactile experience) and other means of VR are outlined.

This study tries to understand the Bhopal disaster (aka Bhopal Gas Tragedy) in the light of public relation and the role played by Union Carbide Corporation in the Bhopal disaster which resulted in the death of over 3 000 people and 15 000 were injured during the disaster. This case shocked the entire nation and nobody had ever imagined that an industrial accident could be that deadly and venomous. The researcher is trying to understand the incidence from the perspective of public relations and how Union Carbide played its role in the light of public relations. This study is trying to understand that how Union Carbide would have made a difference to its image if they would have responsibly used public relations for its better international image and social responsibility in India. Bhopal Gas Tragedy was an important case for understanding crisis and this case also highlighted that how PR could have been used for handling the situation and for managing relations with people. This case was the talk of the town as thousands were affected and it was a national casualty. This case raised many issues pertaining to Management and people and it also underlined that improved management could have led to better treatment of the case.

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