The article presents “The Italian Diary” by Nikolay Lvov and the descriptions of Italy in the memoirs of Princess Yekaterina Dashkova. They both went to Italy in 1781 and met together in Livorno. Lvov was interested in the Italian architecture and art (churches, monuments, The Uffizi Gallery and others), while Dashkova was interested in meeting people (Pope Pius VI, diplomats, patrons of the art and others) and touring.

The background of the majority of events in Dostoyevsky is marked with the evil. The pictures of vast spaces, nature, water, and heaven are practically absent from his works while the world presented is filled with an urban landscape. The space dazzles us with the sin and gives birth to the sin pushing the characters onto self‑annihilation. However, people miss the world that the sense of which is given by such superior values as the Good, Truth and Virtue. An individual, submerged in a spiritual chaos, dreaming about a harmonious and happy world, his/her Arcadia is reflected in Dostoyevsky’s works by the visions of the land eternal bliss.The writer paid special attention to the idea of the “Golden Age”. He interpreted it on his own, being inspired by a well‑known drawing, namely Claude Lorrain’s Akis and Galatea. The pictures connected with the idea of the “Golden Age” are outlined by Dostoyevsky in The Devils first of all, or, to be more specific, in a chapter At Tichon’s (1871), The adolescent (1875), A dream of a ridiculous man (1877) and a small draft entitled The golden age in your pocket (1876). The visions, usually appearing in dreams, show a paradise lost , a beautiful, harmonious and peaceful world based on man’s harmony with nature. And it is here that the writer, an eulogist of a dark and hostile town shows the space in a totally different tonality. He outlines the state of bliss, a wonderful place, and a land of constant happiness. The two spaces, spaciously marked, reflecting two different worlds, a “real” and “wishful” one (desires, dreams), determine an ideological‑cognitive order defining a valuing interpretation of the world presented, constituting, at the same time, an axiological projection of Russian antagonisms in the second half of the 19th century.

Aleksandr Kuprin’s works constitute a peculiar illustration of life of the Russian small town at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries that the writer experienced during his military service in the south‑eastern part of Russia and numerous migrations through the country when looking for a job. The prose writer’s works, showing a broad panorama of the province life, are characterized by peculiar duality. Satirical and unmasking tendencies are accompanied here by glorifying the provincial silence as a source of quietness and harmony of the spirit. Besides, Kuprin introduces the images of the village and town marked in opposition to his works, as well as contradicts a capital to the province. The writer analyses among other things specific life philosophy, the scale of values and socio‑cultural features of the small‑town society.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Ukrainian literature almost did not know the tradition of the so called “urban literature” as its main object of interest has always been a village
and its inhabitants. The local themes sensu stricte appeared in the Ukrainian literature as late as in the 1920s in the novel The city by Valerian Pidmohylny. The aim of the article is to trace how the city has become one of the characters of the novel, and how the author has used the evolution of the image of the city and local space in order to show the evolution of psyche and mentality of the main character. The author claims that the value of this “local” work, the first one in the history of the Ukrainian literature is the fact that it presents the reality of the Ukrainian city those days, with all its good and bad sides, typical problems of the period it was created in, and details of an every‑day life at that time.

The article interprets those poems that include trees and a forest. This is the part of a landscape she liked most. She personified trees, and, what is most important, wanted to penetrate their internal life, and identify with them. This is how a unique landscape was created in her works. It was not a description of the nature and being enchanted by it, but a description of trees’ spiritual life she wanted to transform in. The very landscape, thus, reflected her own experiences, and her spirit’s work. The pictures full of emotion, dynamics, and spontaneity constitute unique works on a spiritual being of trees in view of the artistry of poetics.

The article provides an analysis of spatial motifs in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s August 1914. The analysis focuses on the writier’s peculiar strategy which — among other things — alters meaning of motifs well-known from the Russian literary tradition, for example, the road, the center or the household. The Author emphasizes the fact that spatial discourse prevails in particular stages of the storyline, and thus the analysis of how spatial motifs are distributed allows to perceive their compositional role which touches upon both August 1914 as well as The Red Wheel cycle as a whole.

The article is an attempt of a spacious analysis of works by Aleksandr Galin written after 1989. Topographical and psychological images of “marginal characters” and “new Russians” were contrasted here. The analytical basis constitutes such works as Anomaly, Czech picture, Group, …Sorry, The Siren and the Victoria. Basing on them, the author shows a relationship between a limited space and limited life possibilities of “marginals” and a relationship between a broadened space and a social position of ‘new Russians”.

The article analyses the problem of dog homelessness in a city on the basis of a story The eyes of a stray dog by Anatoly Kim. The story belongs to the cycle A walk around the town
written at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s. The writer was interested in people’s attitude to animals and its ethical dimension. In an artistic space of A. Kim’s work we deal with the opposition: at home (in a flat)‑outside home (in the street)which is juxtaposed with the fate of two dogs, namely a male dog called Gaja and a female dog called Ryża that are taken care of by the same person, that is Barbukin. The main protagonist is a social activist in the animal care association.
The analysis conducted showed that the street as an external space in a spacious model of the story world takes place the main place. The street is a hostile space — a symbol of life of those dog tramps thrown away beyond the margins of civilization belonging to the worse and subordinate reality. A stray dog, accordingly, belonging to the “margin of the animal community” is perceived here as a prick of conscience of a human being these days. Besides, the very work confirms the researchers’ opinion who treat Kim as a bio‑centric writer.

The article concentrates on the phenomenon of the space of transcendence in poetry by Halina Twaranowicz. The very issue is analysed on the basis of a collection of poems An amber apple where a Belarusian poet exposes a religious theme, as well as aims at showing internal experiences and fundamental existential dilemmas in a way that has not been found in the space of the Belarusian literature so far. Axiological marking and an important role of experiencing the Christian faith, typical of this poetry, were presented in a wider philosophicalanthropological context.

The very article is devoted to the cultural post‑apocalyptic novel by Dmitry Glukhovsky entitled Metro 2033. Its action takes place in a specific space, a Moscow underground that after
an atomic conflict became the place of residence of several dozen thousand people. The author of the article starts from characterizing the relationships to be observed in the underground community that managed to divide itself into a series of hostile organizations and groups during the last twenty years that had passed since catastrophe. Much of the onus fell on the migration of the main character through the maze of dark tunnels and corridors creating a unique atmosphere and landscape. Their complicated structure allows for perceiving the very space as a large maze of, passing through which is a par t of a task ascribed to Artiom. As the analysis conducted shows the main character is traveler entangled in the maze space (the maze of an underground, city, library, a spiritual maze) in many ways, which explains why Glukhovsky’s work has been called a novel based on the myth of the maze.

The article is an attempt to analyse one of the latest adaptations of the Wolves and sheep, a play by Aleksandr Ostrovsky. The performance in question makes far‑reaching
changes in the structure of the stage space that was rather adjusted to the style of the stage production typical of the 1920s and 1930s. In order to maintain this convention, apart from typical stage solutions, German hits, popular at that time, were used. It is these changes , using the colour and light that helped a contemporary director maintain and expose the significance of Ostrovsky’s play.