The subject of the article is the connections of Mikhail Makarov and Peter Shalikov (and also Anna Bunin and Elizaveta Trubieсkaya?) with the periodicals for women “Amur” and “Damski zhournal”. “Amur” — the unrealized initiative from 1805 or 1806. “Damski zhournal” — the literary periodical of sentimental tendencies. In the article there are discussed the memories of Stepan Zykhariov (The student’s notes…), Mikhail Dmitriev (The Bits and Pieces from my Memories) and Phillip Wigiel (The memories). In their writings Makarov and Shalikov merge the 18th century with the first half of the 19th century.

The article analyses the Psalms of David by Taras Shevchenko in the context of the psalm-reception’s tradition in Ukrainian literature. Also special attention is devoted to the interpretations of the psalms by Vladimir Monomach, Hryhorij Skovoroda, Marcian Shashkevich, Ivan Franko and others.

The author of this article attempts to describe and explain the status and role of the female characters in poetry and life of an “older” symbolist, Valery Bryusov. The mythological origins of women in his works are to underline that the poet draws on the classical literature. The mythological characters, functioning in the Western societies as cultural models, play similar role and the poet takes them as his point of departure to present the symbolist perspective on women. Moreover, Bryusov follows the ideas of free, and at the same time scandalous, French symbolism, which he tried to introduce into the Russian social and artistic life.

Prevalent at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the theme of the artist and art found its reflection in stories by Aleksandr Kuprin. The present article narrows down our examination of the theme solely to painters, sculptors, and representatives of the world of music, as their example allows one to observe a certain division in the artistic community. When portraying painters and sculptors, the prosaist mainly focuses on the psychology of his characters, and their motivation; he depicts the characters’ struggles with the reality around them, as well as their alienation and asceticism. However, while delineating the profiles of musicians and singers, the writer also takes notice of their appearance, which constitutes one of the aspects of self-creation in response to the then expectations, as well as of their spoilt, vain, and hedonistic lifestyle.

In this article the author attempts to reinterpret Sanin by Mikhail Artsybashev presenting the novel as philosophical rather than pornographic. The focus here is on the motif of life and death, which occupies a central position in all the works by Artsybashev. The novelist’s understanding of life and death was clearly influenced by the views of German philosophers: A. Schopenhauer and F. Nietzsche. What echoes most vibrantly in the novel are the ideas expounded in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, especially the theory of Übermensch, variously translated as “superman” or “overman”.

The subject of this paper is the attempt of analysis and characteristic of female characters in Sadur’s prose. The analysis is based on scheme love — hate — eroticism and is related to heroines from works written in 90. in the beginning of the 21st century. The problem of mutual relations between women and men and the topic of feminisation of the author’s writing are here also touched upon.

The theme of snow/ice, as one of the emblems of Russia, prevails in the works of Vladimir Sorokin virtually as a constant. Depending on the period and direction of the author’s artistic explorations, it acquires different meanings. Initially, it facilitates the deconstruction of classical discourse, but gradually it transforms into a symbol of power founded on violence to eventually become an inextricable part of the metaphor of Russia’s imminent death.

In each of three novels by Sasha Sokolov, the category of time plays a vital role. In A school for Fools, Between Dog and Wolf and Palisandriia, the writer consistently explores “the philosophy of time.” In this article, the analysis focuses on the work titled Between Dog and Wolf since it is a text in which Sokolov intensifies his creative strategy. The writer is interested in time as a philosophical category, as well as anthropological, artistic, cultural and existential ones. By placing the category of time in the space of a game, the author of A school for Fools creates hybrid, processual and heterogeneous space-time of elements that permeate and interact with one another. “Games with time” deconstruct binary oppositions, such as linearity — cyclicality, temporality — atemporality, finiteness — eternity. At the same time the richness of language games becomes a generator of ambiguity, which destroys any homogeneous closed systems when they get deprived of the stimulating “difference”.

The article attempts to characterize connections between literature and music in the dramatic works of Ivan Vyrypaev. On the basis of the writer’s plays (Oxygen, Illusions, Genesis No. 2, Delhi Dance), it indicates manifestations of musicality occurring on three levels: phonic, thematic, and compositional. Vyrypaev’s works — emotional, rich in language and innovative composition — are characterized by remarkable euphony, achieved mainly by syntactic and lexical parallelisms, and in the case of Oxygen also by the external dramatic structure.

The paper is an introduction to the problems of the contemporary works of a Russian writer Roman Senchin (born 1971). The author is considered to be a representative of the new realism current and his prose is a paradigmatic example of socially-oriented literature. Due to the sociological perspective, the article exposes social and political aspects of his work, but less attention has been paid to poetics as such. However, the psychological and existential aspect of Senchin’s work was also stressed. Furthermore, an attempt was made to resolve the dilemma, whether in relation to Senchin’s works it is relevant to use such theoretical concepts as politics of literature and politics in the literature.

The subject matter of the present analysis is Łukasz Czuj’s production titled “The Government Inspector”. The authoress juxtaposes the original text with the aforementioned interpretation, and points to numerous discrepancies. The divergences noticeable in Czuj’s production, such as different space arrangement, shift of focus, change in the genre, may result from the director’s fascination with the Russian culture of the 20s and 30s. However, the divergences are not motivated by the text of the drama, which leads to the conclusion that Czuj’s version, though admittedly interesting, is unfortunately inconsistent with the assumptions of the text.