A. I. Solzhenitsyn

In China, the interest to the work of A. I. Solzhenitsyn arose soon after the publication of his story One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in the journal New World with the permission of N. S. Khrushchev in 1962, which immediately attracted the attention of Chinese literary circles. However, the initial interest in Solzhenitsyn was connected with the political situation in China at that time. The period from the 1960s to the 1980s can be considered the initial stage of the translation of the writer’s work.

The history of the two writers’ interaction is traced on the material of K. I. Chukovsky’s diaries and letters.

In the article the author regards the personality and oeuvre of A. I. Solzhenitsyn («Gulag Archipelago», «Red Wheel», «Russia in Collapse») from the perspective of the unity of Russian spiritual culture in relation to two political philosophies: conservatism and radicalism. Ideas of the Russian religious philosophy expounded in the works by S. L. Frank underlie the theoretical foundation of the paper. A special role is dedicated to the polemic judgments of the writer.

The article analyzes the rhetoric roots of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s novel «The First Circle». It is proved that the rhetoric nature of the novel as a genre – as described by M. M. Bakhtin and Yu. M. Lotman – is characteristic for Solzhenitsyn’s novel. Research of the rhetoric «sources» of the novel together with other roots of large epic genres in Solzhenitsyn’s oeuvre is an important route to the comprehension of both the nature of the writer’s artistic method and the genre of the Russian novel of the XXth century in general.

In the article the role of the picturesque ekphrases in the novel by A. I. Solzhenitsyn «The First Circle» is researched; the principles of the writer’s work with real visual objects are identified; abundant data has been gathered about the artist and graphic painter S. M. Ivashеv- Musatov, the prototype of the hero – artist Kondrashov-Ivanov; previously unattended ekphrasis variants in the early versions and the final version of the novel are studied in the paper.

The article dwells on the issue of how the ideas of the Russian liberal movement in the pre-October period are reflected in A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s novel «The First Circle». The author points out that those concepts are significantly meaningful in the conceptual structure of the novel; the interrelation of the concepts with the development of the theme of the Russian peasantry in this work by A. I. Solzhenitsyn is highlighted.

The article analyzes the place and the function of proverbs and sayings in the structure of the third Knot of the historic epic «Red Wheel» by A. I. Solzhenitsyn – the novel «March 1917».

In the article the author considers Gulag theme on the material of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s short story «One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich» and the novel by M. M. Prishvin «Tsar’s Road». The main characters of both writers remain free people despite their imprisonment. Common people, bearers of public morals, kept their souls pure through hardships, they are patient and hard-working, they abstain from evil, remain internally free in the atmosphere of the absence of freedom, preserving their name and their motherland

In the article the author addresses an unknown page in the life and ouevre of A. I. Solzhenitsyn associated with the criticism of the first and second versions of the text of his «Nobel lecture», which, at the request of the writer, was made by his associate and friend A. A. Ugrimov.

In the article the authors analyze specific features of the diary style of B. V. Shergin, who managed to preserve the seamless synthesis of live folk, literary and Church Slavic languages that allows to identify the true ‘inner form’ of the Russian self-recognition embedded in the word.