M. Aldanov

In the article the author carries out a comparative analysis of historic and philosophical concepts of M. Aldanov and A. Solzhenitsyn based on the novel «The Sources» and the narration within a measured time period «Red Wheel» («August 1914»). The issue of the role of an occasion in history and in the fate of one person is considered, as well as the comprehension of the ‘sources’ and consequences of the Russian revolution and the shift of the epic genre boundaries in the ХХ century literature.

The article deals with different aspects of morbidity problem range in M. A. Aldanov’s historic novels. The author analyzes both traditional literary functions of the illness motives (their important role in unfolding the characters’ portraits, in plot development) and those peculiar for Aldanov’s oeuvre, where the medical discourse becomes one of the languages to describe the catastrophic epoch of the end XIXth – beginning XXth centuries.

The article is dedicated to the analysis of the morbid metaphors employed in depicting social and political events of the Russian history of the XXth century on the material of literary and journalistic texts. Aesthetic and pragmatic functions of these metaphors are researched.

The reviewed monograph of T. I. Dronova presents a multi-layered analysis of M. A. Aldanov’s oeuvre: from the principles of philosophical and historical cognition to narrative strategies. The approach to the legacy of the philosopher and writer suggested by the author allows to reveal the type of his artistic thought and the nature of his dialogue with the predecessors in a very convincing and in many ways novel way.