Izvestiya of Saratov University.
ISSN 1817-7115 (Print)
ISSN 2541-898X (Online)


parallels

“A strange mystical village” in Bunin’s short novel Dry Valley: To the problem of sources

The subject of research in the article is the image of the Dry Valley in Bunin’s short novel and its possible sources. The author believes that the main precedent texts for Bunin’s short novel and the concept of national life and national character embodied in it, are the novels by Fyodor Dostoevsky The Brothers Karamazov (as the researchers have already noted) and The Silver Dove by Andrey Bely. Bunin both argues with the writers and develops their ideas about the essence of the Russian character and the Russian life.

The Conquest of Plassans by Emile Zola and The Petty Demon by Fyodor Sologub: To the Issue of ‘Another’s Word’ in a Symbolist Novel

The article compares two novels: The Conquest of Plassans by Emile Zola and The Petty Demon by Fyodor Sologub. The parallels (in the problem range, systems of images, poetics of the plot, in the psychological picture of the characters’ images) give us grounds to consider the novel by Zola to be one of the sources of plot collisions and poetics for The Petty Demon.