The article reveals the role of E.Z. Tsybenko in the formation of systematic approach to the investigation of Western European Russian studies at the Philological Faculty of Moscow State University. In particular, it is noted that thanks to her creative efforts for more than forty years a comprehensive work was carried out on the basis of the “Russian Literature in Modern World” laboratory. As a result – a sufficient volume of information was collected, West European studies in its development undergone substantial analysis and were published.

The enduring attention of several generations of readers to the question of the title of B. Prus’ novel “The Doll” caused the author’s desire to contribute to its justification. The author’s intention is not, however, to offer any new interpretation – instead of this, he indicates the most consistent and inclusive among the existing ones.

The article is devoted to the history of the formation of the genre of the historical novel for youth in Polish literature. The model of this novel develops during the heyday of positivist literature, in the 80–90s of the 19th century, and remains relevant until 1918. The historical novel for youth is formed under the influence of the historical novels of J.I. Kraszewski and H. Sienkiewicz, it was influenced by the novels of Walter Scott and Ale­xander Dumas. In the positivist model of the historical novel for young people, cognitive function and patriotic education come out on top. Only the best authors managed to combine historical authenticity with a fascinating plot. Historical novels by W. Przyborowski, Z. Morawska, J. Łuszczewska have been published up to the present time.

The article examines the image of the “New World” and the problem of emi­gration in Henryk Sienkiewicz’s and Grigori Machtet’s “American” works. It is stated that the main historical and literary context of both authors is the ideology and philosophy of positivism. The similarity between the worldview of Sienkiewicz and Machtet is determined by the fact that both writers traveled to America, and the comprehension of themes considering American culture played a key role in their creative evolution. The image of America in “Letters from a Journey to America” by Sienkiewicz and “Travel Pictures” by Machtet are compared. Similarities and differences are found in the artistic interpretation of the image of an Indian in Senkevich’s “Sachem” and Mactet’s “Black Ingratitude”. The main attention is paid to the relationship between the theme of emigration and the problem of hope in the stories of Sienkiewicz “For Daily Bread “ and Machtet’s “Prodigal Son”. The author concludes that the difference between the analyzed works considering the plot is established by the social identity of the characters (the image of the intellectual in Machtet’s story and the images of peasants in Sienkiewicz’s tale). It is concluded that there is an antinomic relationship between the motif of hope as an integral part of human life and the statement of the hopelessness of the situation of peasants in America in the story by Sienkiewicz. Machtet’s story is also characterized by the motives of disappointment - the hero’s unfulfilled hopes for self-realization in America, and at the same time, the motives of revival of hope and finding the purpose of life in work on land. The ideological similarity of both texts is determined by the program of „economic patriotism” preached by the writers of the positivist direction.

The article examines the ideological, artistic and genre specificity of Adam Pług’s novels (“Duch i krew”, “Oficjalista” and “Bakałarze”) considering the socio-cultural context, the main Polish literature trends of the 1860s and 1970s. The works of the writer are examined from the view of E.Z. Tsybenko’s social novel theory (“environment depiction, individual social life, their relationships”, “characteristic types”, “the overview of social life”, “home picture”, etc.). The article reveals the factors, which determined the ideological and artistic identity of the social novels by Adam Pług: positivism, social and historical events, chronatope, system of images, synthesis of romantism and realism, interior, language, scenery.

The paper provides a brief overview of literary contacts between Georgia, Poland and Bulgaria from the time of their inception to the present day. Literary connections between peoples are due to the similarity of historical conditions in which they developed over a long period of time: Bulgaria from the end of the 14th to the end of the 19th century was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, Georgia and Poland since the end of the 18th century were part of the Russian Empire. The desire to regain their lost independence and the growing national liberation movement brought together the peoples of Georgia, Poland and Bulgaria, which was reflected in their cultural relations.
One of the main forms of literary connections is translation, which reflects the direct contact, communication of different national literatures. The emergence of translation is closely connected with the needs of society, with what meets the requirements of the literary process. Academician A.N. Veselovsky called this process “counter flow”. In the history of Polish-Georgian and Bulgarian-Georgian literary relations, translation occupied and occupies a paramount place today.

The complex phenomenon of Russian emigration in Poland deserves scholar’s attention, not least due to such large-scale figures as Dmitry Filosofov, who left an extensive literary and critical legacy. The article considers his views on the Russian emigration’ fate and role, contrasting with the impressions of Ilia Ehrenburg’s trip to Poland.

The article deals with the problems of teaching Polish as a Slavic language with the primary objective being to develop the competency of analyzing grammatical forms in a text and analyzing phonetic phenomena in comparison with the facts of the Old Church Slavonic and Russian languages. The study presents various aspects of using a poetic text in the study of Polish as a foreign language. The authors propose an example of a complex assignment on “Linguistic Analysis of a Poetic Text” based on a poem by the modern Polish poet Jakub Eker.

The article presents an analysis of Adam Mickiewicz’s poem “Pierwiosnek”, which is a part of the romantic cycle “Ballads and Romances”, and its translations into Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian. The nominations of the primula which function in the title, in the speech of the lyrical subject, and as the self-designation of the hero-plant in the Polish original and East Slavic translations are analyzed. A comparative analysis of the Polish original and the East Slavic translations is carried out in the designation of such attributes of the plant as its size, the color of the inflorescences, the components of the plant, the time of flowering, the place of growth. That allows us to form an idea of the similarities and differences of the images of the primula in the translations compared with the original text. The issue of compensation techniques used by translators is partially touched upon. The analysis is carried out taking into account the extensive floronymic base of the Polish and East Slavic languages.

The subject of consideration in the article was the peculiarity of psychologism in E.N. Chirikov’s novel “The Return”. He is included in the autobiographical tetralogy “The Life of Tarkhanov” (1911–1924), which demonstrates that in the early 1910s the writer moved away from the previously established reputation of a life writer and a denouncer of social ulcers, turning to a philosophical understanding of the world and man. However, the author’s contemporaries were not ready for the creative evolution of the artist, which is proved by the history of the critical reception of this novel cycle. “The Return” turned out to be virtually ignored by the reviewers, although it was in it that the skill of Chirikov, a psychologist, was most clearly manifested. The analysis demonstrates that the writer tried to move away from the traditional ways of describing the feelings and experiences of the character in favor of depicting his inner world as a living, dynamic formation. The fluidity of Gennady Tarkhanov’s consciousness and his existential nature were expressed primarily in the weakening of the external plot and the repetition of the same sensations in similar situations caused by the love experiences of the hero. This fact testifies to the accumulation of emotions in Tarkhanov’s soul, which ultimately leads him to adulthood and self-perfection. Thus, the writer intuitively moved in line with the trend that will later occupy a significant place in the literature of the first half of the twentieth century under the name of “non-classical” psychologism and even antipsychologism.

The article is addressed to today’s literary material – Dmitry Danilov’s plays of 2017–2020, where a three-dimensional artistic picture of modernity is created through absurdist stage situations, speech and collisions of actors. The ways of dramaturgical embodiment of topical social issues are considered, the image of the mental features of the hero-contemporary is discussed.

The article gives information about the monographic series “Literature of the 20th century”, which is produced by the Department of Contemporary Literatures of Central and Southeastern Europe at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. On the material of the author’s monographs by Victor A. Khorev “Polish Literature of the 20th century” (2009) and Galina Ya. Ilyina “Croatian Literature of the 20th century” (2015), as well as the collective work “Slovenian Literature of the 20th century” (ed. by Nadezhda N. Starikova, 2014), is presented a genre of “small” literary history, describing the most important stages in the Slavic peoples’ literary development during the last century. Each of the book in this series has created a canon of names and texts, reflecting the experience of specific Slavic literature of the 20th century, which allows Russian (and more broadly Russian-speaking) readers to be guided in its achievement.

The article reveals the interrelationship between myth and religion, fantastics and reality in Goran Petrović’s novel “The Siege of the Church of the Holy Savior”. The provisions on the belonging of thenovel to postmodernism, on the parallels of the “Siege of the Church of the Holy Savior” with the work of the famous Serbian postmodernist writer Milorad Pavić are considered. The presence of elements of postmodernist poetics in Petrović is noted, the possibilities of combination postmodernism and myth, postmodernism and Christianity are explored.

The article is dedicated to the multifaceted personality of the Polish-Jewish writer and educator, Janusz Korczak. It analyzes his contribution to the theory and practice of education and his influence on changing attitudes toward children in society as a whole. Central to the article is Korczak’s saying “there are no children – there are people”, which he introduced into pedagogical and common use. It also explores the need for legislative observance of the rights of the child – a topic that featured prominently in Korczak’s essays, which are still unfamiliar to Russian readers. In addition, it considers the unique literary form of Korczak’s so-called non-classical pedagogical texts among other subjects the genre, which targets mixed audience, both children and adults, the narrative technique that seamlessly, alternates between the protagonist, the child, and the narrator acting on their behalf. Here, in his narrative diction, Korczak knits together the long train of words and expressions to point out all possible shades of relations between child and adult. The article concludes by considering the relevance of Korczak’s ideas – which were generated over a century ago – to the modern day and age as well as contemporary pedagogical discourse.

The article is devoted to the analysis of motives of frailty of the world and human resistance to it in Olga Tokarczuk’s prose, based on the narrative of corporeality / materiality. All kinds and levels of the depicted reality are subject to disintegration. We consider reflexions and bodily practices connected with disintegration and death (depiction of a dying, dead, sick, deformed, old body) as well as reflexions and bodily practices which embody resistance to mortality (relic worship, resurrection, dissection, copying, counterfeiting, cloning, etc.). One of the mediated ways of resisting entropy and decay is also the search for harmony and equilibrium between the heavenly and the earthly and the interrelation of their orders, the desire for orderliness as an unattainable goal. In this context the motives of predicting the future, astrology, the place of cosmogonic, theogonic and other theories are analyzed. The way to resist entropy and decay is the word and the narrative, which allows to find a fragile balance in the perishable world. In this connection the ways of resistance to frailty of the world and thanatic fear at the biographic and autopsychotherapeutic level – by means of mythodrama narrative and desensitization narrative are considered.

This article is a commentary on the topic “the lowworld” in the lyrics of O.E. Mandelstam. The closeness of the afterlife to the lyrical hero of the poet is confirmed. The images related to the underground kingdom of the dead are analyzed: toad (“There are disgusting toads here...”), Erebus (“I see a stone sky...”). Their connection with Greek mythology is revealed. Additions concerning the semantics of the image of the swallow-daughter and the boat in the poem “What the grasshopper-clock sings...” are made, in particular, an interpretation of the stanza is proposed, which is an alternative interpretation of the poem made by K. Taranovsky. A commentary is given on Levin’s interpretation of some lines of the poem “Megan”. Parallels to the image of the black sun are added (from ancient Egyptian and ancient Greek myths). Generalizations concerning the image of the black sun and the image of bees are made. The result of the study shows that the motif of going down of the lyrical hero into the underworld is the dominant and determining one for the mythological layer of O.E. Mandelstam’s lyrics.

Continuity, fluidity and melodic nature of French speech are achieved through the predominance of the special syllabic structure of CV (consonne + voyelle, i. e. consonant + vowel), thanks in particular to such a unique phenomenon as liaison, which functions within a syntagm (a meaningful and complete speech segment). Over the end of the last century and the beginning of this century, the number of liaison types in French has been markedly decreasing, leading in many cases to the emergence of hiatus. In this paper we will not only examine which types of liaison are affected by these linguistic changes in the dramatic reading and in the opera singing, using the example of Jean Cocteau’s monoplay “The Human Voice”, but also identify the phonetic features and pronunciation deformations of the readers and singers.

The article analyses the practice of secondary burials as part of the funeral and memorial rite in modern Greece. Secondary burial in this case is defined as the exhumation of the remains from the grave after a certain time and their reburial in the ossuary. The article includes the description of the practice in modern Greece (based on author’s field materials) and comparative analysis of the rite in its traditional and modern forms. It is concluded that secondary burials as part of the modern funeral rite represent a transformation of the rural tradition. In traditional culture the transfer of the bones of the deceased to the ossuary was considered the final stage of the funeral rite, and was perceived positively as a part of the ancestor worship. In modern urban conditions, on the other hand, these reburials are carried out involuntarily (due to the lack of cemeteries in big cities) and have not such an unambiguous reception.

The paper analyses the poetic technique used by V.V. Kapnist in the cycle of odes on the death of G.R. Derzhavin; it is shown how Kapnist uses the combination of addresses in the second and third person as a device to depict the struggle of the poet’s thoughts, where, as if in a stream of consciousness turned to the image of the deceased Derzhavin, the objective alternates with the subjective, the personal with the universal.

The article is devoted to the analysis of symbolic water images in Thomas Hardy’s novels written on different stages of his literary career. Having observed various meaningful images, one can conclude that in Hardy’s novels water element appears to be ambiguous and acquires the archetypal features combining such ambivalent concepts as life and death. Reflecting the emotional state of characters, water element embodies the power of nature – the mightiest force in Hardy’s naturalist worldview.

The article examines the vocal function of zootropes on the basis of lexicographic sources – “Russian Semantic Dictionary” (ed. by N. Shvedova), “The Big Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language” (ed. by S. Kuznetsov) and data from the Russian National Corpus. The paper presents the features of the use of lexical units in terms of gender, as well as new cases of the use of zootropes in the late 20th – early 21st centuries. The main derivational model of change in zoomorphic vocatives is revealed.

The article under consideration dwells on the issue concerned with the peculiarity of suffixes deriving original adjectives in one of the translated works belonging to the epoch of Samanids᾿ dynasty – “Tarjumai ‘Tafsir Tabari’ ” (“Translation of Tabari᾿s Commentary”). In the course of conducting an analysis beset with the theme explored the author of the article determines that the relevant word-building element compared with the original Tajik words is added to borrowed Arabic ones thus deriving new lexical units. Into the bargain, it is shown that a part of derivative original adjectives are attached to the words denoting negative meanings. Adducing the results of the analysis beset with the words derived by the relevant suffix the author of the article concludes that none of them are used equally: some of them are used frequently, others are used moderately, and the third group is used rarely