The essay deals with the history of the first steps of modernism in Croatian visual arts in the 1910s – beginnings of the 1920s, which took the form of expressionism. In the aspect of early expressionism, the work of the most significant Croatian painters and graphic artists (L. Babić, M. Trepse and others), as well as sculptors (I. Meštrović), considered in the context of the art of the Balkan region (Serbian and Slovenian artists) as a whole, is observed. A number of theoretical issues are touched upon – the typology of symbolism and impressionism, closely related to Croatian expressionism, as well as the problem of isomorphism of expressionism poetics as an integral part of the avant-garde to the phenomenon of explosion in culture. The research shows that the beginnings of the Croatian modernism, which coincided with the end of the empire, reflect the specifics of the Balkan model of cultural development in the 20th century, based on the convergence of extremes.

This article is devoted to the analysis of the formal content structure V. Nabokov / Sirin’s second novel “King, Queen, Knave” (1928). The “realistic” narration about adultery is here сlosely connected with metaphysical themes and the features of game poetics. The theme of mannequins, dolls and maps is interpreted here in a quite new way. It is shown that, contrary to popular belief, not the figures of mannequins and dolls highlight the images of the characters, their soulless and mechanistic, but, conversely, the novel “King, Queen, Knave” shows how the blanks of literary heroes types, with a wave of the Author’s magic wand, turn into real people. From the stereotypical figures of the triangle husband – wife – lover and the banal plot about adultery, V. Sirin created a fresh and unusual story with non-standard and accurately drawn characters, with a non-trivial structure of the plot and original narrative models. From the sketchy narrative of adultery, the true dominant theme of the novel emerges – the revival of the inanimate, the creation of the “living life” of a literary text. In every episode, in every moment of the narrative, in every plot course, the Author emphasizes his dominant, organizing and creating role. The law of the Author’s willfulness dominates over the eventual field of the novel and forms game poetics of the novel. The elements of the game and the chance reign here and control the logic of the plot development, the atmosphere is created by the card name, the crazy old man-illusionist, various models of sports games (tennis, mountain skiing, sports equipment store, etc.) and children’s (dolls), dressing up and carnival masks, etc. The Author, in the face of chance / or fate, throws trick-mirages (a pistol that turned out to be a lighter, etc.) to the heroes, and then brutally exposes them; organizes driving rain or sends deadly disease. From the game in the play quite naturally emerge two Russians – the “representatives” of the Author in the text.

The paper is devoted to a facet of Cantemirʼs works that didn’t strike eye of the learned world – his relationship with the highest censorship. In 1852 A. Smirdin decided to republish the volume of Cantemir and Chemnitser’s volume, published in 1847 in the series “Complete Collection of Russian Authors”. The article presents the entire censorship “kitchen” in connection with the alleged publication. All the arguments “pro” and “contra” are absolutely universal and can explain a lot in the complex publication life of Cantemir’s works. The culmination is the peremptory resolution of Emperor Nicholas I, a carefully verified censorship presentation on the works of Cantemir. The hateful words of the monarch about the writer two centuries distaut from him testify to the relevance of Cantemirʼs satire.

The article deals with proverbs translational aspects and sayings in Macedonian and Russian texts. It also provides modern subjects matters of Macedonian-Russian lexicography and analyses the translational techniques in bilingual dictionaries and the interpreters’ and translators’ practice.

The research is carried out by the method of semantic communication analy­sis. The analysis of the communicative composition of a spoken literary text, organized by the communicative parameter of the norm, is presented. The film “Solovey-Razboynik” (“Nightingale the Robber”, Russia, 2012) presents a rare type of a hero capable of changing the society norm, that is, creating and imposing a new norm on the environment. The article analyzes the work of Russian communicative means in dialogues recruited in order to show the process of the hero introducing his own personal norm. The nominative level units perform in the film two aesthetic tasks: 1) they create an alternation of two layers, legend and comics, and 2) they maintain the communication path, also reflecting the change of norms.

The article deals with the punctuation of Church Slavonic texts in the mid-17th century and the process of forming a sentence as a unit of written text that begins at this time. First of all, it is shown that the rules for the marking sentence boundary are described in the Grammar of 1648: this is the use of the dot sign and the use of a capital letter after it. Examining the translation of Blau’s Atlas made in the second half of the 50s in Moscow, we find that both the translators and the scribes of the whitewash copies sought to comply with these new norms. The result of the activity of the scribes influenced the punctuation of Church Slavonic printed books of the second half of the 17th century.

This paper examines one of the important translation technique’s features in the Maximus the Greek’s book circle. It is consistently described the various ways of transferring the Greek substantive infinitive to the Church Slavonic language there. In 1524, Maximus the Greek, in collaboration with his disciple Silvan, a monk of the Trinity-Sergius Abbey, translated Homilia of John Chrysostom into the Gospel of Matthew. The analysis of the linguistic material in the Homilia showed that when translating infinitive constructions, there is a tendency to unify, and the main method of transmission into the Church Slavonic language is calcification. The Greek orientation indicates the implementation of the strategy of the early grammatical reference of Maximus the Greek in the translation, and also it allows us to state the proximity of this work to the translations of the 14th century and to establish a connection with the Chudovsky and Athos versions of the New Testament.

The paper focuses on representation of the Ship of State metaphor in the Modern Greek poetry of the 20th and 21st c. Notional, imagery and axiological layers of the ship-state concept are under analysis. The components of the metaphor under study are identified: “The Ship is Nation”, “The Ship is the Historical Situation”, “The Ship is the Town”, “The Ship is Humanity” (“The Ship is Oecumene”).

The prehistory of the new Duomo constructed instead of the old Cathedral of Santa Maria Maggiore (winter cathedral) and the Basilica of Santa Tecla (summer cathedral) remains a matter of debate. For a long time historiography attributes the main role in the renovation of the Duomo to the first Duke of Milan, Giangaleazzo Visconti. The first attempts to reassess the contribution of Giangaleazzo to the founding of the cathedral met with radical rejection. The question of the origin of the project itself (whether it was developed by Lombard or foreign engineers), as well as whether it has undergone changes in the initial phases of construction and what this may be due to, remains controversial. The article presents an analysis of the latest historiography on the theme.

The article analyzes the fable “Titmouse” – one of the Ivan Krylov’s earliest works. The innovative techniques of the fabulist are dicussed, as well as the connection of the plot, original, not borrowed, with folk proverbs, and the author’s striving for laconicism; the lexical and stylistic features of the fable are considered.