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In a paper, written in polemics with mythology of the Flauberian studies of XX, particularly of the Soviet origin (the so-called realism or new realism, objectivism, impersonality, rationality of Flaubertian manner in “Madame Bovary”, identification of the author and his skills with the narrator, etc.), a figure of the narrator in this novel is discussed in full detail for the first time. This figure, a concrete person and a creator of narrative, is corresponded with Flaubert on various levels (biographical, gender, psychological, rationally creative, intertextual, subconscious) as well as with the characters (including the narrator on his own, his self-reflexion, psychological and psychic complexes, aims, methods and stylistics of narration). Antifeminine dimension of the narrative. «We» of the narrative is interpreted as a controversial sum of “I”, “non-I”, “other I-ies”, shadow projections of “I”, theatrical metamorphoses of “I”. In context of a special position of the narrator bourgeoisness, literatureness of the social consciousness, romanticism, palimpsest of the narrative, the double ending, and also the motives of story-telling and justification of creative efforts are analyzed. Symbolically the main events of the narrator’s world are death and positioning of himself as an inventor of fictions (“the lies”), a highly personal narrative the roots of which are in his school childhood, his mania of additional details and of endless improvement of his text. The narrator as a madman and an author of the madman’s diaries. The characters of the novel as artists. A study of the poetics of repetitions, mirror scenes, colours (blue, red, green), erotics, nature, historical details permits V. M. Tolmatchoff to introduce a rather new interpretation of Flaubert’s work as belonging to romanticism (partially baroqian, partially classical). The paper reconstructs chronology of events, age of the characters and poses a problem of Flaubert as inventor, of a meaning of non-correspondence in his novel between purely fictional time-space and strict historical details.

In a paper, written in polemics with mythology of the Flauberian studies of XX, particularly of the Soviet origin (the so-called realism or new realism, objectivism, impersonality, rationality of Flaubertian manner in “Madame Bovary”, identification of the author and his skills with the narrator, etc.), a figure of the narrator in this novel is discussed in full detail for the first time. This figure, a concrete person and a creator of narrative, is corresponded with Flaubert on various levels (biographical, gender, psychological, rationally creative, intertextual, subconscious) as well as with the characters (including the narrator on his own, his self-reflexion, psychological and psychic complexes, aims, methods and stylistics of narration). Antifeminine dimension of the narrative. «We» of the narrative is interpreted as a controversial sum of “I”, “non-I”, “other I-ies”, shadow projections of “I”, theatrical metamorphoses of “I”. In context of a special position of the narrator bourgeoisness, literatureness of the social consciousness, romanticism, palimpsest of the narrative, the double ending, and also the motives of story-telling and justification of creative efforts are analyzed. Symbolically the main events of the narrator’s world are death and positioning of himself as an inventor of fictions (“the lies”), a highly personal narrative the roots of which are in his school childhood, his mania of additional details and of endless improvement of his text. The narrator as a madman and an author of the madman’s diaries. The characters of the novel as artists. A study of the poetics of repetitions, mirror scenes, colours (blue, red, green), erotics, nature, historical details permits V. M. Tolmatchoff to introduce a rather new interpretation of Flaubert’s work as belonging to romanticism (partially baroqian, partially classical). The paper reconstructs chronology of events, age of the characters and poses a problem of Flaubert as inventor, of a meaning of non-correspondence in his novel between purely fictional time-space and strict historical details.

This article presents W. B. Yeats’s work in two contexts, namely that of the British poetry at the turn of the 19th — 20th centuries and of its dynamics, and that of literary symbolism in general. In polemics with the stereotypes of Soviet and Post- Soviet English studies, the author off ers his understanding of European and American literary symbolism, of its variants (covering the 1870–1920s), including the English variant and its development (from late Romanticism and “Aestheticism” to various “Modernisms”), as well as the understanding of the range of main issues in symbolism, actualised mainly by Nietzsche and his claim that “God is dead” together with his “reevaluation of all values” rather than the French fi n de si?cle poets. The article introduces an original outline (for the Russian audience) of Yeats’s literary biography and then, in its reflection, a line-by-line analysis of The Second Coming (1919) as a particularly symbolist poem. The author argues that this poem, seemingly Christian in imagery, turns out to be implicitly anti-Christian and is about the “Other Coming”, which is parallel to Aleksandr Blok’s poem The Twelve.

This paper paper is dedicated to «Napoleon» (1927), a book by Merezhkovsky which earlier has not been analyzed in detail. This work, in V. M. Tolmatchoff’s estimation, most important in understanding of Merezhkovsky’s emigre period of creative life, synthesizes all the previous key ideas of the writer. Also it corresponds a theme of Napoleon with the Russian history of XX, the European reality of 1920-ies, a vision in Napoleon a religious figure which unwillingly performed a religious mission of world scale, transformed revolution into counter-revolution, sacrificed himself for the future. Imagery of the book is based on the symbolist metaphors, dualisms: in Napoleon Merezhkovsky reveals features of other great heroes as well as of the gods; Napoleon is a contemporary of Stalin and Mussolini. In Merezhkovsky’s view Napoleon is transforming the usual oppostions — a republican in him in a very natural way is becoming a monarch, an atheist appears as a saint of the church of the future. In Merezhkovsky’s view Napoleon is transforming the usual oppostions — a republican in him in a very natural way is becoming a monarch, an atheist appears as a saint of the church of the future.