Ethnographic and ethnolinguistic atlases are one of the sources revealing the origins and transformations of traditional culture as a result of its spatial diversity. Atlas studies of folk culture have been conducted for many years in various European countries, often independently of each other. The main goal of the article is to present the state of atlas research in Poland and Russia devoted to folk demonology, in particular zmora and other mythological creatures with motifs in common. This topic has not been examined in detail within the context of comparative research possibilities; using the method of selected demonological motif mapping in both countries. Therefore, we constitute the first attempt to present the specifics and results of previous atlas research into the above-mentioned issue, as seen in the Polish Ethnographic Atlas and the Ethnolinguistic Atlas of the Polesie Region.

The article deals with the contemporary translation of Tadeusz Różewicz’s poems into Russian. Regardless of the fact that some of his poetry had already been translated and published, new times and new readers need new translations. The considerations presented in the article refer precisely to them. Taken into account were primarily the translations of a generation of contemporary translators for an international competition on the translation of Różewicz’s poems, announced in 2013 by the foundation ‘For your freedom and ours’. The translations of three poems by the Polish poet have been considered: Words, In the light of flickering lamps and Such is the master, works frequently chosen by the winners of the said competition. In particular the analysis regards the saturation of the poems with cultural realities and inter-textual elements. Therefore, comments and some translators’ notes accompanying the translations were taken into account, ones defining their approach to the translation and the translated text itself. The considerations confirmed the need to activate the cognitive function of translation in modern translations – the purpose of the mentioned comments – but also to pay attention to the problems of translating free verse into Russian.

Недотыкомка is a symbol-word in the Russian literature of the Silver Age, meaning ubiquitous evil, according to the modernist world view, constituting the nature of existence. In this paper we demonstrate how the translation of this untranslatable word has influenced the perception of a literary work. We focus mainly on the poem Недотыкомка серая… (1905), the title of which in Wiktor Woroszylski’s translation is Niepochwytnica szara… (1971), while in the translation by Włodzimierz Słobodnik – Niedoruszajka szara… (1971) and in the novel Мелкий бес (1905), where this fulfils an important function (in René Śliwowski’s translation of 1973 – the name of this creature is Niedotkniątko). We examine what role the character of niedotykomka has in the discussed novels and we analyze the impact translation strategies have on the image of a fictional universe as well as a lyrical situation (i.e., the change of the feminine grammatical form in the character’s name into a grammatically neuter one).

In the summer of 1980, following the death of Vladimir Vysotsky, the Taganka Theatre in Moscow received more than 130 mourning telegrams. Their collection (although not all the items have survived) represents an invaluable source for the study of late Soviet culture. The descriptions of Vysotsky contained make it possible to reconstruct a certain collective portrait of the bard – this being one of the purposes of this article. The reasonableness of this task is justified by the fact that a number of the declarations sent testify to the articulation of emotions perceived by the authors as collective ones. The portrait we have created is a picture that perpetuates the personality, in which all the main features of the Russian cultural concept of “the Poet” are fully realized. It is also a portrait of a person who – according to the author of one of the telegrams – “lived ultimate states”, or – according to another – was permanently “standing on the edge.”

The social and political transformations Russia underwent in the 20th century were also reflected in the sphere of imagery. This also refers to the imagery of movement and means of transport. The process of linking the imagery of means of transportation with the political doctrine in force is mostly visible in the period of Soviet rule, in particular in the interwar period when the foundations of this rule were laid. Then, aviation was to become one of the strongly ideologized means of transport. The ideologization process occurred at various levels, starting from onomastic procedures through advertising and linking aviation and Soviet rule within artistic and literary conceptualisations. In Soviet culture, an aeroplane or a rocket were not merely means of transport but the means by which the expansion of communist ideology globally was supposed to be facilitated.

The writings of Lyudmila Ulitskaya, one of the most popular contemporary Russian novelists, attracts lots of attention from both Russian and foreign literary critics and scholars. The author’s popularity is also confirmed by the fact that her works have been translated into more than 20 different languages. The main goal of this article is to provide an analysis of the spiritual dimension of the novel The Kukotsky Enigma. At its very essence, the main subject of the study is the plot, which focuses on the anthropological aspect in the context of the transcendental dimension as such, hagiographic motifs and biblical metaphorics. The article also discusses the synthetism of genetic elements appearing in the novel that allowed the writer to combine Christian, mythopoeic, axiological, soteriological and theological contexts. Furthermore, an attempt was made to analyse the characters, considering spiritual and moral values they represent. The intersection of two spheres – the Sacred and the profane – together with the loci associated with them constitute additional object of the research.

The subject of the analysis and interpretation of this article consists in philosophy and poetics of photography as a medium of memory in Maria Stepanova’s novel Pamyati Pamyati [In Memory of Memory]. Meanwhile, it is aimed at revealing a unique attitude of the novel’s author towards photography and its derivatives as a medium of memory and yet towards memory itself as a mandatory obligation in its essence for all the generations after the Holocaust. In a given context the notion of postmemory is binding and, hence, a separate part of the article is devoted to it. In view of the centuries-old and universal interest around the phenomenon of memory, mainly in the existential context, at the beginning of the article the emphasis is solely put on several selected aspects of it as articulated by Aristotle, Plato, Saint Augustine, Walter Benjamin and Paul Ricoeur. Respectively, the following terms are addressed by them: memoria, aisthesis, gesture of passage or picture – monument. In the article it has been shown that Stepanova is fascinated by the truth of time, the premonition of the Holocaust. She searched the shadows of the past on the faces and in the events captured in the pre-war film frames in such a way that one can experience his connection with that world, discover himself internally in that structure because, as she claims, her text is the novel about non-memory.

The article contains an analysis of Boris and Gleb novel written by a contemporary Russian writer Y. Buida. The analysis is realized in reference to certain postmodern tendencies in literature. The author emphasizes mainly the dialogic character of postmodernism and depicts particular features of the movement in post-Soviet culture. Specifically, the dialogic character of the novel is realized through multilayer interferences of culture codes which suit the idea of chaosmic reality by Deleuze and Guatarri. Correspondingly, the dialogue is also displayed by the eclecticism of genders and styles.

This article presents a picture of war in Mikhail Shishkin’s novel The Light and the Dark (2010). In the narrative, the author introduces a character who fought on the side of the Russian army during the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in China (1898–1901). When describing the events of that period, Shishkin relied on numerous archival materials, especially the study by Dmitry Yanchevetsky At the Walls of Immovable China. As a military journalist who participated in the rebellion, this author blamed the Chinese people, disgruntled with the domination of other countries in their country, for the war. Shishkin, abundantly drawing on Yanchevetsky’s factual research, in his book reevaluates the historical events and condemns the aggression of the Eight-Nation Alliance on China. The writer compares this war to the Soviet Union’s attack on Finland in 1939 citing a term from Aleksandr Tvardovsky’s poem: “the infamous war”. Because Russia’s participation in quashing the Boxer Rebellion remains a little-known fact among Russian readers, it becomes a generalized representation of war in the novel: a universal one. Shishkin adopts a pacifist attitude here. He debunks the myth of war, which presupposes a sacralization of killing and a heroic death of soldiers. There are no glorious warriors on the battlefield, only corpses of anonymous soldiers, blood, the smell of rotting bodies, chopped off heads, flies, and dirt. In this novel, war is an evil that alters one’s perception of reality and emotional reactions and destroys elementary moral principles.

The aim of this article is to answer the question, “How Philaret Drozdov understood God’s holiness and human holiness and how both the ideas were displayed in his writings?” The research material constitutes selected homilies and a catechism. In the first place, the author discusses the definition of holiness and its understanding by the Orthodox Church with regard to the issue of deification. Also, he familiarizes the reader with the concept of holiness in its various aspects. Subsequently, the homilies and the catechism of Philaret Drozdov are analysed. The article shows the Moscow Metropolitan’s beliefs about the essence of human holiness as well as about the eschatological dimension of temporality and the pneumatological aspect of holiness, the issue of grace and a human seen as a vessel of God’s energy. The author proves that the Moscow Metropolitan continued in his works the traditions of the Church Fathers and creatively developed the most important assumptions of Orthodox anthropology and soteriology and, hence enriching Russian spiritual thought.

This article presents an overview of a literary sketch The Bathing Beaches on the Baltic Coast in the West Guberniyas… by Faddei Bulgarin (1789-1859), first published in Russian in 1827 (“Severnaya Pchela”, № 122-125) and in 1828 in Polish (“Kolumb”, vol. 1, № 4). The interpretive context for the story is founded on author’s journeys across the Baltic region and his stay in Karlov near Dorpat as well as development of the resorts by the Baltic Sea. Bulgarin’s sketch was the first description of Palanga (Polish: Połąga) as a seaside resort town. Among other elements of the writing the article discusses its composition and style, focusing primarily on a number of descriptive features concerning: the sea, the land, the nature, entertainments, local inhabitants and travellers and their customs.