«Одна семья, один град общий для мертвых и живых»: о топике трансисторизма

Новое литературное обозрение. 2022. Т. 174. № 2. С. 69–80.

Kalugin D.

Editor of translation: Rodin (Maslov) B.

Τhis article explores the ways in which transhistorical thinking has manifested itself in European cultural history. Τhe overarching notion that the shared space traversed by human communication abolishes various kinds of distance (temporal, ideological, or linguistic) is conveyed by distinct motifs, in particular the idea of “book as a friend”, which originates in the Renaissance, and the conceptualization of the present as a community of “the quick and the dead”. Thanks to the use of these topoi, as well as to modes of readings that they encourage, great individuals of the past appear as interlocutors or objects of emulation, enter a national “pantheon”, or come “alive” with the aid of a historian’s pen. Based on the texts of Russian authors (Ya. P. Shakhovskoi, N. M. Karamzin and T. N. Granovsky), placed in a wider European context, the article demonstrates that the loci communes that make it possible to conjure up the encounter between the living and the dead, can also define visions of the present and of the future.

Keywords: история чтения, воображение, дружба, трансисторизм, аргументационные схемы (топосы), герои

Publication based on the results of: Russian literature at the junction of literary traditions (2022)