Information about the author:
Eugenia V. Ivanova
Evgeniia V. Ivanova, DSc in Philology, Leading Research Fellow, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25A, bld. 1, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
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Abstract:
The article examines the development of academic commentary standards in the Soviet era when commented editions were issued only by the publishing house “Nauka”, together with its traditional components: the description
of the text sources and of its story, commentary on realia. A separate paragraph considers commented editions for educational institutions and illustrates them by the example of the collection of A.S. Pushkin’s works in 5 vols., edited by L.I. Polyvanov. The article describes briefly N.L. Brodsky’s commentary on the Eugene Onegin for secondary schools, that was harshly criticized by V.V. Nabokov, and Ju.M. Lotman’s work for school teachers presenting both Pushkin’s biography and commentary on the Onegin. The article goes on analyzing the Russian version of Nabokov’s Commentary to Eugene Onegin, that became a new step in the development of commentary as a genre, transforming it into an autobiography and a tool of self-knowledge. Another transformation of the genre of commenting is exemplified by S.Z. Lushchick’s commentary book on V.P. Kataev’s novel Werther Has Already Been Written, where commentary becomes real research that discovered an unknown page of Kataev’s biography.