From Old Records. Selected Prose. On the Literary Hero (set of 2 books)

Set of 2 books:

“From Old Records. Selected Prose”: Lydia Ginzburg (1902–1990) is primarily known as a brilliant literary scholar, author of works on the creativity of Lermontov and Herzen, the books “On Lyricism” and “On Psychological Prose,” “On the Literary Hero.” However, she herself considered her greatest achievement to be the documentary prose she wrote mostly for herself, without hope of publication. Time had different plans: during the years of perestroika and later, the diaries and notebooks of Ginzburg were revealed to the reader. This edition includes the memoirs of the researcher, recreating a unique picture of literary life in the 1920s–1980s — memories of Akhmatova, Mayakovsky, Mandelstam, Olenikov, Bagritsky, Shklovsky, Tynianov, and other figures of Russian culture of the 20th century, as well as “Notes of a Blockade Man” — a testimony to the psychological transformation of a person in the inhuman conditions of besieged Leningrad. Ginzburg's texts present an amazing example of intellectual rigor and moral resilience even at the moment of the collapse of humanitarian ideals.

“On the Literary Hero”: The book “On the Literary Hero” is a classic work by the outstanding Soviet literary scholar Lydia Ginzburg, which has become the quintessence of her method. Combining structural and historical approaches, the researcher recreates a broad picture of the literary process, the core of which is the evolution of methods for depicting personality.

Using vast material — from Madame de Lafayette, Abbot Prévost, Goethe, Chateaubriand, Stendhal, Lermontov, Constant, Balzac to Dostoevsky, Proust, Joyce, and Kafka — Ginzburg demonstrates how the artistic model of character gradually liberated itself from the frameworks of the “stylized” canon. Methods of constructing the hero conditioned by tradition became more complex and blurred, the overall aspiration for aesthetic liberation led literature to the poetics of individualized, undecided contexts. Yet, even when surpassed, tradition continued to live in depth, interacting with contemporary rhetoric.

This publication is intended for students, graduate students, educators, and philology specialists, as well as readers interested in the issues of literary process.