“Should we talk about Nekrasov now?”: Textual criticism and D.S. Merezhkovsky’s “Secret Vision”

The author of the article has undertaken a source study of D. S. Merezhkovsky’s work “Nekrasov’s Mystery” (1913) in the context of the modernization of Russian classics at the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. This has been done for the purpose of clarifying ideas about the modeling of a writer’s identity in the minds of contemporaries and descendants. For the first time, the history of “Nekrasov’s Mystery” has been reconstructed from lecture and newspaper publications of its fragments to the final version as part of the study “Two Mysteries of Russian Poetry: Nekrasov and Tyutchev” (1915). The researcher used documents from archives, as well as little-known materials from pre-revolutionary periodicals. A comprehensive comparison of printed, typewritten and handwritten sources was carried out. In addition to the textual reconstruction, the problem of the lecture’s reception by contemporaries is studied. The earliest reviews by the lecture’s listeners and by critics have been analyzed and systematized. Based on the facts presented, it is argued that Merezhkovsky, maneuvering between aesthetics and politics, modernizes the personality and work of Nekrasov to solve journalistic problems, and therefore his speeches should be read in the context of other socio-political statements (and not just literary-critical, as was done previously) by the thinker of the 1910s concerning Narodism, patriotism, revolution and religion, and in the biographical perspective of his connections with Russian émigré revolutionaries.

1. Akchurina, A.R. (2015). Gazeta “Novoe vremia” o dele Mendelia Beilisa 1913 goda [“The Novoye Vremya” newspaper on the Mendel-Beilis case of 1913]. In Perspektivnye issledovaniia v nauke: teoriia i praktika = Advanced studies in science: Theory & practice (Vol. 4, pp. 56–68). Global Partnership on Development of Scientific Cooperation; Ron Bee and Associates Company. (In Russian).

2. Andrushchenko, E. A. (2017). “Vechnye sputniki” D. S. Merezhkovskogo v dvizhenii vremeni [“Eternal Companions” by D. S. Merezhkovsky in the movement of time]. In D. Merezhkovskii. Sobranie sochinenii (Vol. 8, pp. 404–440). Dmitrii Sechin. (In Russian).

3. Andrushchenko, E. A. (2023). K. I. Chukovsky’s Nekrasov questionnaire and D. S. Merezhkovsky. Vestnik slavianskikh kul’tur, 67, 174–185. https:/doi.org/10.37816/2073-95672023-67-174-185. (In Russian).

4. Goncharova, E. I. (2009). “Revoliutsionnoe khristovstvo” [“Revolutionary Christianity”]. In E. I. Goncharova (Ed.) “Revoliutsionnoe khristovstvo”: Pis’ma Merezhkovskikh k Borisu Savinkovu (pp. 5–88). Pushkinskii Dom. (In Russian).

5. Kholikov, A. A. (2018). “Avtobiograficheskaia zametka” kak tekst i kontekst vtorogo prizhiznennogo Polnogo sobraniia sochinenii D. S. Merezhkovskogo [“Autobiographical Note” as a text and context of D. S. Merezhkovsky’s second inter vivos “Complete Collected Works”]. In N. V. Kornienko (Ed.). Tekstologicheskii vremennik. Russkaia literatura ΧΧ veka: Voprosy tekstologii i istochnikovedeniia, Book 3: Pis’ma i dnevniki v russkom literaturnom nasledii XX veka (pp. 677–688). IMLI RAN. (In Russian).

6. Kholikov, A. A. (2024). From “The Mystery of Tyutchev” to “Two Mysteries of Russian Poetry”: Creative history and textual key. Philological Sciences. Scientific Essays of Higher Education, 2024(4), 139–147. https:/doi.org/10.20339/PhS.4-24.139. (In Russian).

7. Kholikov, A. A. (2025). Merezhkovskii i okrest...: Tekstologicheskie razyskaniia mezhdu estetikoi i politikoi: ot “upadka” literatury do raspada imperii [Merezhkovsky and surroundings...: Textological enquiries between aesthetics and politics: From the “decline” of literature to the collapse of the empire]. Nestor-Istoriia. (In Russian).

8. Shruba, M. (2004). Literaturnye ob"edineniia Moskvy i Peterburga 1890–1917 godov: Slovar’. [Literary associations of Moscow and St. Petersburg 1890–1917: Dictionary]. Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. (In Russian).

9. Sobolev, A. L. (1992). Merezhkovskie v Parizhe (1906–1908) [The Merezhkovskys in Paris (1906–1908)]. In A. V. Lavrov (Ed.) Litsa: Biograficheskii al’manakh (Vol. 1, pp. 319–371). Atheneum. (In Russian).