How Letters among Historical Figures Can Elaborate on Historical Period
10:35, 5 April
The National Press Center has hosted a presentation of new fundamental publications which will be of interest not only to Russian and Belarusian experts in the field of literary criticism, but also to a wide range of readers, the Union State portal reports.
- Share on Facebook
- Share on VK
- Share on Twitter
A number of the books presented are both historical and creative works, which retrace the events of the relationship between principalities and historical figures, significant for both Belarusians and Russians. What connects, for example, Lew Sapieha and Lzhedmitry, except for the same historical era? The book “Grand Chancellor Lew Sapieha” narrates about this.
The “Word Magic” published in Minsk presents creative portraits of writers and enlighteners of the 12th-18th centuries related to Belarusian and Russian cultures. At the same time, two collective monographs “Belarusian Land in Memoirs and Documents of the 19th-20th Centuries” were published in Moscow.
Among the books presented are an anthology of contemporary Russian-language poetry of Belarus, the creative heritage of the Belarusian classic Yanka Bryl, the Russian classics translated into three closely related languages: Belarusian, Ukrainian, Polish, etc.
All this is the result of the joint work of the foundations for fundamental research of the two countries: Yanka Kupala Institute of the Language and Literature of the Belarusian NAS and A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
According to Natalya Yakovenko, a researcher at the Institute of the Language and Literature, previously neither historians nor literary scholars considered intercourse in correspondence a historical source. However, letters, diaries and memoirs within a certain historical era give a rather vivid and accurate picture of what was happening.
“During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Belarusian culture developed in interaction with Russian culture, as evidenced by letters and other previously unpublished documents from the life and work of our classics Yakub Kolas, Maxim Goretsky, Arkady Kuleshov and Russian writers Sergei Gorodetsky, Mikhail Isakovsky , Alexander Tvardovski and others,” says Ms Yakovenko.
Before the books appeared, the archives of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Minsk and Vitebsk joined forces and got systematized. Among others, there is a separate publication about Vitebsk and Vitebsk region: the memoirs of the city governor Sergey Shishkin, historian and regional ethnographer Alexei Sapunov, and literature historian Viktor Gayevsky.
The press conference “Literature in the Historical and Cultural Dialogue of the Belarusian and Russian Peoples” was held at the National Press Center on the eve of the Unity Day of the Peoples of Belarus and Russia. Marking this event, the Director of Yanka Kupala Institute of the Language and Literature of the Belarusian NAS Ivan Saverchenko noted: “It is important that today there is an understanding and conceptualization of how the dialogue of cultures contributes to the rapprochement and mutual enrichment of peoples”.
