LITERATURE RESEARCH ON P. KULISH’S “THE GREAT STRANGER”.

The envelope containing these pages is labelled ‘Literary studies on Kulish’s work “The Great Stranger’. However, the 12 pages of notes are an analysis of Pyotr Fyodorovich Basmanov, one of the main characters in Panteleimon Kulish’s historical novel “Aleksey Odnorog”, which was first published in the St. Petersburg magazine “Sovremennik” in 1852-1853. One of the chapters of V. Petrov’s dissertation ‘Panteleimon Kulish in the Fifties: Life, Ideology, and Work’ is devoted to this historical novel, but the researcher focuses on the main character Oleksiy, and P. Basmanov’s name is mentioned twice in the lists of secondary characters.

Most of the notes are extracts from the first edition of the novel (Nikolai M. [P. Kulish]. ‘Aleksei Odnorog. Historical Novel,’ Sovremennik 36, no. 12 (1852): 61-140; 37, no. 1 (1853): 9-78; 37, No. 2 (1853): 161-224). Some pages are V. Petrov’s theses on the image of the ‘Great Stranger’ embodied in the novel’s character P. Basmanov: ‘In Basmanov, Kulish wanted to portray the image of the “Great Stranger”, to transfer features from the external to the internal: with Basmanov’s external familiarity: frankness, simplicity, [indecipherable], cheerfulness, he hides the “Stranger” inside, in the depths of his nature, which can reveal a completely different, unknown one’ (Fond 16, file 243, p. 497). V. Petrov also notes machiavellianism and a ‘dialectical scheme’ of betrayal and loyalty among the character’s traits.

Yuliia Karpets