Abstract: The article analyzes the novels of F. A. Iskander "Sandro from Chegem" and Jia Pingwa "The Shaanxi Opera" from the point of view of the presence of musical images associated with specific musical works, performers, genres, directions, etc. Music influences the themes and issues, the images of the main characters, the character system, the plot, the motivational structure of these books. In Fazil Iskander's novels "Sandro from Chegem" and Jia Pingwa's "The Shaanxi Opera", music is what preserves the old, rural culture, provides cultural continuity in an urbanizing and simplifying world. The music of the Qin opera and Abkhazian songs reveal in the novels the rhythm, respectively, of Chinese and Caucasian rural ‒ labor, family, love, and natural existence. The music of Fazil Iskander and Jia Pingwa allows them to characterize the heroes of their works, to create an otherworldly harmonic chronotope. The music in "Sandro from Chegem" and in "The Shaanxi Opera" affects human and natural reality, considering them for themselves as an opportunity to sound in space. Finally, the music in these works can overcome death, carrying the memory of oneself through despair, farewell to the deceased and the transition from life to life. The relevance of the article is determined by the high interest of modern literary criticism in comparing works created in different national cultures, in particular in Russian and Chinese, as well as to the artistic interaction of literature and music. The novelty of the article is due to the previously unseen comparison of the novels of Fazil Iskander and Jia Pingwa in terms of identifying the forms and analyzing the functions of their musical component, as well as from the point of view of their belonging to similar literary phenomena ‒ "village prose", "root-searching literature".

Abstract: The article analyses the novels "The Master and Margarita" by M. A. Bulgakov, "The Great Gatsby" by F. S. Fitzgerald and "The Song of Endless Longing" by Wang Anyi from the point of view of the presence of musical images associated with specific musical works, performers, genres, instruments, etc. in them. Music influences the themes and issues, images of the protagonists, character system, plot, composition, motive structure, and stylistic features of these books. In all three novels the presence of two spheres – earthly space and other-worldly reality – is revealed. These spheres, having opposite axiological connotations, manifest themselves also through music. New York, Moscow and Shanghai are portrayed by the writers as cities existing within the real or conventional "jazz age" – in a broad sense within the era of "nervous excitement" against the background of past and approaching turbulent changes. Jazz in "The Master and Margarita", "The Great Gatsby" and "Song of Endless Longing" symbolises the illusory romanticisation of earthly life, which in fact is full of ugly, suffering and transitory things. The heroes of Bulgakov, Fitzgerald, Van Anyi in the final stories, being killed, pass into otherness, leaving behind a coarse and vulgar world filled with earthly noise, characterised by falsity or cacophony, and hearing harmonious music associated with natural sounds or coming from metaphysical soundlessness. The relevance of the article is determined by the high interest of modern literary studies to the comparison of works created in different national cultures, in particular – in Russian, Western and Chinese, as well as to intermedial phenomena, in this case – to the interaction between literature and music. The novelty of the article is due to the comparison of the novels of Bulgakov, Fitzgerald and Wang Anyi, which has never been made before.

Abstract: The article analyzes the image of a werewolf fox, formed in the Far Eastern mythological tradition and Russified in the stories of Russian authors Yuri Mamleev, Marta Ketro and Dmitry Vodennikov. The motive of werewolf among these writers has an indefinite character: on the one hand, werewolf can be understood literally by them, on the other ‒ as a metaphor (for example, feminine nature or poetic otherness). The werewolf foxes in the stories "The Teacher", "The Fox Wife", "The Confession of the Chinese Werewolf Fox" are placed by the authors in the Russian cultural and everyday context of the 1980s and the 1990s of the XXI century and are embedded in the space of a changing but unrelenting Russian spiritual search. In these works, they act as spiritual seekers and mentors in contact with two worlds, striving for a transcendent reality and revealing it to people.
The presented article was written as part of a large study on the "Chinese text" of modern Russian literature. In addition to these works, it mentions some domestic novels, which also feature a werewolf fox.
The relevance of the article is determined by the active interest of Russian literary criticism in borderline, intercultural phenomena that give rise to new artistic meanings. One of these phenomena is the Far Eastern werewolf fox, whose image variants have appeared in recent years among a large number of Russian writers. The relevance of the article also lies in the constantly expanding links between Russian and Chinese cultures. The novelty of the article is determined by the comparison made for the first time between the mentioned texts in the aspect of different and at the same time similar development and understanding by writers of different generations and different aesthetic attitudes of the image of the werewolf fox.

Abstract: Russian and Chinese dystopias have similarities and differences in their genesis. The proximity of the dystopian texts of the two cultures is due to parallel historical and social processes, which are reflected in the plots of the corresponding works. The difference is manifested in the accents that both literature puts. In particular, we can say that there is no Chinese dystopia in the Western and Russian understanding: China sees dystopia more as fiction and satire. Despite this, Russian and Chinese dystopias have similar features. The purpose of this article is to analyze the ideological, plot, and motivational calls between A. Tvardovsky's poem "Terkin in the Next World" and Zhang Tian-yi's novel "Notes from the Spirit World". The scientific novelty of the research is seen in the fact that the author for the first time compares these works, designates genre signs of dystopia in both texts, formulates the specifics of the writer's assessment of the corresponding dystopian regime. The inhabitants of the afterlife, in which Terkin found himself, and the world of spirits are the image of contemporaries of Tvardovsky and Zhang Tian–yi, citizens of the state, which is metaphorically portrayed by writers as the reality of death. This infernal world turns out to be a mortal mirror for the political regime. In the case of "Terkin in the next world" it is an authoritarian regime, in the case of "Notes from the spirit world" it is a pseudo–liberal regime, and but in fact - oligarchic and nationalistic.

Abstract: The article analyzes the image of the Chinese werewolf fox, or Huli jing (Chinese: 狐狸精), in Victor Pelevin's novel «The Sacred Book of the Werewolf». The comparison of the main character of Pelevin's work with the images of Huli jing in classical Chinese texts is made. In the center of consideration is the nomination of the heroine, her appearance, habitat, the ability to turn around and impose a hassle, the nature of sexuality, lifestyle. It is established that the image of the werewolf fox in Pelevin is a synthetic image created on the basis of mainly two cultures – Chinese and Russian. At the same time, she was influenced by mystical, religious, cultural and literary Chinese traditions. The writer relies on the components of the image of the Huli jing, borrowed from Chinese books, but offers an expanded and reinterpreted version of them. Pelevin is primarily interested in the desire of the werewolf fox not for bodily, but for spiritual transformation, on the way to which his heroine, relying on eastern philosophy, studies the principles of her mind. The Huli jing of the «Sacred Book of the Werewolf» and the confusion that it induces act as a metaphor for reality as a whole (man, time, space, language, the outside world, etc.). The nature of reality, according to Pelevin's novel, is transformational at its core, and this feature of it is due to its illusory nature. The relevance of the article is determined by the high interest of domestic and foreign literary criticism in the work of Viktor Pelevin and comparative studies (in this case, affecting Russian and Chinese cultures). The novelty of the work is due to the expansion of the concept of werewolf in Pelevin's novel – from the bodily inversivity of the main character to the characteristics of various aspects of reality.