Book as a multilevel space of communication: The Faith, Love, Hopeby J.G.B. Draseke interpreted by V.A. Zhukovsky

Zhukovskys personal library is a most valuable collection of literary monuments and artefacts ofthe world literature. It represents an artistic laboratory of the poet. Tomsk philologists inventoried themajor collection of editions, preserved in the research library of Tomsk State University in 1980s.Nevertheless, earlier non-registered books with Zhukovskys marginal notes, writings and wholefragments of prose translations are discovered quite often even nowadays. Some editions are essentiallyvaluable as the author indicated their importance himself. One of such editions is a copy of thebook written by a German preacher J.G.B. Draseke, The Faith, Love, Hope (Draseke J.G.B. Glaube,Liebe, Hoffnung. Ein Handbuch fur junge Freunde und Freundinnen Jesus. Luneburg, 1814). Thisbook was of great importance for Zhukovsky.Drasekes book, which belonged to V.A. Zhukovsky and M.A. Protasova, is kept in the PushkinHouse. It uncovers new stories of the Russian romanticists biography and literary work, as well asthe cultural and historical context of the 1810s. The multilevel space of communication between theauthor and his readers is found in this edition and its additional pages. This book has a multilevelcomposition. This sermon in German about faith, love and hope uncovers the most intimate story inthe poets life concerning his relationship with his living ideal. Zhukovsky appears as a reader,translator, teacher and a person missing his beloved one.The book initiates three perspectives of communication. First, the book discloses communicationbetween the author and the reader about God, humanity and main Christian virtues; second, it disclosesthe space of communication between Zhukovsky and Protasova, who accepted Drasekes sermonas an intertext in the context of private relationship and circumstances; and, finally, its thirdperspective can be regarded as serving educational and pedagogic aims, for Zhukovsky intended thisbook to philological education and moral upbringing of the girl he loved.This article contains a detailed description of both readers marginal notes. Zhukovskys translationof the chapter titled I am human has never been published before.

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