V.A. Zhukovsky's complete works and self-translations in German: the principles of scientific publication and its role in the poet's literary heritage publishing history

In 2016, Volume 11 of the Complete Works and Letters by V.A. Zhukovsky was published, which meant the end of the colossal effort of Tomsk philologists headed by A.S. Yanushkevich to prepare and publish the poet's writings and diaries. The results of this publishing and research project, obtained within the framework of modern tendencies in humanities, lead to a new perception of the heritage of the first Russian romanticist, who was also the mentor of the Royal family and a recognized "genius of translation". These results have set up vital tasks to introduce Zhukovsky's German writings and self-translated compositions into scientific discourse. The article highlights the basic principles of publishing and textology in the forthcoming edition, which includes more than twenty pieces of prose and poetry. For the first scientific publication of Zhukovsky's German writings and self-translations the "texte en regarde" format was chosen, in which the original text and its translation run parallels. This type of layout conveys a particular literary consciousness form, which is crucial to understand the literary method of the poet and his epoch. The aim of this article is to conceptualize the meaning of this format in the history of the world's book culture with reference to the creative work of Zhukovsky, who was a reader, a writer, an educator and a thinker all at the same time. In the article this format is also discussed from the point of view of the publishing history of Zhukovsky's cultural heritage in the 20th-21st centuries. His work as an editor in Vestnik Evropy [Herald of Europe] (1807 - 18011), in the periodical Dlya nemnogikh [For the Few] (1818), in the anthologies Kollektsioner [The Collector] (1829) and Muraveynik [The Ant Hill] (1831) marked stages in Zhukovsky's experiments with foreign texts, and those experiments involved translation into Russian. The final stage of his life and creative work, associated with his marriage and leaving for Germany, was also reflected in his experimental work on translating and editing. During that stage his main interest was to find the most effective strategies of transferring his own (both original and translated) writings into the German context. Another reason why the author considers the parallel existence of the text doublets as a creative form of consciousness, an ideal form to represent Zhukovsky's German cultural heritage is that this method has had its long history and traditions due to the efforts of the well-known philologists of the 20th-21st centuries, mainly to A.A. Gugnin. The scientific publication of Zhukovsky's late German poetry and prose in the paradigm delineated by Russian and foreign researchers of "Zhukovsky's world" has definitely become an up-to-date task that will outline new ways to conceptualize Russian classics' literary heritage written in foreign languages. Fitting into the designated tradition of parallel editions, the intended completed works and self-translations in German is ground-breaking in the Russian publishing as it will represent for the first time all self-translations made by Zhukovsky and thus will reveal two sides of his creative individuality, or rather, its two literary languages, in their contingency.

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