TO THE HISTORY OF THE TEXT OF L.N. TOLSTOY'S SHORT STORY "TWO OLD MEN” (1885-1886): THE FIRST PUBLICATIONS OF THE WORK
The article defines the features of the final stage in the history of the text of L.N. Tolstoy’s story “Two Old Men” (1885-1886), using the material of the first publications in “Mediator” (“Posrednik”) publishing house (1885-1886) and in the 12th part of “The Works of Count L.N. Tolstoy” (1886); and also clarifies the dating of the work. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that all the discrepancies between these editions were identified and systematized according to stylistic and semantic differences for the first time, which is presented in the “Appendix.” The author of the article characterizes both groups of variants of the 12th part of “The Works” as new fragments of the text that arose at the stage of publishing preparation, for which we had no evidences. The results of the research substantiate the directions of Tolstoy’s work on the story from october 1885 to the spring of 1886. The article shows how the author and editors (namely, S.A. Tolstaya and partly N.N. Strakhov) corrected verbal picturesqueness, figurative and expressive means of the work. The writer’s revision of the content constants of “Two Old Men” clarified the compositional antithesis of the main and secondary characters within the framework of the intersection of two themes in the plan of the work: pilgrimage to the holy land and famine in the village as a socioeconomic crisis.