The Art of Textual Criticism in the Scientific Heritage of L. D. Gromova-Opulskaya. On the 100th Anniversary of Her Birth

Abstract

The article, dedicated to the memory of L. D. Gromova-Opulskaya, examines her contributions to the development of Russian textual criticism, particularly in the preparation of editions of L. N. Tolstoy. For this purpose, she developed unique principles for deciphering manuscripts, methods for determining editions and variants of literary texts and compiling scientific commentary. More than half a century of service to Russian classical literature included the experience of preparing academic editions of Tolstoy, Herzen, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and Yesenin. Discoveries in the field of practical textual criticism formed the basis of theoretical articles by the scholar and conceptual work “Problems of Textual Criticism of Russian Literature of the 19th Century” (1982), which proved the dialectical connection between the history of literature of the 19th century and textual criticism, affirmed historicism as a universal principle of textual research, and revealed a direct and consistent connection between the three components of textual criticism: the history of the text, the creative will of the writer, and scientific criticism of the text. The article examines specific examples of Gromova-Opulskaya’s art of textual criticism, drawn from the archive of the volumes of Tolstoy’s new Complete Works that she prepared.

Keywords

• l. d. gromova-opulskaya
• l. n. tolstoy
• russian literature
• scholarly criticism of the text
• commentary
• textual criticism