Issues

In 1926, Fyodor Sologub joined the jury of the literary competition of the “Mir prikliuchenii” magazine. The jury included Vladimir Bondi, Alexander Gorlin, Ivanov-Razumnik, Boris Modzalevsky, Sergey Platonov, Pyotr Soykin, and Nikolay Engel; they had to select ten nominees from the anonymous short stories submitted to the editorial office. Ivanov-Razumnik called the work of reading these manuscripts and compiling a report on the competition “the last literary work” of Sologub. The article reveals that this statement is not so far from the truth. After the publication of the competition report (summer of 1927), Sologub wrote several poems, as well as unfinished prose sketches. However, despite the fact that the report was most likely written by Vladimir Bondi and that the signature under it is collective, this text (“Mir prikliuchenii”, 1927, no. 8) is the last lifetime appearance of the writer’s name in print. The inclusion in the jury had several consequences for Sologub: three aspiring writers approached him through the editorial office of the magazine (two with routine requests to see their poems and to read a story submitted for the competition, and the third was an indignant exclamation from an author who had not had time to submit his text). The article also draws attention to the unpublished pencil portrait of Sologub, made by the permanent artist of the “Mir prikliuchenii” magazine Mikhail Mizernyuk on June 20, 1927.