Annotation of the results obtained in 2023
In 2023, the scientific team successfully fulfilled all set tasks. The results of scientific work were presented: - in presentations with 5 reports on the project problems at scientific conferences; - preparation and publication of 4 articles in scientific journals included in the Web of Science and/or Scopus bibliographic database; - preparation and publication of 2 articles in scientific journals included in the RINC bibliographic database; - publication of a collective monograph: Andrei Nikolayevich Egunov: manuscript heritage (scientist and translator in the intellectual history of Russia). - organising a round table devoted to the legacy of A.N. Egunov with the involvement of the editors of the journals "Platonic Studies" and "Schole" during the conference "The Universe of Platonic Thought" (June 2023, St. Petersburg). - posting the results of the research on the website http://a.egunov.tilda.ws/, as well as information in mass media (website of I. Kant Baltic Federal University). - preparation of the final report. R.V. Svetlov, providing general supervision of the project, focused on the research and publication of materials from the manuscript "Notes on Plato's Translations". The archive of A.N. Egunov includes unpublished fragments of his translation of the dialogue "The Feast". These fragments were prepared while working on the 1965 edition of Plato's Selected Dialogues. A.N. Egunov prepared recommendations for the future translator and gave as a sample some fragments of his own translation. In the article "A.N. Egunov's "Notes" for the translation of Plato's "The Pyre"" one of these fragments - the speech of Pausanias - is published. The experience of A.N. Yegunov's work on the 1965 edition of Plato's dialogues and his translation strategies was also summarized on the material of A.N. Yegunov's critical review of S. Aptom's translation of the dialogue "Pyrus". A.N. Egunov's critical remarks demonstrate the competition of different approaches to the reading of the ancient philosophical and literary heritage, which were being outlined in the Soviet science of the 1960s. The manuscript was processed, researched, prepared for publication, and an academic commentary of Egunov's translation of Leibniz's letter "To the Monsignor" was produced. The addressee of this letter was a famous French religious figure, Bishop Meaux J.-B. Bossuet. The publication of this translation allows us to solve a number of research tasks. First of all, it gives us an opportunity to see the peculiarities of A.N. Egunov's translation work. We know him first of all as a translator from Ancient Greek. However, when working on the French text of the letter, he followed the same principles as when translating Plato. The letter is interesting from the point of view of how Leibniz interpreted the possibility of the reunion of the Catholic and Protestant churches in the early 1690s. The principle of precedent begins to play an important role for him. The history of the relationship between the Czech Hussites and the Roman Catholic Church was such a precedent indicated in the text. The third important aspect of this letter is the way in which G. Leibniz uses his own scientific and philosophical concepts when discussing the topic of religious politics. While criticising the mechanistic ideas of Cartesianism, he mentions several themes important to him that introduce a different, more holistic model of the world. This horizon was probably meant to allow us to see that the differences between Christian churches are only external. These are the themes of extension, force and substance, which refer to the philosophical developments of the German thinker, such as the theory of singularity and the theory of individuation, or the concept of sufficient reason, understood as the basis and foundation of philosophical knowledge. The publication of "Letters to the Monsignor" will shed light on the evolution of not only religious and political, but also scientific and philosophical views of G. Leibniz. Minak V.S. continued the analysis of A.N. Egunov's literary studies, especially his last major work "Gnedich and Western European Literature". In 2023 the part where A.N. Egunov examines the relation of N.I. Gnedich and the Gothic novel is published. D.A. Fedorov and O.N. Anderson, as part of their work with A.N. Egunov's archive, prepared and published the article "The Unfinished Manuscript of 'The Greek Novel in Russian Translations'".

 

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Annotation of the results obtained in 2022
Researching the archive was primarily associated with cataloging, digitization and analysing the archive itself, looking into the matter of A. N. Yegunov's heritage historiography, studying the publication fate of his works, as well as a comparative and hermeneutic analysis of A. N. Yegunov's texts in the history of Russian science. The analysis of A. N. Yegunov's archive enabled to classify the contained materials into 6 categories: 1. “Manuscripts, drafts and working materials”. 2. “Documents dedicated to the life and work of A.N. Yegunov” - the data and tables about the life of the scientist and writer. 3. “Documents of an administrative nature”. 4. “Letters”. 5. “Photographs”. 6. “Miscellaneous” - a personal work card-file. A more detailed description of the mentioned structure is provided in paragraph 1.3 of the report, as well as in the following article: Fedorov D. A., Kolmakova M. V., Anderson O. N. The archive of Andrey Nikolaevich Yegunov. // Platonic Studies (2022). A moderately large, yet incredibly informative and carefully preserved extant personal A. N. Yegunov's archive appears to be a rich and valuable source of information on the life and work of the writer and translator. It allows one not only to encounter his familiar texts but also to discover previously unknown working materials; completed, however, unpublished for various reasons works, the documents which testify to the difficulties and successes encountered by A. N. Yegunov on the path of his life. Based on investigating the archive, studying the historiography and the A. N. Yegunov's published heritage, a detailed characteristic of his scientific works was proposed (see the article: Fedorov D. A., Anderson O. N. The legacy of A. N. Yegunov in the history of Russian science. // Vestnik RHGA (2022)). Let us hereby highlight several specific significant results which characterize A. N. Yegunov as a literary historian, translator, and scientific editor. The first one is related to the publication of the archive materials' excerpt devoted to A. N. Yegunov's research of N. I. Gnedich’s work: “Yegunov A. N. Gnedich and Western European Literature”. A. N. Yegunov's interest in N. I. Gnedich reveals not only the propinquity to the ancient heritage of the primal, but also his affinity to the main European literary trends of the modern era (in a broad sense of the word), including classicism, sentimentalism, pre-romanticism, romanticism in particular. However, while analyzing the early N. I. Gnedich's work, the author focuses on classicism and pre-romanticism, and besides in the reverse order, in accordance with fidelity to the studied material, since such progress precisely was inherent to the N. I. Gnedich's literary development, the climax of which, as it was already mentioned above, was the translation of “Iliad”, being the first canonical classical piece of work. Nevertheless, at a certain point of his research A. N. Yegunov claimed that the given “article” was nothing but a “detailed excursus to chapters V-VIII of “Homer in Russian Translations”” (however, in the typescript's latest version the mentioned comment had already been crossed out). Thus, one may definitely conclude that aside of the ancient literature, A. N. Yegunov was more or less interested in the key European literature tendencies of the XVI-XVIII centuries: baroque, classicism, sentimentalism, pre-romanticism and romanticism; and Gothic literature in particular, which distinctive features he also traced in the early N. I. Gnedich's works. Having analysed the works of the latter, A. N. Yegunov perceived creatively and studied the conceptual theory of Russian literature, because within investigating its such a significant expression as the Karamzin course, there lies the vision and comprehension of the integral distinctive features of the Russian literature of the Enlightenment – the era which preceded the literary era of N. I. Gnedich himself, also known as the Golden Age of Russian literature. Another crucial result of the work performed is investigating the A. N. Yegunov's approaches to classical texts' translations and their editing. Among other things, this was enabled owing to the archive, in the inventory of which under number 10 “Notes on the translations of Plato (in the book “Plato. The Selected Dialogues”, M. 1965, S. A. Osherov, S. Markish)” may be found. The research group studied and published some of these notes, which clarified A. N. Yegunov's strategies as a translator and editor of Plato's translations. A. N. Yegunov strove for the ultimately transparent and accessible transmission of the author's conception of the translated text to modern Russian. The hermeneutic delving into the intention of the writer who created the original, thereby became his most significant aim (as in particular can be seen in his assessment of the translations of Homer by Russian poets – see his monograph “Homer in the Russian translations of the XVIII-XIX centuries” M .- L. 1964). It is the conjunction of the conception comprehension with an internal report on those literary means, which let this conception be conveyed to the reader with no distortion, unclarity or vagueness, multiplied by A. N. Yegunov’s literary gift, that made his translations of Plato’s dialogues truly classic. This translation strategy, as one may conclude from “Notes”, also defined his work as an editor. It was this very strategy that became the reason for significant editing, to which A. N. Yegunov subjected multiple texts published in 1965, including the V. S. Solovyov's “Protagor” translation. Upon analyzing the interpretation of Plato's political terminology in the translations of A N. Yegunov the reality of this strategy was confirmed. This is particularly apparent when translating the term “isonomia”, i.e., “equality of law”, “equality of rights”. In the VIII book of “State” A. N. Yegunov uses an indirect expression (he defines a democratic, i.e., an “isonomic” person as someone who is “indifferent to everything”). As we assume, this is due to the fact that the translator proceeded from a quite reasonable assumption claiming that the Plato's concept of “isonomy” does not only strive to mark the political system specifics, which he analyses in relation to the description of a democratic person. It also concerns such an individual himself. Hence, in this case, this word may quite well describe the state in which he rushes from one impulse to another. Acquiring not rather political but psychological semantics, “isonomy” may imply profound indifference – as a representative feature of a democratic soul (in its Plato’s interpretation). Which makes it perfectly clear why A. N. Yegunov did not translate this abstract literally. The achieved results were presented in the following articles by the scientific collective members: Svetlov R. V., Minak V. S. A.N. Yegunov as a translator of Plato. // Platonic Studies (2022); Svetlov R. V. “Isonomy” and “indifference” – on A. N. Yegunov's translation of the “democratic man” description from the VIII book of Plato's “State”. // Vestnik RHGA (2022); Minak V. S. A. N. Yegunov as a researcher of Russian and foreign literature. // Vestnik RHGA (2022). The project participants have made 3 reports at various scientific conferences. Interim results of the project are presented on the project’s website http://a.egunov.tilda.ws/.

 

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