AROUND THE BOOK POSOLON’: «THE DARK NIGHT» FAIRY TALE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE PETERSBURG ENCOUNTERS BETWEEN A. M. REMIZOV AND M. V. SABASHNIKOVA

Dealing with the mythmaking problem in Russian Symbolism, the article analyses transferring of the images and motifs of the novel The Dark Night from the book Posolon’ (1907) by A. M. Remizov into the realities of the most famous locus of Symbolist culture, Vyach. Ivanov’s The Tower. The author deciphers its latent meanings and offers a new reading of the Remizov’s tale as a work that attempts to replicate the mythological folk mentality. The additional meanings are derived from Remizov’s rare autographs, in the subtext of which there is an episode associated with M. V. Sabashnikova. The true story from the literary life of the Symbolist circle helps to fill the gaps in the biographies of the two personalities, and refl ects the signifi cant literary and cultural phenomena of the early 20th century.