Time of Palievsky

Abstract

The article is based on the author’s personal memories of meetings, cooperation and conversations with the outstanding Russian philologist Pyotr Vasilyevich Palievsky. Being a scientist of exceptional range, Palievsky has received wide recognition in Russia and abroad as the author of classic studies. The author of the article tries to determine the essential features of his contribution to the theory of literary image, the study of the nature of artistic values, the identification of patterns of the literary process. Palievsky’s books and articles, public speeches, oral judgments about writers, about Russian and world artistic culture, about the fate of Russia in the turbulent movement of humanity express scholar’s holistic, original system of views on man and the world. Using the example of individual life episodes and statements of the scientist, the article reveals a personality unique to Russian literary studies, cultural studies, social studies in terms of the degree of involvement in world ideological processes and almost all-encompassing breadth of horizons. The article highlightes activity of Palievsky as the service to his Fatherland of a richly gifted scientist-patriot, continuer and keeper of the national tradition in Russian philology.