Eight seminars on commenting on unpublished minutes of meetings in the section of theoretical poetics at the State Academy of the Artistic Sciences (GAKhN, 1922–1930). Philosophers, literary historians, and linguists discussed both literary and philosophical problems, including philosophy of language and philosophy of culture. This and other groups within GAKhN brought together individuals who were at the forefront of humanities of their time, while the Academy itself was conceived as an experimental institution that developed the latest trends in European art science, primarily influenced by German scholarship. For contemporary humanitarian knowledge, these materials are important because the study of the formal-phenomenological school presented in GAKhN is just beginning. Many archival materials remain unpublished and unexplored. Our project will contribute to the development of these highly relevant issues. They are valuable not only for their historical significance but also for their contemporary relevance, as they can stimulate the latest humanitarian thought. Among the discussed concepts and problems are artistic form, image and representation, methodology of literary science, structure, style, verse, inner formalist polemics, classicism and romanticism in culture, and others. Participants in the GAKhN were, for instance, Gustav Shpet, Mikhail Petrovsky, Boris Gornung, Boris Yarkho, Mikhail Stolyarov, Rosalia Shor, Viktor Zhirmunsky, and others. To grasp the context and specificity of GAKhN and its place in the history of culture, it is possible to go beyond the section on theoretical poetics and discuss topics such as biography and culture, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. The goal of the seminars is to create historical and scholarly annotations to the corpus of discussion minutes texts in GAKhN, in order to prepare and publish a collection of these materials.

Marina Akimova