Abstract
The essay employs the concept of the cultural border/bordering to the comparative analysis of two significant literary texts, namely panoramic descriptions of Crocodile Street by B. Schultz and Nevsky Prospect by Gogol. Here we are dealing with the type of border that may be called spatial and chronological; the introductory part attempts to justify the appropriateness of such approach. The core comparative analysis of the essay touches upon structural, semantical, and poetological levels of these two by the concept of the border and bordering. Pointing out overlapping moments as well as differences sheds light on the problem of modernism in historical perspective and on the processes of influence and heredity from premodernist elements to the modernist poetics as such. Comparing Bruno Schultz with Gogol helps reveal the specificity of the work of the former that is at once unique and typical of modernism. Reading Gogol through Schultz reveals the importance of “Gogol’s lessons” for modernism, their suggestive potential to influence and transform the means of artistic cognition.
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