Greco-Roman Antiquity in The Library for Reading journal of 1841-1848

The article attempts to identify the characteristics of classical antiquity representation in O.I. Senkovsky’s Library for Reading during 1841–1848 — a time of decline in popularity for the journal and a period of ambiguous perception of the classical heritage in Russian literature. Analysing twenty-four literary and more than thirty scholarly items on Greco-Roman subjects, the study reconstructs Senkovsky’s multifaceted editorial strategy for the popularisation of antiquity. In the literary section, the extracts from the works of classical authors selected by Senkovsky for publication aimed to highlight romantic features in Horace's poetry and Virgil's “Aeneid,” the woman question in Aristophanes' “Lysistrata”, and potential for Christian perception of Sophocles' “Antigone”. They also displayed innovative approaches by younger generation of translators to interpreting masterpieces of classical literature. Works by contemporary poets posited antiquity not as a rejection of modernity, but as a means to better understanding of modern conflicts, values, and anxieties. The key features of the scholarly and critical materials, many written or extensively edited by Senkovsky, were: first, a focus not on political history but on everyday life, material culture, arts, and intellectual history of ancient Greece and Rome; second, an interest not only in the results of recent research but also in the very process of generating new knowledge about classical world; and finally, a deliberately lucid, engaging, public-facing style. Antiquity was thus presented as an appealing civilization with a unique cultural-historical experience, its mysteries still awaiting researchers, and as an inexhaustible source for creative dialogue across times. This model allowed Senkovsky to address both a broad reading public, thereby fulfilling the educational mission of the journal, and the learned elite, inviting them to reflect on the methodology of ancient history, translation from classical languages, and effective ways of presenting specialized issues in classical philology and archaeology to public.