Merezhkovskiy's "Atlantis": Sources and Reception

The article deals with the analysis of Volume 2 of Merezhkovskiy's trilogy "The Mystery of the Three", i.e. "The Mystery of the West: Atlantis-Europe". Thematically it can be divided into two parts, the first being an analysis of the quotations and references in "Atlantis" in order to establish their accuracy, the other covering the contemporaries' reaction to such a monumental piece of work. The novelty of the article lies in the fact that the study of quotations and references shows the peculiarities of Merezhkovskiy's technique of citation, it marks "mistakes" in them and tries to explain the reasons for those "mistakes"; a special attention is paid to Vyacheslav Ivanov quoting Merezhkovskiy, when he apparently explores the text unknown to us. The article also gives a range of the contemporaries' reactions to the "Atlantis". Merezhkovskiy was known for his passion for quotations and sources, in order to write "Atlantis" he could have read everything related to Atlantis available at that time. Moreover, Merezhkovskiy managed to provide his work with a quasi-scholarly apparatus, which is indicative of the significance of searching the sources for him. Nonetheless, as it is shown in the conclusion, his great work was not really in demand by his contemporaries: neither by the scholars, nor by the literary critics.