AN UNREALIZED PROJECT OF DMITRII SERGEEVICH LIKHACHEV (BASED ON ARCHIVAL MATERIALS)

The article presents an analysis of some materials that were found among letters in the archive of Dmitrii Sergeevich Likhachev. These materials include notes about the contents, the composition, the form of publication, and the main theme of a new book that Likhachev was planning to write. By means of publishing a selection of extracts from medieval Russian literary texts of the 11th–18th centuries and of some translated texts, Likhachev apparently intended to reveal the search for humanity that the authors, editors, and copyists of these texts were engaged in. The scholar decided to name the book «The Bee». This title continues the tradition of Byzantine florilegia, which included selections of sayings of ancient authors, quotations from the Holy Scriptures, and theological works. Translations of such collections were widespread in the Slavic world. The six sheets of paper that contain Likhachev’s notes are undated, but their content suggests that the scholar conceived the idea of this book some time after 1985. The project, however, was not realized.