Literary reception of A.K. Tolstoy's lyrics in Russia

The subject of the research in the article is the reception of A. K. Tolstoy's lyrics in Russian literary studies. The work aims to identify the peculiarities of the perception of Tolstoy's poetic legacy from early reviews, critical articles, and biographies of the pre-revolutionary period to the works of literary scholars of the Soviet stage and contemporary researchers. The goal of the work is to trace the evolution of the scientific reception of Tolstoy's poetic heritage, to identify key interpretive models that have developed in the pre-revolutionary, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods, as well as to characterize the main methodological approaches of contemporary researchers. The article analyzes the works of the founders of scientific-critical thought about the poet (V. S. Solovyov, Y. I. Aikhenvald), fundamental textual and historical-literary works from the Soviet era (I. G. Yampolsky, D. A. Zhukov), as well as the latest studies representing philosophical-religious, ontological, contextual, and linguistic branches of A. K. Tolstoy's works (S. V. Solodkova, V. A. Kotelnikov, A. V. Fyodorov, E. A. Burdina, and others). The use of elements of receptive aesthetics allows for the identification of shifts in scientific approaches to the perception of A. K. Tolstoy's lyrical works, the formation of ideas about worldview, aesthetics, the uniqueness of the artistic world of lyrics, and the writer's place in the history of Russian literature. The methodology of the work is based on the comprehensive application of historical-literary and comparative-typological methods, which allow for the examination of various stages of the literary reception of A. K. Tolstoy's lyrics in their chronological sequence. The scientific novelty of the research is determined by the fact that it offers for the first time an analysis of the literary reception of A. K. Tolstoy's lyrics from lifetime criticism to studies of the 21st century, which in turn opens up prospects for the study and perception of Tolstoy's lyrics abroad. The results of the analysis reveal the ambiguity and contradictions in the evaluations of early critics, indicating a movement from skeptical remarks about the "secondary nature" of A. K. Tolstoy's works in the pre-revolutionary period to the recognition of the significance of his poetic works in the history of Russian literature, as well as a shift from biographical and descriptive approaches, which dominated in the 19th and early 20th centuries, to analytical and systematic analyses in the second half of the 20th to the 21st centuries, which allowed for the establishment of the true significance of Tolstoy's creativity in the history of Russian literature.