"Dialectics of soul" and other psychological techniques in the novel "The Last Day" by Mikhail Naimy

Vlasova Yuliya Evgenievna ORCID: 0000-0003-4311-3403 PhD in Philology Associate Professor; Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences; Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University of Russia 10/2 Miklukho-Maklaya str., office 502, Moscow, 117198, Russia vlasova-yue@rudn.ru Other publications by this author

Vavichkina Tatiana Anatolevna ORCID: 0000-0003-3474-5820 PhD in Philology Associate Professor; Department of Foreign Languages; Faculty of Foreign Languages; Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University of Russia 10/2 Miklukho-Maklaya str., office 502, Moscow, 117198, Russia vavichkina-ta@rudn.ru Other publications by this author

The novel "The Last Day" refers to the late stage of the work of the Lebanese writer, poet, philosopher Michael Nouaime (1889-1988). The name of this outstanding man is widely known in Lebanon, the Arab world and beyond. The works of this writer have been translated into many foreign languages, including Russian. Nuayme was connected with Russia not only by studying at the theological seminary of Poltava in the early twentieth century, but also by his love of Russian literature. According to the Lebanese writer and translator Imad al-Din Raef, Mikhail Nuayme considered himself "a man brought up on the fine art of Pushkin, Lermontov and Turgenev, on laughter through tears Gogol, on the fascinating realism of Tolstoy..." ^{[1, p. 29]}. Researcher M. V. Nikolaeva adds that for Nuayme, the main thing in Leo Tolstoy's work turned out to be "outstanding moral searches and religious and philosophical constructions, the search for origins, patterns of relationships between an individual and the surrounding world of people, nature and the universal" ^{[2, p. 141]}. In his autobiography "My Seventy Years", the Lebanese calls Tolstoy "Nimrod of Yasnaya Polyana" ^{[3, p. 205]}, emphasizing the grand scale of philosophical thought and the high level of literary skill of the Russian writer. The Arab thinker absorbed not only the philosophical, but also the religious ideas of Tolstoy. Ibtisam Ahmed Hamza wrote that Arab writers, especially Nouaime, were attracted by Tolstoy's "attention to the spiritual essence of man" ^{[4, p. 43]}.

The Lebanese author treated the figure of F. M. Dostoevsky with special reverence, whose artistic techniques he tried to adopt. Following Dostoevsky, Noimet raises and reveals the topical theme of the changeability of human nature, the inconsistency of his actions, the ambivalence of his statements. Admiring the Russian writer, the Lebanese writer wrote that in the novels "Crime and Punishment" and "Idiot" Dostoevsky reproduced the struggle of good with evil, conscience with sin. Speaking about the evaluation of Dostoevsky's ideas, Noimet declares that evil will not overshadow the good in a person, no matter how low a person is, "the voice of conscience inside him will not be silenced" ^{[5, p. 243]}. Consequently, Nuaymeh, the writer, drew from the works of Russian classics ideological and aesthetic views close to him and embodied them in his own works, transferred to Arab soil. The Lebanese also borrowed some methods from the Russian classics, such as stream of consciousness and dialectic of the soul, and other psychological techniques that he actively used in his work.

"The Last Day" is a philosophical essay written by Nouaime at an advanced age and published when the writer turned 74 years old. According to critic I. E. Bilyk, this novel describes the "path of enlightenment of a Sufi" ^{[6, p. 20]}, which rises through the stages of contemplation, renunciation of earthly goods and reaches the level of comprehension of the highest truth. In the introductory article to the novel "The Last Day", his translator into Russian, F. O. Nofal, calls Nuayme "Arabic Belinsky" ^{[7, p. 15]}, hinting at the author's critical mind. It should be recalled that, following Belinsky, literary critics distinguished and compared two opposite types of characters: a heroic personality and a small man, who differed in origin, social status, temperament and appearance.

Describing the chronotope of the novel, we note that the action takes place on the twenty-first of June on the longest day of the year and lasts exactly twenty-four hours. The number of chapters is the same as the number of hours in a day. The scene is an Arab country, presumably Lebanon at the end of the twentieth century. On the first pages of The Last Day, in the person of the main character Musa al-Askari, the reader finds a lonely, shy little man who lives without will, obeying the flow of time. He equally shuns the company of the inhabitants of the top and the gathering of the inhabitants of the bottom. A man is content with his own world. This reason forced Musa's wife to leave him. But one night he hears in a dream a voice exclaiming three times: "Get up and say goodbye to the last day!" ^{[7, p. 35]}. Like a bell, this call rings from the pages of the novel eight times, pushing the hero to say goodbye to the last day of his old life and start thinking, doing, living in a new way. "I was imprisoned in cages that no longer exist. Home is one cell, body is another, thought is the third, social and marital obligations are the fourth, work is the fifth, knowledge about the world and people is the sixth, the soul that I am afraid to renounce is the seventh... And longing for space is the first messenger of freedom!" ^{[7, p. 175]}.

Wading through the hermit's inner monologue, the reader learns that al-Askari is fifty-seven years old, he is a doctor of philosophy who is writing a book about the Sufi movement. The students dubbed the teacher "the guardian of values and justice" ^{[7, p. 45]}. However, he is criticized by his colleagues for being able to work for free. He has no friends or relatives. Besides, Musa has kidney stones. Although he has a house in the village and a car, they were bought in installments. His beloved son, hydrocephalus Hisham, is a heavy burden: the young man is eighteen years old, but he cannot walk. And Ru'ya's wife ran away with a young lover to Europe. Therefore, thoughts of the grave arose in the hero's head. He had a dream about his own funeral. Agonizing nocturnal reflections on life, death and time continue to haunt him all day. The reader watches how the hero's consciousness transforms in twenty–four hours: darkness – grave – pain – silence – a dream about existence – a miracle of a son who spoke - a letter from a runaway wife – a new order – a son for his father – a treasure in himself – a man is not an observer, but a converter. In the finale, Musa is freed from the burden of unpleasant emotions, bad memories, and fears that prevent him from living. The novel is based on the humanistic idea of moral improvement of a person. In search of himself, Musa comes to the following conviction: one cannot be afraid of death, one must swim against the river of time in order to become the ruler of life. Using the example of al-Askari, Nuaymeh, a humanist, gives the reader a model of behavior in difficult circumstances. It should be added that in November 2019, the P. Lumumba RUDN hosted a conference dedicated to the 130th anniversary of Mikhail Nuaime, at which Arabist G. O. Lukyanova made a presentation. She said that, having lived an intense creative life, the writer came to an important conclusion that the meaning of human existence lies in the diversity of the world, that man is a brother to man. "Man is the most valuable thing on earth" ^{[8, p. 38]}.

At the beginning of the novel, Musa considers himself a victim of circumstances and an insignificant creature that obeys the flow of life, but as the action progresses, the figure of the hero grows in proportion to the good deeds he has created. For example, he commits altruistic acts, gives a treasure trove of gold coins found in his garden to a poor caretaker with many children, Abu Farhat, who is in great need of money. Al-Askari saves a gas station attendant from a police slip. Also, Professor Musa sacrifices his career by refusing to become the rector of the university, convincing himself that what exists is more important than the momentary: "You cannot live obeying logic and making money from people's suffering, because there are feelings of beauty, mercy and love" ^{[7, p. 192]}.

The main character is a logically complete image. The writer develops the image of a mature and wise man, in whose head millions of thoughts swarm, and describes in detail (twenty-four chapters) the stages of the hero's rebirth. Renewal occurs not only in reality, but also in dreams, more precisely in dreams, when consciousness jumps from fantasy to fantasy. The twenty-first chapter is devoted to the hero's dream, in which he floats on the river of time and watches the eternal funeral: "I'm standing by a deep, deep, motionless river that disappears at a huge black tunnel. A half–white stranger dragged me to the shore. Half black. Boats and barges are crowded on the mirrored surface, sailing into the darkness" ^{[7, p. 219]}. They include kings, priests, scientists, poets and muses, politicians and believers. This endless procession symbolizes the frailty of the world. An imaginary interlocutor helps to unravel the hidden meaning of what he saw. He advises the hero to learn how to manage time, that is, to start swimming against the flow of the river of time. The wise assistant (Unnamed) and the son of Hisham in the next boat are furiously working with oars and sailing back to the tunnel of darkness, showing the right way. As a result, Musa becomes immune to the antics of time: it is not time that controls him, but he controls time. Nuaimeh applied to his hero a spiritual practice common in Sufism: the struggle of man with hidden vices.

Poet and translator E. V. Dyakonov called Nuayme "a hermit from Shahrub" ^{[9, p.3]}, hinting that the Lebanese spent the last part of his life in a mountainous Lebanese village, far from the hustle and bustle of the city. It is no coincidence that the writer takes his hero away from society into the world of dreams and prayers, peace and quiet, creating an ideal natural environment around him to reveal the best qualities of Musa.

For twenty-four hours, all the stages of Musa's life flash before the reader and become one in a row, including small events filled with feelings, emotions that replace one another. This is facilitated by a technique that the critic N. G. Chernyshevsky called "the dialectic of the soul" ^{[10, p. 33]}, using it to characterize the creative method of L. N. Tolstoy. According to this way of thinking, opposites are fighting in a person, which force him to make new decisions by accumulating himself and converting quantity into quality. It seems that Hegelian ideas about the unity and struggle of opposites, which end with the removal of contradictions in accordance with the law of negation of negation, attracted not only Tolstoy, but also Nuayma. Like Andrei Bolkonsky under the oak of Austerlitz, Musa al-Askari lies in his mountain garden and reflects: "Until today, I lived and did not give myself an account of those things that poison my life, narrow it down to the expanse of a needle's eye. Now, lying under a nut, I can ask the tree, the earth, the wind, the ant and myself: Who are you? What are the walls of the fortress that you are ready to defend made of? Your name, degree, reputation, position, wife. Son, house, car, garden, salary, bank account, mind, dreams and illusions? A pebble thrown from the top turns into a huge lump of snow weighing thousands of tons on the slope. I am this snow-covered stone, immaterial, formless, weightless and colorless. I want to thaw and get rid of my abrasions and illusions, clothes and body, thoughts and fears, desires and passions!" ^{[7, p. 183]}.

Being a fan of the philosophical ideas and writing methods of the Yasnaya Polyana elder, Nuayme uses similar ideas and techniques to create his creation. Musa al-Askari's "Last Day" is given not only through the chronology of events happening to the hero and his entourage, but through the characters' dreams and the movement of their thoughts, feelings and emotions. Also, parables about a python and a sparrow and about a man and a Great Dane play an important role in revealing the image. These wise stories tell the hero that love for others is stronger than love for oneself. And they implicitly lead Musa to the idea of forgiving his wife's infidelity. A peculiar inner story of the movement of the mind and the improvement of the human soul is told, where love acts as salvation: the husband goes to the airport to meet his wife returning home after a long separation.

The novel is based on the idea of moral improvement of a person. Russian Russian literary critic and translator of this novel F. O. Nofal believed that the Lebanese writer not only "actively operated on the mythologems of Christian - in particular Russian - literature, but also resorted to Sufi allegories" ^{[11, p. 246]}. The hero insists on his opinion and ignores the opinion of others. He is not interested in being with university colleagues, or with housemates and neighbors. He is lonely, he is oppressed by his wife's infidelity, his son's serious illness, and the routine of life. To prove the extremely serious condition of the hero, the author turns his brain and psyche inside out. Internal monologues are heard. Musa talks to himself or has conversations with an imaginary character. It seems to him that someone Unnamed is controlling him and giving him advice, even writing letters: "Don't look for Hisham. Look for yourself. You're lost. Hisham will love you wherever you are. Learn to love him the same way. The blind will never be equal to the sighted" ^{[7, p. 213]}.

The author, through the stream of consciousness, leads the hero to a conviction that changes the professor's personality, the rules of life, and even his faith. "In one of the pockets of my mind lies the key that once and for all has forbidden the way of time. Four hours have passed since I heard the voice, and I can't find my place. In four hours, I have covered distances that I have not covered in fifty-seven years. The night recedes, the line of darkness disappears, the light bulb is no longer needed. The Trizna stretches out in front of me. Wine is in the blood, and blood flows through the body. Who created the body? The breath of the breeze, the stars in the high blue and the ringing silence. All nature is shyly silent. The euphoria of the predawn silence, poisoning my soul, is the real truth, far from deception. It is loaded with melodies that lift me onto a magical carpet of joy. The eyes see in the open window and feel a roll of black soft silk, lightly seasoned with a scattering of silver by an unknown magician. Life on the plains and hills, in gorges and mountains, in seas and rivers is wrapped in silence, but this silence is teeming with elusive sounds – lives" ^{[7, p. 68]}.

The turmoil of the soul is illustrated by the emotions, feelings and thoughts that are bubbling in Musa's head, preventing him from making a decision. Nuayme, imitating Dostoevsky, uses subtle transitions when describing the borderline state of Dr. al-Askari: "My joy at the arrival of Ru'yi is restless. It flutters like a flame in a village stove" ^{[7, p. 229]}. As a philosophy teacher, the scientist al-Askari constantly makes predictions and analyzes alleged plots, approving them or exposing them to debunking. The reader joins the game, carefully watching where the logical chain of conclusions leads. It becomes interesting what secrets are hidden inside Musa: "Science has advanced far in the study of the smallest and largest things that exist in our world, but this world is still teeming with secrets. Man is full of unsolvable riddles. Man and the world around him are indivisible. We are not destined to know one without the other. The order that guides the world and man is the same order. The only constant in chaos is that which reduces or increases things indefinitely. This unit is the "unknown" One and Only thing that the ancients called "God". Man is the perfect image and likeness of God on earth – he tries to bring the deity to the surface, obeying the order. The lucky ones who have known the One God, who do not know the tides, live in the Absolute and with the Absolute" ^{[7, p. 103]}. The memories, desires and feelings of the professor are recreated in as much detail as possible. The gradual disclosure of Musa's psychological world makes his actions understandable to the reader.

In the course of the novel, Musa al-Askari is arguing with himself. The technique of introspection helps to reveal the essence of the hero and moves the narrative. Relying on the laws of dialectics, the hero brings himself out of the crisis, overcoming fear and pain. Sometimes a person loses the meaning of life, he becomes afraid, it seems to him that there is no need to live. But rewinding the tape of memories back, the hero finds vivid pictures of a happy life there: courting his future wife, the birth of his beloved son, buying a house and a garden plot and other joys of life. The author checks Musa's conclusions empirically. Is beauty omnipotent? What happens when the body takes over the soul? What should be above education? The seventeenth chapter tells the story of a tall, broad-shouldered, beautiful-looking medical student who hunted birds in the mountains and considered himself a god. He suddenly stumbled and fell screaming. After a medical examination, it was discovered that the goldfinch pecked the young man, avenging his murdered brothers. This case made it possible to prove that pure beauty has no power, and education is not useful in a world where physical pleasure and the power of money dominate the spirit. And only an enlightened heart is beautiful.

Like the hero of antiquity, the cunning Odysseus, Musa al-Askari is quick-witted. The product of the mind is not a momentary benefit, but the result of a thought process. Ingenuity is aimed at a nearby result, and brain activity is aimed at an invaluable discovery. If dexterity and ingenuity serve low purposes, then reason sacrifices itself and serves a higher purpose. Not only the individual benefits from his work, but the whole of humanity. Thus, the mind generates immortality by defeating death - the mortal body of a person dies, but his discoveries and inventions remain. The mind is above death.

Continuing to characterize the writer's artistic handwriting, it must be said that Mikhail Nuayme uses an internal monologue. The author was able to transform into his hero, he thinks for him and speaks on his behalf in crisis moments of life and when it's hard on his soul. The writer emphasizes the unaccountability, the underlying inner state of the hero: "I felt like an open book, which is being read by an incomprehensible outsider, a visionary" ^{[7, p. 149]}.

Psychologism extends to both descriptions of appearance and descriptions of nature: "On the way home from the garden, a small hill grew up in front of me, bordered on the sides by three high rocks and a dozen wild trees. Where am I? In the Garden of Eden? Beneath me is a thick feather bed of flowers and herbs. Above me is a clear blue sky. There is endless greenery around me, a whole scattering of buds. The only truth is beauty. Truly, pure beauty is omnipotent! And if you rise up and clean the vile stables of the soul before beauty?" ^{[7, p. 190]}. Noyme's psychologism is not only descriptive. The author recreates the image of a person in all its complexity and contradictory dynamics, using different techniques: internal monologue, stream of consciousness and dialectic of the soul.

From Dostoevsky, Noimet adopted the manner of deeply prescribing painful human experiences. To create credibility, he uses a split personality technique. Reproaching himself, Musa exclaims: "You are just a terrible father, unrecognized by his own child, who himself does not know his son" ^{[7, p. 81]}. Working on contrast, the writer immediately mixes the negative and positive emotions of the hero: "I feel like a sea overflowing and not losing a single drop of my own. My waves are drawn to Hisham, white roses, butterflies, to the garden, the village, the mountains, the blue sky above them, the sun" ^{[7, p. 89]}. Dialectics is a dialogue between the hero and himself. Wandering along the river of life into the realm of death. According to the laws of this philosophical method, the good and bad memories of the hero struggle with each other, and denying each other, they turn into a new quality: they become a way out of a life impasse, a new path for Musa and his family. His wanderings in the corners of memory. Wandering between two mutually exclusive principles of light and darkness. Following Fyodor Dostoevsky, Mikhail Nuayme places the hero in a borderline situation and begins experimenting with his psyche. One of the foundations of the psychological description of Nuayme is the intensity of the hero's feelings. Thanks to the image of Musa, the writer reveals the inexhaustible possibilities of the human psyche, describes the work of consciousness and immerses the reader into the depths of the subconscious. Through the suffering of the individual, Nuayme paints the tragedy of a personality that realizes its insignificance. Next, the author shows how the hero heals himself through a rebellion of denial, turning into a new hero. With the help of the "dialectic of the soul", Nuayme reveals the inner world of al-Askari from different sides.

Through the flow of feelings and thoughts, the author leads the hero to a new belief that changes his rules of life. The stream of consciousness flows into the hero's brain through dreams. In the world of Morpheus, the hero does not have a disintegration of personality, since his dreams are accompanied by faith, hope and love. This triad becomes the salvation of Musa, who believes in the power of reason, hopes that his immobilized son will recover, and his beloved wife will return home. Nuayme, unlike Dostoevsky, is not an apocalyptic writer who dissects a person and settles the devil into the soul. Tolstoy's materialistic concept is closer to him. When a person loses the meaning of life, when his body takes over his soul, there is a physical feeling of discomfort, even fear that there is no way out. At this point, a new belief is born. The dialectic of the soul helps to get out of a crisis situation, the essence of which is the removal of internal contradictions between two mutually exclusive principles: life and death, man and woman.

The image of Musa's son, chained to a chair by an eighteen-year-old mute youth, although static, is no less important. He is called to help his father believe in the victory of the good beginning. Hisham is the embodiment of Christ, the highest moral principle. He is meek and obedient. It carries moral harmony. His task is to heal the rebellious father from the tragic duality. Hisham can be compared to Prince Myshkin, the hero of the novel "The Idiot". Like Lev Myshkin, Hisham Musa al-Askari says that kindness and tolerance should rule the world.

According to literary critic and translator V.N. Zarytovskaya, for the "Arab world, Russian literature in the person of F. M. Dostoevsky is the leading works of world classics, the influence of which can be traced in the works of Arab authors" ^{[12, p. 4060]}.

Nuaime is attracted by the moment of a person walking on the edge of the abyss between life and death. This borderline state is created through the intensity of the plot, the dynamism of events, the expressiveness and nervousness of the narrative language. The speech is aphoristically orchestrated: "the troubles of some will serve as reason for others" ^{[7, p. 143]}. To enhance the effect, the author uses a system of speaking names. The main characters of the work are al–Askari Musa, the warrior Moses, son Hisham, the generous, wife Ru'ya Kavkabiyya, the heavenly gaze, the Unnamed visitor without a name. As for the interpretation of the meaning of the title of the novel "The Last Day", it can be interpreted in two ways: apocalyptically and philosophically. The first interpretation alludes to the Holy Book, which talks about the Day when believers will save their souls and enter the Kingdom of heaven, or not. The second version is more pragmatic. She leads the hero to save a person through brainstorming, reviewing previous behavior, analyzing shortcomings and choosing a new altruistic path. Just as Dante in the Divine Comedy takes his Virgil through purgatory, so Nuayme leads the philosopher Musa to the gates of hell so that he can see the vices of humanity and describe them. In the final, the last day of the "old" Musa passed into the next day of the renewed al-Askari. The author's task was to investigate the condition and behavior of a person on the verge of death, to show the way to save his soul. The novel has a system of hints-codes that help to find the truth. A person's life is compared either with a tooth with caries, or with a river of time tending to death. A man on this river of life is a fragile boat. Also, an individual can be compared to a pocket with a pearl inside, and a key needs to be found to a person's mind. Human thoughts are like ants that grow wings, insects turn into butterflies or swallows. The movement of thoughts is associated with the flight of fantasy and the play of imagination. The hero is looking for himself, not only through the analysis of the past, but through actions. For example, Musa passes the test of greed by giving a poor guard a pot of denarii found in the garden.

Compositionally, the novel is divided into twenty-four chapters. The tie is an inner voice in a dream, calling to get up and say goodbye to the Last Day. As the action progresses, this call is repeated many times, growing like a wave. The climax is the twelfth chapter, in which his guide, Unnamed, comes to Musa and explains that if he had realized that "on the Last Day there would be separation from a dead being and a joyful meeting with his true self, then it would not have been so painful for him" ^{[7, p. 154]}. From this moment on, the reader understands that there will be no real death, but the rebirth of the hero will come. The denouement is Musa's gradual cleansing of old beliefs and stereotypes. Musa's epiphany was also facilitated by other characters in the work. In particular, the role of Hisham's son was to prove to his father that he should not sacrifice himself for the imaginary good of others. The recovery of his son and his departure from home to another independent life prompted his father to make the right decision.

A special place in the novel is occupied by a character called the Unnamed. This is Musa's doppelganger, his best side, the hero's guide dog. He first appears in the tenth chapter of the book. In it, the son tells his father a dream where he encountered a man in a robe who looked like a genie. The magician reached out, plucked the brightest star from the sky and pinned it to the young man's chest. Thus, the wizard made Hisham a guiding light for his father. Then the Unnamed one comes to the house of al-Askari to reveal the secret of the fact that he called Musa to get up and say goodbye to his former life. Then the wizard leaves a note with an explanation and instructions. For the last time, we meet the fairy-tale magician together with Hisham in a boat sailing backwards along the river of time. The role of the Unnamed one is to be a spiritual mentor who tells the hero where to go, leaving marks, notes, hints. When Hisham disappeared, Musa found a folded piece of white paper in the house. It was a letter. "Don't look for Hisham. Look for yourself. You're lost. Hisham will love you wherever you are. Learn to love him the same way. The blind will never be equal to the sighted. The signature is Not–Named" ^{[7, p. 213]}.

Summing up the results of the study, it should be recalled that the main character of the novel "The Last Day" Musa al-Askari is a famous intellectual philosopher, a mature man, a respected teacher who one day thinks about the meaning of being and tries to rethink his life. Striving for perfection leads him to unexpected discoveries. Through introspection, Musa comes to the conclusion that his entire former life is worthless. Techniques such as psychological analysis, introspection, stream of consciousness, and internal monologue allow Nuayme to portray the inner world of the hero in all its completeness and diversity. It is no coincidence that the researcher of the writer's work, the Arabist M. V. Nikolaeva, called Nuayme "the patriarch of Arabic literature of the twentieth century" ^{[13, p. 212]}. In the novel "The Last Day", the reader can find answers to important questions: why and for whom to live, how to get out of depression. Narrating about good and evil, love for his son and wife, sin and repentance, Nuayme acts as a true humanist. Painting the different states of the soul of Musa al-Askari, the artist uses psychological analysis, which allows to consider the personality from different sides. Mikhail Nuayme's artistic handwriting inherited some of the techniques of Russian literature. Following F. M. Dostoevsky, Nuayme plunges the hero into a borderline situation, where through dialogues with an imaginary double, the secrets of the inner world of the personality are revealed. Admiring the creative work of Leo Tolstoy, the Lebanese writer tries to play with feelings, juggle thoughts, dive into the subconscious and bring the professor to consciousness, creating the "dialectic of the soul" by al-Askari. This experiment takes place within one day and leads to the rebirth of Musa. This continuity is not accidental. First, the Russian classics revealed to the young Lebanese the ways of analyzing the human psyche. And then Nuayme himself, through the hero of the novel "The Last Day", opened his Arab soul and the entire Arab world to Russian readers.

In conclusion, I would like to add that the head of the Soviet school of Arabic studies, academician I. Y. Krachkovsky, maintained friendly relations with the "Poltava seminarian". Hinting at Nuayme's five-year studies in the Russian Empire through the Orthodox Palestinian Society, in his letters the Russian orientalist called the Lebanese "Dear Misha" ^{[14, p. 55]} and noted that sympathies arise spontaneously, but the future of all mankind depends on them. We hope that the bridge between Russian and Arabic literatures will be built from these sympathies.