This article offers a polemical response to Liubov Kikhney’s “The Plot and the Characters of A. K. Tolstoy’s ‘Don Juan’: Between the Classical Tradition and Modernist Ideas” (2025). It acknowledges the value of Kikhney’s map of Russian rewritings of the Don Juan plot and the strength of her account of the sources used by A. K. Tolstoy, yet challenges the transition from thematic or structural resemblance to a claim of Tolstoy’s “mainstream influence” on Silver Age literature. The method combines the comparative-historical distinction between genetic contact and typological analogy, intertextual theory, source-critical verification, and a close reading of the source article’s argument. A graded evidentiary test is proposed. It considers the availability of a putative source, chronological direction, marked verbal correspondence, a rare structural conjunction, the transformative function of the borrowed element, comparison with rival sources, and convergence among independent forms of evidence. The analysis shows that the seducer, Donna Anna, the Commander, retribution, repentance, demonic agency, and the quest for ideal love are high-frequency components of the Don Juan repertoire and therefore possess low source specificity. They establish participation in a common tradition but do not, by themselves, identify Tolstoy as the mediating text. Kikhney’s readings of Bryusov, Balmont, Blok, Gumilev, Tsvetaeva, Zaitsev, Potemkin, and Akhmatova leave significant alternatives insufficiently tested: Western European versions of the legend, Pushkin, Mozart and Da Ponte, Mérimée, Zorrilla, and the modernists’ own intratextual systems. The case of Daniil Kharms is treated differently. It is the strongest candidate for a genetic relationship because Kharms transforms Tolstoy’s distinctive heavenly prologue, and specialist studies support the connection; however, an unfinished play cannot be made to prove that its author rejected a finale of retribution. The article consequently replaces a linear model of “Tolstoy followed by the Silver Age” with a polycentric network of reception. In this model, Tolstoy remains an important node and a Russian mediator of the tradition without becoming the compulsory source of every later version. The proposed recategorization preserves Kikhney’s observations while making the strength of each conclusion commensurate with the strength and specificity of its evidence.
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