Irrealistic traditions in Russian prose of the first third of the 20th century

Abstract

The monograph examines the irrealistic traditions in Russian prose of the first third of the XX century. Irrealism as a semantic and style-­forming principle of artistic “belles-­lettres” (as opposed to documentary, artless) at the beginning of the XX century was mentioned in criticism, including by A. A. Blok, N. N. Rusov, N. F. Berner, and it was first designated as a term and justified theoretically in philosophical and philological studies by A. M. Evlakhov. The extreme individualization of a purely artistic, rather than a creative process as a whole, suggests the search for irrealistic features of unpopular works (drafts, manuscripts, unfinished, unpublished, misunderstood texts) or second-rate writers (A. N. Bezhetsky (Maslov), S. P. Bobrov, K. Bolshakov, A. S. Voznesensky (Brodsky), A. A. Galunov, V. V. Hoffman, M. L. Hoffman, S. I. Gusev-­Orenburgsky, A. F. Damanskaya, A. M. Evlakhov, V. Evtihiev, V. A. Zhukovskaya, A. K. Zakrzhevsky, V. A. Carrick, B. A. Koiransky, E. Kurlov, V. Lensky and N. Muravyov (Adbamovich brothers), N. I. Manaseina, O. Norwegian (Kartozhinsky), M. I. Pantyukhov, N. I. Petrovskaya, M. L. Premirov, M. A. Pozharova, A. D. Radlova, N. N. Rusov, B. A. Sadovsky, V. V. Sipovsky, Y. L. Slezkin, A. M. Fedorov, M. Khodyreva, AnChebotarevskaya, F. I. Chernova, G. I. Chulkova), because the flip side of non-demand, external distancing from public life was freedom. Despite the motley picture of the literary process of the Silver Age, this monograph attempts to systematize it (according to the criterion fashionable at that time, which deserved the attention of P. N. Sakulin, A. P. Skaftymov, etc., — irrealism), as well as, according to the Doctor of Philology, academician of the Independent Academy of Aesthetics and Free Arts B. F. Egorov, there is a “solid theoretical foundation and fresh, new material”.