Museum Estate in Russian Literature: Narratological Aspect

Abstract

In the 20th century, the estate became a phenomenon of the historical past. This process began at the turn of the 19th and 20th century: the ghostliness of the estate culture and its archaic character are commonplace in literature of that time (A.P. Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard,” G.I. Chulkov’s “The Sister,” S.M. Gorodetsky’s “Sutulov’s Nest,” A.M. Kuzmin’s “The Deceased in the House”). At the same time, the problem of narrative ordering of numerous events and persons connected with the estate heritage comes to the fore. In the works of the first half of the 20th century, it appears as the aspect of comprehension of the pre-revolutionary epoch (N. Ognev’s “Kostya Ryabtsev’s Diary,” M.M. Prishvin’s “The Worldly Cup,” I.A. Bunin’s “The Imminent Spring”). But the wider the museification of the estate spreads, the more urgent becomes the question of memory narratives as a specific mechanism of cultural self-consciousness. The article analyzes S.D. Dovlatov’s story “Reserve” through the terminology paradigm of contemporary narrative theory. The writer shows how to acquire a frankly artificial (simulative) character in the estate museum context memory narratives, the “alien” estate past never becomes “his”/“her own” present of the narrator (guide) and his addressee (tourist).

Keywords

• estate museum
• russian literature of the 20th century
• narratology
• narrative
• memory narrative
• s.d. dovlatov