Филологический класс (Dec 2021)
The Relevance of Reshetnikov’s Creative Activity: the Author’s Style in Modern Ural Literature
Abstract
This article substantiates the thesis about the relevance of the works of F. M. Reshetnikov, a Ural mid-19th century writer, for the 20th century literature, as well as for modern creative writing. Reshetnikov’s works caused fierce polemics among the critics of his time. His method was defined as “popular realism” (by N. Shelgu- nov) and “ultra-realism” (by P. Kropotkin) but the writer was criticized for describing everyday life, for turning attention to non-Russian ethnic minorities, for monotonous writing, etc. The modern literary critic B. M. Gasparov brings Reshetnikov into the context of pre-modernist literature and compares him to A. Platonov. The article argues that Reshetnikov anticipated many trends in modern literature, especially those created in the Ural-Siberian region. His works contain and artistically combine examples of documentary essayism and mythopoetics, naturalism and (as-yet-to-be-created) modernism and reveal certain existentialism of the worldview, exposing artistic consciousness of the author himself. This article compares Reshetnikov’s texts with R. Senchin’s novel “The Eltyshevs” (2008): they are linked by depressive and apathetic narration about a decaying village; their characters are placed on the verge of life and death, sometimes beyond the edge of survival. The study reveals common features between Reshetnikov’s poetics and that of playwrights from the “Kolyada school”, including N. Kolyada himself, Ya. Pulinovich, and others. The article also compares the methods of compositional (montage) poetics in Reshetnikov’s novel “Where Is It Better?” and in an early play by Ya. Pulinovich “Behind the Line” (2008). A certain continuity with Reshetnikov can be observed in the works of A. Salnikov: there is a genre-thematic connection between Reshetnikov’s novel “One’s Own Bread” and Salnikov’s “Indirectly” (2018), there are similarities in the writing and in the style of these works, in the author’s reliance on epic solidness of the depicted world which “atones” for excessive descriptions of everyday life and characters’ routine. Thus Reshetnikov’s realistic writing, while being close to naturalism and exposing absurdity and phantasmagoric nature of reality, suddenly finds demand in the modern world.
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