Article

Name: About a “Forgotten” Text of the Russian Diaspora: “Vospominaniya” by A. M. Fyodorov (1868–1949)

Authors: Rebecca Gigli

Institute for Literature of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria

In the section Literary Life of the Plot

Abstract:

The recent “autobiographical turn” in the humanities has given new relevance to the study and interpretation of ego-documents. This has also contributed to a revival of interest in the literature of the Russian emigration, since there is a close connection between the latter and life writing. For the authors of the Russian Diaspora, autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, etc. are not just a collection of memories. They are texts that perform different functions. The ego-documents of the Russian emigrants problematize the representation of the past, the preservation of memory, and the transmission of the cultural identity of a given author or an entire community. The study of these questions becomes especially intriguing in the case of newly discovered texts. This paper is devoted to the analysis of such a “forgotten” text, “Vospominamiya” by A. M. Fyodorov (1868–1949). The author of the memoirs is a noteworthy representative of the Russian émigré community in Sofia. Today this figure remains in the background. However, during his lifetime, he was a successful poet, playwright, and novelist. His “Vospominaniya” has had an unfortunate critical and publishing fate. Until now, this work (with rare exceptions) has remained practically unstudied. The full text will be published in Bulgaria for the first time only this year (2025). In the latter, the author’s approach to the memoir genre is very original. The aim of the study is to examine various narrative strategies and themes used by the author to achieve the goals of his memoir prose. Particular attention is paid to the themes of “literature” and “exile”, which play a pivotal role in the text. Moreover, the research shows that the choice of topics, included in the memoirs, implicitly outlines A. M. Fyodorov’s portrait as a writer, which he wants to leave to his reader and to the future generations.

Keywords: life writing, A. M. Fyodorov, Russian emigration, plot theory, autobiographical “Self”, mem-oirs, memory, narrative

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