Article

Name: The Reception of Chinese Culture and Literature in the Work of German Kochurov

Authors: Ekaterina V. Senina

MGIMO University, Moscow, Russian Federation

In the section Literary Life of the Plot

Abstract:

Chinese literature became not just a source of knowledge about China for Russian emigrant writers – it became a powerful source of meta-literary reception. The meta-literary reception is the perception of Chinese literary tradition by emigrant writers, that is, the creation of an image of perception of Chinese literature. It is about the assimilation of themes, motifs, images, plots, genre and style forms of Chinese literature in order to enrich the creative arsenal with the foreign tradition and to discover the points of contact between this foreign culture and their own. The process of meta-literary reception begins in Harbin with translations of Chinese classical literature, followed by stylisation, reinterpretation of classical stories, and translations of contemporary literature. The article focuses on the study of images of perception of China and the Chinese in the work of the little-studied Far Eastern emigrant writer G. Kochurov. The main way of G. Kochurov’s meta-literary reflection of Chinese culture was a hybrid form of stylisation. In his first novel, the writer imitated the English modernist novel, later - the stylistics of the Chinese classical novel. The analysis of the process of meta-literary reception of Chinese culture by Russian emigrant writers has allowed us to conclude that the rich arsenal of Chinese literary tradition, imagery, and plot has certainly enriched the literature of Russian China. It has given not only exotic colour, but also convincing texture and brevity to the lyrics, and has produced specific narrative strategies in prose. The historical and geographical logic of the development of the cultural life of the Far Eastern emigration determined that the meta-literary reception of the Chinese tradition began in Harbin with lyrics and ended in Shanghai with the creation of quite complex genre formations, such as the hybrid form of the stylised novel. This experience of meta-literary reception of Chinese culture was more fruitful, combining antiquity and modernity in the image of literary China, the viewpoints of the Chinese themselves and the image of the perception of China by Europeans.

Keywords: Russian abroad, Chinese literature, German Kochurov, literary stylization

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