Article

Name: A music lover given to mockery, a lecturer driving past and his imitator: literary reflections of Andrey Bely

Authors: A. S. Alexandrov, E. K. Alexandrova

In the section Study of literature

Abstract: The paper considers the images of episodic characters of the novels by the writer Gaito Gazdanov, a Russian emigrant of the junior generation. The «prototype» for these characters was the symbolist Andrey Bely. One of them turns out to be a friend of the hero-narrator of the novel «An evening with Clare» Boris Belov. The very name of the hero, the internal contradictions, «unchangeable» jocularity, fear of ridicule and his attitude to music refer the reader to Andrey Bely, who in his theoretical works and literary-critical speeches asserted the need to subdue the art of the word to the laws of music. At the same time the image of Boris Belov is mentioned in autobiographical analogies. Other heroes endowed with the features of the writer-symbolist were the characters of «The history of one travel» a lecturer driving past and his imitator Sergey Swistunov. Andrey Bely became a prototype for images Sergey Svistunov (largely inscribed in the «Gogol» intertext of the novel) and Boris Belov (noted autobiographical analogies). Clearly traced is the polygenetic nature of both images.

Keywords: gazdanov, andrey bely, intertext, music, joke, prototype

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