Автопортрет как стратегия женского биографического письма (Н. Берберова Курсив мой и О. Гильдебранд-арбенин а Девочка, катящая серсо)

Abstract

The article focuses on the problem of the morphology of self-portrait in the structure of female autobiographies of the Silver Age. The objects of analysis are Nina Berberova’s autobiography and Olga Gildebrand-Arbenina’s diaries viewed as self-portraits unfolding in time. On the one hand the architectonics of self-portrait is related to the development of female subjectivity in the situation when a woman in a male culture had to express her identity through ‘italics’ and ‘diaries’. On the other hand it is related to the intermediality as a typical feature of the early XX-th century’s culture when discursive interconnections in a verbal piece of art were based on the semantic codes of other arts. The author considers the problem of visualization of the verbal in the semantic structure of self-portrait. Like a painter or photographer a female author constructs a new visual rhetoric marking her self-identity and recognizing herself in the Other in the mirror of self-portrait and camera-lens. Hence the prioritized visual strategies of self-portrait representation : 1 . A mirror as a metaphor of autobiographical memory ; 2. A camera-lens and recognizing oneself in the Other.