Специфика преломления антиутопической традиции в повести Юза Алешковского «Николай Николаевич»

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the analysis of the novella “Nikolai Nikolaevich” by Yuz Aleshkovsky, the largest representative of the “third wave” of Russian emigration, in the context of the anti-utopian tradition of Russian literature. The choice of topic is explained by the need to identify the key features of the poetics of the writer’s early creative work, which will largely become decisive for his subsequent works. The paper aims to provide insight into how the tradition of dystopia is interpreted in Yuz Aleshkovsky’s novella. The study is original in that it is the first to present a holistic comprehension of the novella “Nikolai Nikolaevich” in the stated aspect. As a result, the researchers have proved that the novella is dystopia in terms of genre, despite the fact that it depicts not a fictional, but real-life state, although shown in a grotesquely exaggerated manner; it has been found that the key anti-utopian features of the work “Nikolai Nikolaevich”, the narration in which is conducted in the traditional skaz manner, are the conflict between the person and the state, in which the individual invariably loses; the confrontation with the socialist utopia; methods of reality absurdization; elements of carnival poetics (allusions aimed at creating images of the “material and bodily bottom” that oppose the “official” culture, as well as the use of obscene and substandard vocabulary).