Жанровый синтез в мемуарах А. Т. Болотова

Abstract

Although the genre status of the memoirs of the Russian writer Andrei T. Bolotov has been repeatedly raised in the literature, it has never merited a separate study. This article analyses the structure of Bolotov’s memoirs in terms of their genre peculiarity. Text analysis shows that, when writing his memoirs, Bolotov used techniques borrowed from across various genres with which he was well acquainted. Those were the novel, the epistolary genre, the travelogue, the historical essay, etc. In the broad context of Bolotov’s works, the article shows that all those elements were not combined mechanically. A well-read and stylistically sensi­tive author, he was guided by an intuitive sense of appropriateness of each technique depend­ing on the object of description and thus achieved a genuine synthesis of genres. Finally, it is concluded that this intuition and a clear understanding that his task was a thorough descrip­tion of his life as a record for posterity translated in the literary finesse of Bolotov’s texts and their appeal to the reader.