Dialogue with Literary “Forefathers” in the Ego-Texts of Writers of the Younger Generation of the First Wave of Emigration (I. Odoevtseva, G. Kuznetsova, N. Berberova)

Abstract

This article analyses the ego-documentary narratives authored by writers of the younger generation of the literature of the first wave of the Russian emigration. Writers like I. Odoevtseva (On the Banks of the Neva and On the Banks of the Seine), G. Kuznetsova (Grasse Diary), and N. Berberova (Italics Are Mine: Autobiography) turned out to be united by a common personal and literary fate. They established dialogue with literary predecessors, which largely determines the aesthetic position of the authors and their place in the literature of abroad. The memoirs of I. V. Odoevtseva, as memoirs of a participant in the literary life of the Silver Age and the first wave of emigration, make it possible to recreate and preserve the era in the faces of its most prominent representatives, not so much as poets but as unique people. The organisation of the narrative in the form of dialogues meets the task of directly “resurrecting” its characters in the mind of the future reader. G. N. Kuznetsova’s diary/memoir has a two-pronged task: firstly, it helps form an aesthetic idea of émigré life and the circle close to Bunin. Also, in the memory of the descendants, it not only preserves a man but also a unique artist, who was ahead of his time and felt dramatically at odds with his literary era. Finally, it depicts the complex process of formation and self-identification of a creative personality in their dialogue with the literary “forefathers”. N. N. Berberova, who creates a myth about herself and her contemporaries according to the laws of pan-aesthetic art, includes herself in the йmigrй literary canon with a “pantheon” of literary “ancestors” (with Khodasevich and Bunin at the centre): if not a writer of the first row, then an outstanding one, a talented creative personality keeping up with the times.