Journalism or Writing? (On the Syncretism of the Documentary and Fiction in Russian Writers Creative Works)

Abstract

The article continues the discussion of the “phenomenon of journalism” in the creative heritage of Russian writers of the early twentieth century. The diary as a genre has always been at the center of research interests, but so far the criteria for “diary” have not been defined either by literary critics, or by theorists of journalism. At the turn of the century, diaries were kept by many artists of the word, it was the only genre that allowed expressing thoughts on pressing issues, which made it possible to attribute this genre definitely to journalism. At the same time, there is a tendency in the works of scientists to note the “informational possibilities of this type of ego-document for the study of the humdrum of a particular topos” (E.M. Krivolapovа), thus relating it to documentary prose. The subject of the analysis is the genre of diary prose by Ivan Bunin and Mikhail Prishvin. Written at the same time, the diaries of these writers reflect — each in its own way — one era — the bloody revolutionary present. The article poses the problem of the relationship between documentary and fiction in the diary genre. By comparing the diaries of Bunin and Prishvin, the author proves that a nonfiction text may well have a certain aesthetic value, but not the aesthetic, but rather the ethical aspect becomes dominant in nonfiction. This is manifested in the topical, socially significant problems of the work, and in the author’s striving to reduce the distance between his consciousness and the consciousness of the reader, and in the special lexical and grammatical structure of the phrase (Bunin's Cursed Days). Prishvin's diaries on the selection of vital material suggest that his position is artistic when the artistic image becomes the only true one in the presentation and perception of the world.