The City of the Future in the novels by V.F. Odoevsky "Russian Nights" and "The 4338th year

Abstract

The article offers a comparative consideration of two social models in the fiction of V.F. Odoevsky. The researcher focuses on the unfinished novel "4338" and the insert novella "The City without a Name" from the novel "Russian Nights" by Odoevsky. When comparing both texts, the article points to the indissoluble semantic unity of the author's cultural and social views on the proper (ideal) future society. If "Russian Nights" is entirely turned to the present, so that the dystopian paintings in the short stories "The City without a Name" and "The Last Suicide" are needed only to properly look at the modernity of the 1840s and the consequences of mistakes that can be made in the present, then "4338" really aspires and into the future and projects a new scientific and social world. "4338th year" can only be considered a utopia in part. In the light of satirical criticism in the novel "Russian Nights" and other works by Odoevsky, "The 4338th year" turns out to be not so unambiguous a text as was commonly believed in literary studies of the early twentieth century.