The military prose of Zakhar Prilepin and the tradition of Western interwar literature: between polemics and reception

Abstract

The article examines the dialogical interaction of Zakhar Prilepin’s military prose with the tradition of Western interwar literature. The article analyses the connection between Zakhar Prilepin’s battle studies and the poetics of the novels by Henri Barbusse, Jaroslav Hašek, Ernest Miller Hemingway, Erich Maria Remarque. The specificity of the influence of the poetics of the “Lost Generation” on the features of the works “The Pathologies”, “Some Won't Go to Hell”, “Citizen Soldiers' Romance” are determined. In particular, the intertextual connections of Zakhar Prilepin's battle studies both with interwar Western prose itself and its reception in Soviet literature are revealed. The polemical attitude of Zakhar Prilepin to the pacifism of the “Lost Generation” is analysed. The article considers such features of the dialogue between Zakhar Prilepin’s military prose and the Western interwar tradition as the development of the idea of front-line partnership, the use of irony and humour, the implementation of editing and defamiliarisation techniques. It is concluded that in his innovative militaristic poetics Zakhar Prilepin moves from ideological criticism of the “Lost Generation” representatives to a partial acceptance of their ethic and aesthetic principles.