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CHILDHOOD AS THE SOURCE OF A WRITER’S INSPIRATION. IGOR KLEKH

https://doi.org/10.31425/0042-8795-2018-2-77-91

Abstract

The article examines the role of autobiographical retrospections and reminiscences in Igor Klekh’s stories Diglossia [Diglossiya], A Partial Man, or Notes of a 40-year-old [Chastichniy chelovek, ili Zapiski sorokaletnego], The Judgement Day [Svetoprestavlenie], and The 1999 Chronicles [Khroniki 1999 goda]. The writer’s Soviet childhood represents an artistic technique, a unique way to perceive and organize the narration. It is possible to say that it is from a child’s perception of the world that Klekh draws his literary inspiration, and that it is nostalgia that determines his stylistic experimentation. Speaking of Klekh’s leitmotifs and poetic imagery, such as the material metaphor of memory, documentary letter, reshuffled reminiscences, etc., the author points out that it is this specifically perceived and artistically digested phenomenon of the Soviet childhood that defines Klekh’s fragmented narrative style.

About the Author

T. Hofmann
Slavonic Seminar at the Zurich University
Switzerland

Tatiana Yurievna Hofmann, writer, Candidate of Philology, research fellow 

Academic interests include Russia’s and Ukraine’s classical, Soviet and contemporary literatures, overlapping with cultural and artistic studies. Author of Ukraine’s Literary Ethnographies [Literaturnie etnografii Ukrainy] (2016) and Sevastopology [Sevastopologiya] (2017), as well as a number of articles on the aforementioned topics. 



References

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3. Kelly C. Children’s World. Growing up in Russia, 1890-1991. New Haven, London: Yale U. P., 2007.

4. Klekh I. Y. Man as a Novel // Proust M. Swann’s Way / Translated from French by A. Frankovsky. Moscow: Veche, 2017. P. 5-8. (In Russ.)

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Review

For citations:


Hofmann T. CHILDHOOD AS THE SOURCE OF A WRITER’S INSPIRATION. IGOR KLEKH. Voprosy literatury. 2018;(2):77-91. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.31425/0042-8795-2018-2-77-91

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ISSN 0042-8795 (Print)