DOI 10.52172/2587-6945_2021_16_2_78
Abstract
The article is devoted to actual problem of Russian literary criticism of the XX-XXI centuries: the question of inheriting the tradition of artistic psychologism by F. M. Dostoevsky. The object of analysis is K. Fedin`s early prose, his novel «Cities and Years» (1924), created by a classic writer in a revolutionary era. The author of this article puts forward a hypothesis – the representation of type of reflective hero-intellectual Andrei Startsov in a situation of moral choice in the novel «Cities and Years» prompted the writer to turn to F. M. Dostoevsky’s artistic psychologism. K. Fedin uses the form of psychological analysis of the great Russian classic, creating the image of an intellectual, carefully individualizes experiences of protagonist in their dynamics, reproduces the process of his perception of the idea of revolution and at the same time traces Startsov's connections with other characters. K. Fedin recreates the psychology of those characters who are able to live for the sake of the idea, based on the revolutionary «expediency», and those characters who personally decide for themselves the question of possibility or impossibility of violence against the individual. Telling about student Startsov’s life, K. Fedin recreates the psychological atmosphere of his intellectual environment in Germany before the war and during the war period (on the eve and during the First World War) and in Russia, after 1917. The most important theme of literature of 1920s «The fate of the individual in the revolutionary era» is linked to theme of the First World War and the fate of younger generation. The destiny of generation of 1910s is shown as deeply tragic because of K. Fedin's global «vision». Developing F. M. Dostoevsky`s tradition of humanism, exposing the «ulcers» of modern European civilization, which has raised the idea of humanity, the writer prophetically foresees the coming catastrophes of the twentieth century. New for the Russian prose of the 1920s was the type of intellectual hero created by K. Fedin in the novel «Cities and Years», whose psychology in 1930s was artistically interpreted by E. M. Remark as the psychology of the «lost generation». In this article biographical, historical-literary and typological methods are used.
Key words
Russian prose of 1920s, K. Fedin, novel «Cities and Years», Dostoevsky's traditions, psychologism.