The Synthesis of the Documentary and the Artistic in the Memoir Prose by K.A. Korovin (Chaliapin. Meetings and Living Together)

The article focuses on the specificity of the memoir text by the famous Russian artist K.A. Korovin. When in emigration, far from his homeland, he turns to literary creativity and writes memoirs, stories and essays about the Russian past and his famous contemporaries: Chekhov, Levitan, Serov, Vrubel and Feodor Chaliapin, who was his friend for forty years. The memories of Chaliapin are born not only out of Korovin's nostalgic retrospectiveness, but also out of his desire to build an artistic model of reality, to recreate the concept of creativity and the creator's image that would epitomize the Russian elemental nature, close to the memoirist himself. Korovin uses genuine facts to shape his aesthetic ideas about creativity and culture as elements of life, emphasizing artistry, the depth of intuitive insight of the image, immense and ambivalent appearance of the person whose “miracles of art” embodied the “Dionysian” principle. With the help of a mirroring technique, the writer projects what he writes about on his own life, his position of an emigre artist, whose creativity can be fully realized only on his native soil. Korovin shows Chaliapin as he is, highlighting his flaws with a bit of humor. However, he emphasizes the significance and tragedy of the greatest Russian singer to reflect on the immensity and complexity of the Russian character, on the nature of genius and his fate. High persuasiveness in the synthesis of the documentary and the artistic is achieved due to Korovin's unique impressionistic creative manner. His exact vision and ability to catch the main line of the portrait or the main detail of the depicted scene made it possible to visually and vividly convey the described characters and situations and capture the reliability of the past moments. Including visual imagery in the memoir narrative, K.A. Korovin expands the capabilities of the memoir text in achieving synthesis of memory and imagination, fact and fiction, words and images.