National self-identification of the emigrant hero in the emigrant prose of Georgy Ivanov and Henry Miller. Article Two: The crisis of creative self-realization

The author compares the American prose writer Henry Miller’s novel Tropic of Cancer (1934) and the Russian poet Georgy Ivanov’s story Disintegration of the Atom (1938). The aim of the article is to compare the plot situations of the emigrant heroes’ self-identification in the aspect of the manifestation of their national and cultural identity in order to understand how the problem of national self-identification of a person of the modern era in emigration is aggravated. The second part of the article draws attention to the collision of creativity and the interpretation of art (literature) by the central characters. It is concluded that Miller and Ivanov agree on the idea of the crisis of culture and the dying of art in the situation of modernity. In the story of a hero, an aspiring writer, Miller shows the transformation of avant-garde ideas and the conformism of a contemporary artist. Miller’s central character appears as a spiritually integral person, capable of creative realization and capable of challenging a civilization stricken with cancer. Ivanov depicts a creatively sterile man-“atom”, unable to overcome the existential impasse in the crisis of modern civilization. Although in both works the heroes assert the highest value not of art, but of real life, sensuality, bodily passion, Ivanov’s hero cannot accept life and renounces it unlike Miller’s hero, who accepts himself and the world. The novel Tropic of Cancer is interesting in the aspect of imagology: it shows a number of images of Russian emigrants as perceived by an American hero. This is an American “view” of the Russian emigrant, different from the automyth of Russian emigrant writers (Georgy Ivanov). Geographically, Miller sees Russia as the most distant part of Europe. The dominant feature of Russians in Tropic of Cancer is irrationality (“crazy Russians”), but Miller, unlike Ivanov, captures both the pragmatism and conformism of Russian emigrants. The emigrant writer Boris, on the one hand, appears as a type of a European avant-garde artist; on the other hand, Russian roots are manifested in his aesthetics and attitude to the world. Boris turns out to be similar to the hero of Ivanov’s story, a creatively sterile person, immersed in the world of ideas, the break with which reflects the creative growth of the hero of Miller’s novel. A skeptical assessment of Russian idealism brings Miller and Ivanov closer together. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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