Metareflexive dialogue with F.M. Dostoevsky in the small prose of Yuri Buyda

This article analyzes the forms of a metareflexive dialogue with F.M. Dostoevsky in the stories of the contemporary Russian writer Yuri Buyda "The Story about the Prince Aleshenka" and "The Age of Abraham and His Flocks" from the cycle "Osoryinski Chronicles" (2014). Although dialogical relationships with the creative heritage of the great classic can be traced in almost all the works of the cycle, in these two stories finalizing "Osoryinski Chronicles", they are particularly clear. This is evidenced by the very title that contains a reference to the dialogue with Dostoevsky, and the fact that the heroes of these stories read his novels, think about them, professionally study his work. Eventually, even the writer appears there as one of the characters. The objective of this essay is to show how through "another's word", through "thoughts about thoughts", through intertext, quotations, allusive connections with Dostoevsky we see Buyda's position, his evaluation of the phenomena that were predicted by the great classic. The paper discusses the types of characters created by Dostoevsky (in particular, the Stavrogin type), the phenomenon of demonism and "karamazovship", the topic of the "mental murder", the conflict of the angelic and the devilish in a human soul in the functional aspect. The philosophical issues of Buyda's stories are associated with the reflection on the eternal questions that were raised by Dostoevsky: the freedom and lack of freedom, self-will, guilt and responsibility, love-passion which makes one cross the "threshold", the love of God, without which the world is transformed into "the world of the dead." In the course of the analysis of Buyda's stories we identified dialogical links with Dostoevsky's The Demons, The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment. In the study of the peculiarities of Buyda's dialogue with Dostoevsky we also found connections with texts-intermediaries - critical essays of Berdyaev and M.M. Bakhtin on Dostoevsky's works, as evidenced by the explicit and implicit quotations. The dialogue with Dostoevsky is also complemented by a dialogical relationship with the philosophy of existentialism which is reflected in the author's interpretation of the theme of crime and punishment and the image of "man-God". A conclusion was made that engaging in the dialogue with Dostoevsky Buyda uses the stylistic, genre and compositional techniques - various forms of dialogue, confession, the situation of recent revelations - characteristic of the novels of his great predecessor. The dialogue of the modern writer with Dostoevsky is associated with a literary game, a parody, but it is not a postmodern game for game's sake. The works of Buyda are characterized by an inherent anti-utopian pathos. The author warns against the dangers of the spread of the total game, theatricality, acting that lead to the displacement of naturalness and to the triumph of the mask over the face; against the dangers of the triumph of Nothing. And while Dostoevsky leads his hero to the resurrection of the soul, there is no place for such a spiritual transformation in the Godless world where Buyda's characters live.

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