M. Zoshchenkos and M. Prishvin's autobiographical prose: life buildingVariants

On the material of the autobiographical works, M. Zoshchenko's novel Before Sunrise (1943) andM. Prishvin's novel Kashchey's Chain (1923-1953), the author investigates the peculiarities of lifecreatingsearches of the writers. The genre of autobiography became popular in the epoch of sentimentalismand, especially actively, romanticism. By 1930s it had undergone essential changes: preservingthe intimate space of the dialogue with the reader, the "Soviet" autobiography for authors became thesearch of their own identity, sometimes - a chance to preserve the once integral reality (left in the past)through memories.Prishvin began the search of connection of art with life at the sunset of modernism. He made outhis theory different from the symbolic and the proletcultural as well. The autobiographical discourse ofthe novel Kashchey's Chain is realized through the integration in one whole of the three bases ofPrishvin's world: woman - nature - creativity. The consequent sacralization of the child's dream of afantastic tsarina creates a new concept of Prishvin's poetry - the Beautiful Sistine Lady. The lifecreatingproblem of the correlation of the ideal and reality penetrates the whole text of the autobiography,connecting the mythological story of Pygmalion and Galatea with the love line of Alpatov and hisbeloved - Inna Rostovtseva. The idea of effective love penetrates the following novel pages, addedafter the war in 1940s, in a new fashion enriching the understanding of the title. Kashchey's chainbecomes the symbol of human sufferings and misfortunes, destined to everyone in the course of life.According to Prishvin, the person must and can escape from them - to break off Kashchey's chain -and then, as an award, he will receive Love and force to realize himself the Creator of life, its "winner".The genre name of the novel, "fairy tale", transfers the individual author's attitude to a fairy tale:for him it is the other side of the truth, the "hidden" truth that must become life.M. Zoshchenko implemented the strategy of "practical life-creativity" in therapeutical (medical),philosophical and enlightening forms in his novel. Such practice of building life through the man himself,through taking out his own suffering soul, through overcoming not only his neurotic child's fearsbut also fear in its global meaning - the fear of death and being old - was, according to the author, theonly useful thing for the new society absorbed by war and sufferings. The use of last modern knowledgeof mentality and physiology, the application of the physiological doctrine of I. Pavlov andZ. Freud's psychoanalytic method, the philosophical knowledge about the human body nature, educationalideas - all these become elements of Zoshchenko's complete life creating program. Owing to thechanges on pages of the book, the person should find a "key to happiness".Zoshchenko's personal effort did not result in the expected outcome, and the mythological underlyingcause of Zoshchenko's anthropology undermined the pragmatism of the given concept. Thewriter searched not only for the "key to happiness" for a separate person but, possibly, during the SecondWorld War events, also for all the humankind; he tried to realize people's century-long dream ofimmortality and eternal youth. His story is a way to certain metaphorical (mythological) "enlightenment"of the humankind through suffering - the analogue of antique catharsis. Zoshchenko, pursuingthe same aims as Prishvin, - the deliverance of the humankind from sufferings and finding happiness -prophesies the beginning of a new era and a birth of the new person who will be able to see "sunrise".

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