A literary character as a "prototype" of writer's personality: conditions of "recognizing" and creative consequences of identification

The article explores the prognostic and life-creating opportunities of Russian literature. Characters of F. Dostoevsky are presented not only as personifications of types of social behavior, but also as prototypes of creative strategies. Psychology of conceptual characters: character-explorer, "small man", "underground man", "bes" (demon), is presented in development as expression of their mental potential through creative work. The article develops the methodological principle of "reverse projection" as identification of the personality of a real author (writer or poet) with character-prototype. The basis of the method is definition of determinacy of creative and social behavior by mental characteristics of personality, which was demonstrated by Dostoevsky in his character Karmazinov (Demons), The second methodological principle is exploring the typological image of a character as a role, i.e. the substantial formula of a personality that has a potential of development. The article also examines the possibility of "embodiment" of a conditional image into life as realization of the creative potential of a type in creative aims, possibilities and creation of a text. This is the expression of self-actualization in writing as confession, as transformation into character, as a reflexed degree of equation of a writer and a character and maximum possible objectivity of self-rating. The third principle is consideration of the problem of stylistic predetermination through psychological cognation of a character-prototype and a real author. The degree of stylistic closeness or distance must show the degree of the vital type, its ability to essential development. The article presents examples of equations, obvious for both contemporaries and authors themselves, of authors and novel characters (V. Mayakovsky, V. Khlebnikov, A. Barkova) and points out characteristics of psychological similarity and degree of closeness of mentality and style. The article explores examples of forced or creatively turned recognizing of oneself in the literary image of a "small man", an "underground man", a "bes" (demon) and their creative expression (M. Gorky, Yu. Olesha, L. Leonov). Aesthetics and poetics of post-modernism (D.A. Prigov, V. Sorokin) are analyzed as a continuation of the strategy of an analytical letter of an underground man and a provocation of an immoral explorer (with the distribution of roles among "demons"). The obvious priority of Dostoevsky's characters as main "prototypes" of writer's strategies is caused by a writer's aim to picture self-actualization of a character which was realized in the practice of writing: writing letters, "little poems" and Notes from Underground. But the principle of discovering characters in their creative development can be applied not only to characters-writers. The phenomenon of the "transformation" of a novel character into a real personality of his writer as a result of realization of mental aims in the creative process is described in the article as an expression of the playing nature of Russian mentality and culture.

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