Narration organization in N.N. Berberova's stories (from ''The Feastsof Billancourt'' to ''Where They Do Not Talk About Love, and Other Stories'')

N.N. Berberova(1891-1993), who is famous for her biography and memoirs books, left an almost undiscoveredprosaic heritage, which includes such prose as stories and short novels of ''The Feasts of Billancourt'',1929-1934; ''Where They Do Not Talk About Love, and Other Stories'', 1931-1949; ''Relieving theFate'', 1934-1941, and four novels: The Last and The First: Novel from Emigration (1930), TheSovereign (1932), Without Sunset (1938), and The Cape of Storms (1948-1950). The series of stories''The Feasts of Billancourt'' (published in ''The Latest News'' in 1929-1934) and the stories of the1930s, which were later named ''Where They Do Not Talk About Love, and Other Stories'', are of vitalimportance not only as the prosaic debut of a young poetess, but also in the context of search of a newstyle of prose and new themes among the writers of emigration. Tendency to use colloquial commonspeech, objective simulation of the environment and its language traditionally presented by Gogol anddeveloped by M. Zoshchenko, A. Platonov, and I. Babel helped to find the main subject: life of acommon Russian ''proletariat'' emigre invisibly connected with the contemporary Soviet people. Theauthor explained her success and the artistic imperfection of her stories by her unusual style of writingand by Zoshchenko's influence. However, Berberova's stories of 1920s-1930s are interesting not onlyfrom the sociological point of view as a popular mentality investigation of common emigres, but alsoaesthetically. Her own narrative style is formed in these stories, which will later shape in her matureprose in novels, biographies, and memoirs. Unfortunately, her author's orientation on skaz (narration)as a means of popular mentality expression is broken almost immediately. The change of the skaz ontopersonal first person singular narrative in ''The Feasts of Billancourt'' showed the shift of the author'sattention from the psychology of ''mass emigre'' to the individual conscience, the inner person, fromempathy to emigre life understanding.In the personal narrative of ''Where They Do Not Talk About Love, and Other Stories'' we cannotice a dialogue between the narrator and the character: narrator's signs as a look from the outsidecorrects the character's position. Life stories, exploding the readers' expectations lead to the innerworld cognition that is why they lack generalization. On the contrary, they reveal something unusual,phenomenal in ordinary life. The novelist events are often created by breaks in the narrative, by changeof the narrative style. Berberova's narration in the stories of 1920s - 1930s highlights the change of thesubject depicted and her personal authorial point of view: from the mass to individual conscience, fromnarrator's agreement with the character to their complicated interaction; from the emigre way of lifedepiction to the emigre existence understanding.

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