“The Heir in a Straight Line”: Mechanisms and functions of George Grebenstchikov’s literary self-canonizaton

The article discusses the mechanisms and pragmatics of George Grebenstchikov’s multi-genre texts and behavioral gestures aimed at solving the problem of literary self-canonization. The object of the research was determined by the corpus of materials - fictional (the novel “Churaevs”) and nonfictional (memoir essays, articles, notes, letters and other documents) prose of Grebenstchikov and memoir testimonies about him. Archival documents are involved, some of them are introduced into scholarly discourse for the first time. The articleconsiders the mechanisms and pragmatics of the writer’s verbal texts and behavioral gestures, which were aimed at solving the problem of his literary self-canonization. The Grebenstchikov version of the Russian national literary canon is reconstructed. The mechanisms of Grebenstchikov’s self-projection on the figures of the writers who, in his opinion, were at the canon’s origin - Alexander Pushkin and Leo Tolstoy - are traced. The tasks that Grebenstchikov set for himself when developing these self-projections are revealed. The analysis has led to a number of conclusions. Regularly and persistently declaring his inheritance of the traditions of Pushkin and Tolstoy, Grebenstchikov sought to raise his status in the field of literature, trying to canonize his name “against the background” of the recognized classics. His strategy included not only the “positive” part, but also the “negative” one. Comparing himself with Tolstoy, the Siberian writer periodically used his figure as a “constitutive Other” (Iver Neumann), and, describing his conversation with the monument to Pushkin in the essay “Visiting Pushkin”, he extremely reduced the distance between himself and the poet, using the strategy of “intimatization” of relations with the classic. Grebenstchikov’s literary self-canonization had a number of interrelated tasks, the main of which was to strengthen the personal myth of the writer “from the people”, who has the right to a special place in the literary field. In addition, literary selfcanonization became an important life-creation resource and an instrument of institution-building for Grebenstchikov. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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