“Slums” of St. Petersburg and Tomsk: from imitation to artistic reception

Modern literary criticism is actively studying the types of artistic interaction: repulsion, borrowing, influence, imitation, parody, and others. The paper examines these phenomena in the works of Vs. Krestovsky “The Slums of St. Petersburg” (published for the first time in the journal “Otechestvennye zapiski” (1864-1866)) and V. Kuritsyn “The Slums of Tomsk” (published in the newspaper “Sibirskiye otgoloski” (1905-1907)). Considering Kuritsyn’s novel, one can find the processes of receptive mastering of new achievements of all-Russian and world literature rather than the usual imitation of the capital city writer’s style by the Siberian author. Using “The Slums of St. Petersburg” as a model, Kuritsyn could master the local material at first and involve the reader to the “literary game” so that to reach later a new level of artistic reception and compose a narrative combining the elements of a detective and adventure novel. It resulted in the impoverishment of the social aspect of the work and rejection of the moral value establishment, partially compensated by an increase in the adventurous dynamics of the novel. Thus, the original research hypothesis was confirmed. At first, V. Kuritsyn consciously emphasized in his work the tradition of Vs. Krestovsky, who was guided by the European concept of a “mystery novel.” However, the original concept was changed, and the novel revealed a departure from both the “social novel” and the influence of Vs. Krestovsky. That is why we can consider a more complex form of artistic interaction, such as a reception, in the novels under study.

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