«One’s own» and «another’s» in «The adventure of ensign Klimov»: the memoirist’s dual view

The paper examines the text of A. Ya. Klimov’s memoirs in terms of the role of the opposition «own-alien» in the organization of its narrative structure. Particular attention is paid to the specifics of the genre of the text and to the author’s «dual» position conditioned by the poetics of the genre. The Autobiographical Notes created by Klimov, fix the memoirist’s «double vision»: temporal distancing, reflective retrospective look into his own past reinforce the position of the author of the memoirs. The peculiarity of the narration in «The adventure of ensign Klimov» is analyzed in the context of the Russian memoirs tradition of the XVIII century. A significant difference distinguishing «The adventure of ensign Klimov» from a great variety of autobiographic works of the XVIII century, whose authors also describe other lands and customs, lies in the fact that this text does not reflect an opinion of a voluntarily traveling wayfarer, but a view of a man forced to live by the customs which he describes, a man for whom foreign customs have of necessity become «ordinary», but who, nevertheless, does not cease to perceive them as alien.

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