Traditions of Description of "Estate Culture" in Aleksey N. Tolstoy's Story "Devushki"

The article examines the influence of the literary tradition of portraying manors on the works of Aleksey N. Tolstoy. On the example of the 1913 story "Devushki" [Girls], the problem of internal contacts of the writer with Ivan Goncharov is first raised. The biographical, sociocultural and textological approaches to the study of texts used in the study make it possible to reveal the plot and text allusions to Goncharov's Obryv [The Precipice]. As a result of the analysis of the periodicals and the study of the cultural life of the beginning of the century, it was found that the story was not only influenced by the novel but also by events dedicated to the writer's 100th birthday, widely celebrated in 1912, and by discussions of the early twentieth century related to the "sexual issue", touched upon in the novel and actualized with the writing of Kreytserovaya sonata [Kreutzer Sonata] by Leo Tolstoy. Consequently, Tolstoy's story "Devushki" reflects processes typical for the culture of the turn of the century: the idealistic image of the past and the desire to preserve the "estate culture". The story reflected predilection for the past and distrust of the present, characteristic for the epoch, which allows to consider it in the context of the writer's estate prose and to talk about the continuation of the tradition of nineteenth-century Russian literature and, in particular, Goncharov's "estate prose". Tolstoy's orientation to the tradition of depicting the aristocratic manor, developed in the Russian literature of the 19th century and, in particular, in Goncharov's prose, manifests itself both at the content level and at the compositional one. In the story, the author recreates the world of a patriarchal manor with its daily worries and life against the backdrop of nature. His characters make jam, are at law with peasants, receive guests, they go to bed early, do not know anyone and read Goncharov's novel Obryv in the evenings. This is the world, as if written off from the estate of Malinovka and its inhabitants, grandmothers, Tatyana Markovna Berezhkova and the sisters Vera and Marfen'ka. Like in the novel, at the beginning of the story Tolstoy shows the life of a provincial town, living with rumors and gossip, the main action is transferred to the estate. In the estate prose of Goncharov and Tolstoy, the motive of the path of the main hero acquires great importance, during which he has the opportunity not only to feel the vastness of his native spaces, but also to think about the purpose of his path and prepare himself for the perception of the estate and its inhabitants.

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