The Reading Range of Fyodor Sologub's Characters as a Form of Self-Representation. "An Autobiographical Reader"

The article considers Fyodor Sologub's range of reading through the repertoire of reading of the characters of his prose works. A special, largest group of "readers" are characters with autobiographical features: teenage boys from the early, often unfinished texts ("Lelka", "A Young Lady and a Barefoot") and poets from the stories "A Mousetrap", "You Remember, You Will Not Forget". The steady set of authors and books that are mentioned in Sologub's works and characterize his reading range (in the early period of life and work) correlates with the writer's statements preserved in the memories, which confirms the autobiography of the image and allows to use this information to analyze the reading range of the writer. Particular attention is paid to the short story "Lelka". In its draft version (under the title "A Little Poet"), Sologub first used the technique of quoting his own poems and raised the theme of folk talents and oppression of Russian writers, which he further developed in his journalism ("Remembrance", "Notes", etc.). In "Lelka", the transition in the short stories from an autobiographical image of the reader to an autobiographical image of the poet was shown (further, detailed enumerations of what heroes read are not used). Another autobiographical character correlated with the little poet, the "old poet" from the short story "A Mousetrap", is an ironic view of the writer on himself. However, autobiography manifested itself most of all in another character - a poet from the story "You Remember, You Will Not Forget", which is connected with the plot of the poem "Irina". This principle of interrelation of prose and poetic texts is also supported on the pages of his prose by frequent autocitation (the mentioned short stories and "Death by Advertisement", "A Way to Damascus", etc.). Statements about poetry appearing in the writer's prose suggest that they express Sologub's views not only on the literary circle and the literary process, but also on the reflection of the writer's self-perception in the circle of his contemporaries. In every possible way contrasting himself to fashionable and popular poets, Sologub ironically speaks about readers' love to everything fashionable. At the same time, he does not name (except for two cases) modern poets and does not enter into arguments about their poetry. The previously revealed principle of creating a story based on a poem, as well as quoting one's own poems, which supports the unity of the creative material, creates a picture of a special literary space in the writer's prose. The image that Sologub creates in his stories is close to his own image - a poet separate from the literary process.

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