The Influence of Contemporary Memories on the Formation of the Image of Paul I in the Fiction of the First Third of the Twentieth Century

The article is devoted to the study of the influence of contemporary memories on the formation of the image of Emperor Paul I in fiction. The study is based on the play "Pavel I" [Paul I] by D. Merezhkovsky and the story "Poruchik Kizhe" [Lieutenant Kije] by Yu. Tynyanov, whose plots were mainly borrowed from memoirs published in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. The main aim of the study is to identify the relationship between the image of Paul I created in the texts of writers and playwrights and the memories of contemporaries who recorded their ideas and knowledge on the pages of memoirs. It is obvious that representatives of the literary community, as well as scientists, extensively used memoirs as a source of information for writing their works. Moreover, following historical science, fiction has also contributed to the consolidation of the image of Emperor Paul I as a madman on the throne in the eyes of a wide range of readers. During the research, not only the memories of contemporaries, but also scientific works about the era of Paul I written by historians N.K. Shilder, Yu.A. Sorokin, A.N. Bokhanov were used. The image of the Emperor presented in fiction was undoubtedly influenced by the writers' own ideas about the nature of the Russian autocracy, as well as their attitude directly to the personality of the sovereign himself. To a greater extent, this is noticeable in Merezhkovsky's work "Pavel I", but Tynianov's work, written in the Soviet period, also contains the ridicule of the vices of Paul I and his era. Along with telling about the negative qualities of the Emperor, writers followed many memoir authors and noted his positive characteristic features, which raised the reader's interest in the work. In general, the analysis of fiction of the first third of the 20th century devoted to the personal qualities and state activities of Russian Emperor Paul I shows that writers borrowed many plot lines from the memories of contemporaries. Writers and playwrights, relying on the well-known complex of memoir texts and research works, under the influence of their own historical and political views, portrayed the Russian monarch mainly as an unbalanced and severe monarch, thus repeating the most stable cliches that developed in the historiography of the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The image was broadcast to a wide readership, embodied in films and on the theatrical stage, becoming the basis for established judgments about the nature and activities of Emperor Paul I. The real personality of the monarch was in the shadow of the stereotype.

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