About the author:
Elena A. Andrushchenko — DSc in Philology, Professor, Leading Research Fellow, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25a, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8260-4961
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Abstract:
Depiction of everyday estate life is the commonplace in the works of fiction, but it also occurs in the broader context of Russian non-fiction. The article analyzes forms of poeticization of the “estate culture” encountered in a memoir essay by B.N. Chicherin, not a writer but a jurist, scholar, historian, publicist, mayor of Moscow in 1882–1883 years and the founder of Russian liberalism. The contents of the journal publication discussed in the article were not reproduced in Chicherin’s memoirs published in 1929, what suggests that the author had a different purpose in 1890. His essay was intended as a foreword to the diary of N.I. Krivtsov, a distinguished Russian officer and statesman. Forms of poeticization of the estate routine in Chicherin’s memoir essay of 1890 include: descriptions of heroic, selfless and highly spiritual experiences of the earlier generations; their contrast with the dull and fruitless modern age; depiction of everyday estate life in an existential aspect; historical and literary observations and conclusion about the development of Russian literature. The reason for Chicherin’s idealization of Russian estate routine in his essay on N.I. Krivtsov was the author’s concern over the condition of Russian society and state in 1880s.