Information about the author:
Ekaterina A. Belikova
Ekaterina A. Belikova, Researcher, А.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya St., 25A, bld. 1, 121069 Moscow, Russia; Russian Christian Academy for Humanities named after Fyodor Dostoevsky, emb. Fontanka River, 15, 191011 St. Petersburg, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7436-4662
E-mail:
Acknowledgements: The study was supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation № 24-28-00699, https://rscf.ru/en/project/24-28-00699/; Russian Christian Academy for Humanities named after Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Abstract:
The article focuses on A.N. Tolstoy’s publicism 1917−1919 as a sourсe for The Adventures of Nevzorov or Ibikus novella. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the extension of the source list, which previously consisted only of Tolstoy’s diaries and letters. In these articles he reflects upon a normal person’s life during the Revolution and the Civil War. Our comparison of the publicism and the novel shows the evolution of the protagonist — Semen Ivanovich Nevzorov. He is a naive dreamer in the first part of the novel, that is textually close to Tolstoy’s articles Not me but you and Night shift. The theme of art is very important for Tolstoy. Thus, a bellyman from the article Death of art personified once again in the protagonist image. The fragments of the article Let them make no mistake, dedicated to the situation in Odessa in 1918−1919, repeated in the Ibicus with a bit of reduction. Tolstoy’s reflections from the articles About a man in trouble and Thoughts about influence the narrative of the novel: the writer says that it is important to be active during the hard time of the Civil War.