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Abstract:

Tatyana Tolstaya’s autobiographical prose, presented in this article based on the collection of short stories and novellas “The Invisible Maiden” (2015), has a predominantly female “population”. The vividly depicted female world here grows from the narrator’s personal recollections and acquires its own socio-psychological and generational typology. Meticulously recreated individual stories of Leningrad grandmothers, nannies, and young and not-so-young heroines flow into the realm of historical and mythopoetic generalizations. The depiction of their extended lives and speech patterns often focuses on the interplay of childhood and old age, leading to an understanding of the psychological phenomenon of a childhood which has “not gone”. In the course of a detailed examination of the title story, “The Invisible Maiden,” the stories “Loves Me, Loves Me Not,” “Sonya”, “The Most Beloved,” and other works, it is shown how, in the reconstructions of the childhood of the narrator and other characters, biographical time interacts with historical time, and the realistic principles of writing are enriched by modernist myth-making.

Keywords: modern Russian prose, Tatyana Tolstaya, the female world in literature, mythology of childhood, childhood and old age in culture, artistic autobiography.