"THERE ARE STRANGE APPROACHES": 'COMMON PLACES' IN THE MEMOIRS ABOUT CHERNYSHEVSKII AND PISAREV
In: Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta: naučnyj žurnal = Moscow State University bulletin. Serija 9, Filologija, Heft №4, 2023, S. 145-156
The research is based on the materials of memoirs about Chernyshevskii and Pisarev. The 'common places' of the memoirs, in which the similarity of the two activists is revealed, are compared. Purpose: to investigate the influence of public reputation on the formation of the memoir image of Chernyshevskii and Pisarev. Aims: to identify the specifics of the formation of the memoir corpus of famous public and literary activists; to justify the presence of an out-of-text model as a source of commonality of the image angle. Other documentary sources were also involved to identify the reasons for the coincidence and discrepancy of the facts. Contradictions were established in both cases. Results and conclusions: it is possible to assume, that in the public consciousness of a certain circle there existed a model for creating the image of an outstanding public activist of the revolutionary movement. Both Chernyshevskii and Pisarev not just matched to this model, — their images were originally put in its ground. The formation of the image model was based on two sources: poetic images of Nekrasov's poems dedicated to Belinskii, Dobrolyubov, Pisarev and Chernyshevskii; relying on the genre of the eulogies at public funerals of the 1860s–1870s and later, that replaced the expression of public protest. The commonality of themes — selfless service to social ideals; genius, sacrificed for the sake of people; early demise from the oppression of the authorities, — brings both sources together. In the memoir image, according to the general model, essentially individual features are combined, emphasizing the generalized properties of an extraordinary personality. The outstanding abilities of both underline a single 'profile' in a special way: the highest intellectual talents, laid on the chancel of struggle. The motive of unrecognition, the contradiction between the expected — true — and the real appearance of a person, demonstrates a great advantage of the fortitude and thought over ordinary human nature.