THE POETICS OF SURVIVAL: THE IMAGE OF THE "LITTLE PERSON" AND STRATEGIES OF THE ABSURD IN THE SHORT PROSE OF L. PETRUSHEVSKAYA AND S. DOVLATOV

Bobykina Ekaterina Nikolaevna, Plotnikova Ekaterina Andreevna

The article focuses on a comparative analysis of the short prose of L.S. Petrushevskaya and S.D. Dovlatov, who represent the trend of “other prose” of the 1970s–1990s and rework in a new way the literary type of “the little man”. The study addresses the topical research task of identifying common and distinctive features of their poetics of survival under the conditions of late-Soviet and émigré unfreedom, as well as describing strategies of the absurd that shape a specific chronotope of everyday life. The material of the research comprises stories and novellas by Petrushevskaya (“Immortal Love”, “Our Circle”, “The Black Coat”, etc.) and Dovlatov (“The Suitcase”, “The Zone”, “Pushkin Hills”, “The Foreign Woman”). The methodology combines comparative-typological, narratological and chronotopic analysis, along with elements of intertextual and discourse analysis. It is shown that both authors remove explicit authorial commentary, minimize psychological analysis and build the narrative on the basis of the character’s speech portrait and a documentary-marked everyday reality; at the same time, in Dovlatov the absurd is normalized and subjected to ironic reflection, whereas in Petrushevskaya it turns into an inescapable existential trap. The article concludes that there is a typological kinship between Petrushevskaya’s and Dovlatov’s poetics of survival and a fundamental difference in the semantics of the absurd and the chronotope of unfreedom.

Keywords:short prose, "other prose", poetics of the absurd, little man, skaz, chronotope, post-realism, narrative, Petrushevskaya, Dovlatov