Space of City in Apollon Grigoriev''s Fictional Prose
Apollon Grigoriev was ‘the last Russian romantic’, poet and creator of ‘organic criticism’. Grigoriev also wrote the prose, which is extremely interesting from the standpoint of the history of literature and poetics. Generally, researchers analyzed Grigoriev's poetry and criticism. This are, in particular, works by Alexander Blok [Grigoriev 1916, p. I-XL], by A.I. Zhuravleva, who is the leader in researches of Grigoriev's critical heritage [Zhuravleva 1980, p. 7-47], and by R. Wellek [Wellek 1992]. Meanwhile, Grigoriev's artistic prose also deserves attention. However, the majority of researchers of Grigoriev's prose, such as B.F. Egorov [Grigoriev 1988], and E.E. Grodskaya [Grodskaya 2006] considered Grigoriev's autobiographical motives. However, the descriptions, in particular the descriptions of the city, play a significant role in Grigoriev's creative works. The subject of my article is images of city in Apollon Grigoriev’s prose, for studying which I use contextual and discourse analysis, as well as method of analytical reading. I show the writer described Moscow and Petersburg in accord with his ideals of Pochvennichestvo ('soil-bound' school), he proved Moscow was the soil of Russian culture, and we can display it only on the level of poetics, because Grigoriev didn’t voice his ideas directly. So Grigoriev’s urban scenery is example of Petersburg and Moscow texts. Moreover, they are interlacement of old romantic and new realistic poetics. The description of Arcadia, utopian scenery, resembles exotic scene in typical romantic novels. But the city characterizes its townsmen as social type, what is close to poetics of ‘natural school’.