Gothic Stories by Alexander Chayanov in the Context of the Romantic Tradition
The Gothic stories of Alexander Chayanov are influenced by the Western European and Russian Romanticism of the XIX century; they bear a clear mark of influence of E.T.A. Hoffmann, Antony Pogorelsky, Vladimir Odoyevsky, Mikhail Zagoskin, Vladimir Pavlovich Titov, and others. However, they also belong to the literature of Art Nouveau, where the traditional plots (existence of doubles, interaction with supernatural beings, quest for the eternal feminine) are intertwined in bizarre forms, following the creative path of the Russian writers of the first decades of XX century (Valery Bryusov, Mikhail Kuzmin, Pavel Muratov). Chayanov created the harmonious unity between the text and the image in his books; the stories were illustrated with Romantic engravings by A. Rybnikov, N. Ushakova and A. Kravchenko.