The Writer in the Landscape of the Smenovekhovstvo: Remizov and Prishvin

Abstract

The article analyzes the ambiguous motives and reasons that in the early 1920s, both at home and in the diaspora, influenced the literary personality of the writer in such a way that it involuntarily acquired the features inherent in the Smenovekhovstvo movement. For the first two years in Germany, where he fled to escape the unbearable conditions of life in Russia, Alexey Remizov retained the right to return to Petrograd. Due to this voluntary position of a ”temporary” emigrant in the history of the literary process of the early 1920s, a number of events of his creative life was captured in the landscape of the Smenovekhovstvo. The article presents the first analysis of Remizov's essay ”The Hook. Petersburg’s Memory” (1922), which, at first glance, supports N. Ustryalov's program aimed at organizing the return of emigrants to their homeland. Individual perception of the Smenovekhovstvo ideologemes is discussed using the example of the behavior of two writers in a specific ideological situation. One is the case of Remizov as a “temporary” emigrant writer in 1921- 1923, the other is the case of Prishvin as a writer who, after the October coup, took the position of an “internal emigrant”. Based on Prishvin's diary, the article reveals the tragic story of the perception of Remizov's essay “The Hook” (1922) and the attitude of the two writers to the concept of ”patriotism”, one of the main motives of the “return home” movement. The article offers a new perspective on the history of the relationship between the two like-minded authors and restores the context of their unknown correspondence from 1922-1923, fragments of which have survived in Prishvin's diaries, and in one letter that was published as Prishvin's essay ”Sopka Mair ” (“The Hill Mair ”, 1922). The essay was addressed to Remizov and contained an ”answer ” to the essay ”The Hook”. This article is part of a study of Remizov’s works, viewed as a reflections of individual experience in the history of the first wave of Russian emigration.