Autobiographical myth by Igor Kholin in the context of soviet discourse (based on the novel “Cats and Mice”)

Abstract

The article is aimed at considering the genesis, structure and representation forms of the autobiographical myth by “Lianozovo School” poet Igor Kholin in his novel “Cats and Mice”. It is proved that the sociocultural context and world-modeling category of this myth is the opposition between official and uncensored literature, which is characteristic of Soviet discourse and brings to the fore the author’s role of a nonconformist poet. The latter is formed through introducing a system of characters – Igor Kholin’s “twins” – into the text, to whom he attributes not only the details of his private life, but also his published works. As a result, artist and amateur poet Nikolai Sergeevich, poets Holly and Savely Volin and the Author writing the novel “Cats and Mice” are united by a common biography which excludes their involvement in artistic practices that dominate the cultural space. The desire to dissociate himself from them also determines the key semes of Igor Kholin’s myth – “opposition to official art” emphasising the contraposition of underground literature to any “permitted” forms of literature and “pretense to aesthetic superiority” absolutising its artistic primacy and avant-gardism. The first seme is explicit and “served” by the motifs of an aesthetic demarcation between “state publishing” and “self-publishing”, their mutual intolerance and notorious inadequacy of assessments. The second seme is implicit and “supported” by motifs realising the thematic invariant of “freedom Vs. oppression” (with the former being uncensored literature with sharp “discrepancy” with reality and the unpredictability of text unfolding). Therefore, complicated and contradictory relationships between official and uncensored art in Igor Kholin’s autobiographical myth are whittled away to a spectacular yet extremely simplified scheme which excludes any forms of their interaction other than confrontation.