Doctoral defence: Aleksejs Samarins „Литературная позиция и творчество С. А. Ауслендера в 1906–1908 гг.“

On 20 November at 14:00, Aleksejs Samarins will defend his doctoral thesis "Литературная позиция и творчество С. А. Ауслендера в 1906–1908 гг.“ ("The Literary Stance and Prose of Sergey Auslender in 1906–1908“).

Supervisor:
Roman Voitehhovitš, University of Tartu

Opponents:
Ludmila Sproģe, University of Latvia
Gennadi Obatnin, University of Helsinki

Summary
This dissertation is devoted to the study of the initial stage of Sergei Auslender's (1886–1937) creative development. There is currently no monograph that provides a comprehensive understanding of Auslender's early work. Separate mentions of the writer in research literature often limit themselves to the formal classification of his work into one or another modernist branch and describe him as a "stylizer" or an epigone of the "Kuzmin’s school". Despite his youth, his kinship with Mikhail Kuzmin and friendly relations with the symbolist circle, Auslender from the outset paved his own way in literature. His specificity manifested itself in the development of the author's theme, work on style, appeal to "others" word, the use of personal experience and historical information as an artistic material.

The goal of the dissertation is to provide a comprehensive analysis of Auslender's literary and critical texts during the period of 1906–1908. It covers his first publications in well-known editions and his debut collection of stories, titled "The Golden Apples" (1908), which marks the culmination of his initial stage of writerly evolution. The dissertation analyzes a broad range of Auslender's artistic and critical texts, some of which are being introduced into academic discourse for the first time. The research methodology is based on such philological methods as structural, conceptual, compositional, intertextual, and other types of text analysis, including comparative, historical and biographical methods of interpretation.

Chapter 1 is devoted to a critical examination of the notions of Auslender as a "stylizer" and "Kuzmin's imitator". The scientific unproductivity of these notions is proven, the origins of the writer's reputation are described, and a new view of his creative method is proposed. Chapter 2 describes Auslender's participation in Vyacheslav Ivanov's closed creative-philosophical circle "Hafiz" and analyzes the story "The Notes of Ganymede", which reflects the activities of "Hafiz" and the author's attitude towards its ideas and practices. Chapter 3 is devoted to the analysis of "The Golden Apples", offering interpretations of all the book's texts, presenting a hypothesis about its concept, structure, and composition. Special attention is paid to the reconstruction of biographical and historical contexts that largely determine the ideological content of the stories. Chapter 4 provides an analysis of Auslender's theatrical criticism, including his participation in symbolist journal polemics and his ethical and aesthetic attitudes. Using the example of Auslender's work, the dissertation demonstrates the necessity of studying the legacy of forgotten authors and clarifies the specificity of Auslender's creative method, which involved an artistic synthesis of historical, literary, and biographical material to create a multifaceted image that can be read on several levels.