The article deals with one of the trends in the development of Russian memoiristics in the twentieth century, when authors do not limit their creative strategy to simply testifying about their experiences, but perceive the memoir text as an artistic genre with certain degrees of freedom of the writer. Hence the introduction of speculation, exaggeration, deviations from the real chronology, the presence of a free composition with an acceptable permutation of the
displayed events. The image of the epoch becomes a purely aesthetic construct and is built according to the laws of artistic generalization. Writers feel a desire to work with the material of memory as a building material, allowing for bizarre elements of combinatorics, arbitrary speculation, and spontaneous self-expression. Such interesting memoir texts as “Petersburg Winters” by G.V. Ivanov, “Elysian Fields” by V.S. Yanovsky, “The Peasant Sphinx” by M.A. Zenkevich,
“Bohemia” by Rurik Ivnev are considered within the framework of the topic. Sometimes the authors are more interested not in the fact as such, but in the subjective impression and experience of it. Elements of phantasmagoria are introduced, and the prism of the oneirosphere display is used. The language of metaphorization, symbolization, and hyperbolization is used. Memoirists are often influenced by modernism and other non-classical forms of artistic consciousness.
For citation: Golubkov S.A. Memoir text as a space of literary experiment // Ivanovo State University Bulletin, Series: Humanities, 2024, iss. 3, pp. 24—32.