On genetic links of F.A. Iskander’s works

Abstract

The article deals with the analysis of opinions of F.A. Iskander on writers, which he made in his short prose of the post-Soviet period. The object of the study is small prose works published in thick literary magazines in the period from 1996 to 2006. Through an intertextual approach and content analysis, precedent names are identified: in addition to Pushkin, Tolstoy, the writer’s reviews of Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Rozanov, as well as Shakespeare, Goethe, Kipling and Darwin are analyzed. According to the results of the study, the following conclusions were made. Firstly, English literature as important to Iskander as Russian. Secondly, the dynamics in the writer’s humanistic views are noted, as evidenced by the changes in the assessment of Russian authors and the theory of evolution. Iskander believes in improving people, but with age he came to realize that it’s a very long process. Thirdly, with the help of a comparison of the most significant authors for Iskander, the key features for his work are revealed: the opposition of the West and the East, interest in evolutionary teachings, generalization, historicism, weakened didacticism. In terms of the genre, Iskander and his significant authors share an interest in complex prose genres, namely a novel in short stories and a collection of short stories.