Citation

Podlesnik B. Russian Literature 2019; 107-108: 161-184.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019)

DOI

10.1016/j.ruslit.2019.10.008

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Suicide has become an important factor in the mythologization of biographies of twentieth-century writers and poets: it was often interpreted in the context of authors' literary vocation, which meant that in the rough conditions of twentieth-century Russian history the link between the two frequently resulted in the interpretation of the author's suicide as his ultimate literary or creative act. The multiple suicides of (mostly modernist) poets in the first half of the century, therefore, had an immense mythogenic potential. This potential resonates in the interpretations of literary suicides in modern popular culture as well as in the interpretations of suicides by other writers. In the texts of historian, literary critic and writer Grigorii Chkhartishvili/Boris Akunin, an interesting new aspect of this tradition emerges. Chkhartishvili/Akunin tries to combine the demythologization of the scientific (rational) definition of the writer's suicide with writing strategies that can be interpreted as the result of an almost superstitious fear of suicide as an imminent danger of real writing. This intricate combination of re- and demythologization offers an interpretative tool for analyzing Chkhartishvili's/Akunin's model of "structuring his creative writing" as well as his creation of multiple creative personalities and the meaning of their interrelations. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.

Language: en

Keywords

Suicide; Boris Akunin; Creative Identity; Genre Fiction; Grigoii Chkhartishvili; Literature and Popular Culture; Literaturicide