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Abstract:

The present article is devoted to creative activity of Yuliy Aikhenvald who is associated with the Silver Age in the history of Russian culture. And in emigration where against his will he went in 1922 he was called one of the brightest critics of the era who turned the reading of literature into an art of individual perception, proclaimed the priority of co-creation and directly brought criticism closer to the reader. For him society did not exist, there were only individuals: a work of art should not be evaluated in terms of social utility, it is always a direct dialogue between a writer and a reader, to investigate a literary work means to create, to read means to write, each work is an autobiography of its creator. In his opinion, literature does not reflect life, but creates it, the value of a literary work lies in its singularity and uniqueness, and criticism is its direct continuation. Aikhenvald believed that invariably fails any attempt to explain literature from the class point of view, historical materialism. At the same time indisputable facts reveal that works of art, in its essence, have no organic connection either with the social position of their creators or with the nature of the historical period. It is no doubt that Aikhenwald made a significant contribution to the development of Russian émigré literary criticism and became one of its most significant figures.