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Abstract:

The article is devoted to the cycle of S.D. Krzhizhanovsky “Moscow in the First Year of War” in the context of the tradition of such genre as physiological essay, and cultural allusions. The years of the Great Patriotic War became a time of spiritual upsurge and revival of work with words for the writer. The cycle includes 19 works, which are given the subtitle “Physiological Essays”, reflecting the desire for documentality and accuracy of everyday details. Krzhizhanovsky’s goal is not to convey facts, but to depict the life of the author’s thought. Through photography, characters emerge, and not only social but also moral portraits are presented. The titles of the essays serve as a vivid linguistic characteristic: the external is a projection of the internal. The main artistic device is personification. The texts are united by an anthropomorphic image of Moscow. Krzhizhanovsky creates portraits of things and reifies people. The mechanization of man is presented in the essays “Cave Dweller”, “Girls by the Water”, “Breadmaker”. And, on the contrary, the windows, the megaphone, the barricade become full-fledged heroes. The essay “Man, Rifle, and Lantern” is saturated with symbolic images. Reality gives rise to the fantastic and ironic in “The Philosopher”. Due to the broad cultural context, the essays “Dorogomilovskaya Ruth” and “Gravediggers” acquire a deeply philosophical tone. This return to the word in a broad sense — to creativity and cultural memory — helped to overcome the metaphysics of war and bring the concrete historical content to the ontological level.

Keywords: S.D. Krzhizhanovsky, physiological essay, word, Moscow text.