Klyuchnikov Kirill Vladimirovich – master’s degree student, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (Moscow, Russia)
The article analyses Mikhail Sokovnin’s cycle of prose miniatures Varius through the lens of genre theory. It examines the stylistic features of the texts, where repetition functions as the main literary device and brings the prose closer to the spontaneous speech of a psychologically other person, which also aligns with the cycle’s absurdist poetics. Sokovnin’s focus on Varius’s linguistic peculiarity, manifested in tautology, is explained by his desire to emphasise the subjectivity of marginals – of all those who possess a distinct worldview and a distinct speech. The article argues that Varius represents the writer’s alter ego and reflects Sokovnin’s own respiratory problems (he suffered from a heart defect) in his manner of speaking (forming sentences with difficulty). However, Sokovnin himself frames Varius also as a collective image of all those who do not conform to psychological and social norms. The choice of the miniature corresponds to Sokovnin’s creative strategy: it juxtaposes not only prose and poetry, fiction and reality, but also the public and the private, thereby allowing oppressed voices to articulate prosaic struggles and to insert the lyrical self into a social context. Minimalist tendencies realise themselves in a genre that builds itself on the reduction of literariness; its discreteness and «mosaic-like» structure reflect the absurdist understanding of reality as scattered particulars.
Mikhail Sokovnin; prose poem; lyricism; poetics of the absurd; minimalism; Varius