An artistic detail in the poetics of P. I. Melnikov-Pechersky's story “Grisha”

The article considers an artistic detail as the most important structure-forming element of the poetics of one of the early literary works of P. I. Melnikov-Pechersky by the example of his story “Grisha” (1861). The fact that the basic principles of literary creativity of Melnikov-Pechersky were developed under the influence of his long-term office activity connected with studying of Old Belief and its history, and substantially under the influence of V. Dahl, is noted in the article. Certain examples from the story show that the artistic detail in the text of Melnikov-Pechersky based on authentic Old Belief materials has a special substantial meaning and carries a semantic distinguishing function. The author of article emphasises the priority of cultural and household details in Melnikov-Pechersky’s story. The article demonstrates that lack of the detailed, enlarged descriptions of Old Belief life is compensated in the story by precisely chosen artistic details giving an idea of the subject (phenomenon or image) in general. Moreover, it is remarkable for Melnikov-Pechersky's story that the clear characteristic of the whole (subject, phenomenon or image) gives a chance to restore, taking into consideration the knowledge we have, lots of details of the described subject.