Artistic strategies of Yevgeny Kharitonov’s and Eduard Limonov’s autobiographical prose

The article presents a comparative analysis of the artistic strategies employed by Yevgeny Kharitonov and Eduard Limonov in depicting the autobiographical heroes of their prose during the early stages of their writing careers. The relevance and originality of this study stem from the limited exploration of this topic and the overall insufficient examination of these authors’ bodies of works. The focus of the analysis is on the central characters in Kharitonov’s collection Under House Arrest (1969-1981) and Limonov’s key novels It’s Me, Eddie (1976) and The Diary of a Loser, or the Secret Notebook (1979), all of which possess a distinctly autobiographical nature. Through a comparative examination of the protagonists and the ways in which they are portrayed, the study identifies notable similarities in how both authors reflect the existential conflict faced by the Russian intelligentsia in the 1970s. This conflict is closely tied to the portrayal of a marginal hero who identifies as a “Russian writer”, navigating the challenges of emigration (in Limonov’s case) or forced creative isolation (in Kharitonov’s case). The analysis also reveals the dynamics of changes in the form of the authors’ autobiographical texts.