On the question of Pushkin's series of illustrations for the story “The undertaker”

The article is devoted to the substantiation of the hypothesis about the connection of Pushkin’s drawings in the handwritten sheets of the story “The Undertaker” with the text of the comic poem by A.A. Shakhovsky “The Plundered Fur Coats” (1811-1815) and with prophetic dream visions, which shortly before the death of V.L. Pushkin was seen by his niece O.S. Pavlishchev. The content of this mystical dream was described in detail by Olga Sergeevna’s son L.N. Pavlischev in the first part of his memoirs “From the Family Chronicle” (1888). Relying on the two mentioned sources to decipher the relationship between the details of the central (the skeleton of Pyotr Petrovich Kurilkin) and the side parts of the illustration for Adrian Prokhorov’s dream, the authors of the article offer their own version of the attribution of the portrait of an elderly lady, which is drawn next to the profile of the late Vasily Lvovich. In the context of the hypothesis a new explanation is given to A.S. Pushkin’s self-portrait as part of another illustration - the figure of an outside observer in a white toga in the drawing of the funeral procession behind the coffin. Comparison of handwritten graphic images and verbal-figurative motives is supported by a biographical analysis, a comprehensive examination of correspondence and memoirs, journal polemics, works of literature and documents that recorded the struggle of the “literary parties” of the 1810s-1830s. Having thus identified the closest and distant creative context of the first story of the Belkin cycle, created in Boldino on September 9, 1830, the authors of the article summarize their hypothesis with the conclusion that the creation of the image of Ivan Petrovich Belkin was facilitated by the life views and literary and social activities of V.L. Pushkin.