The poetics of the autobiographical and memoir features in O. Volkonskaya's prose (based on the collection of short stories violets and wolves)

This paper deals with the uniqueness of short stories by the Russian writer O. Volkonskaya, whose oeuvre has been poorly studied by scholars. The paper considers the book of short stories Violets and Wolves and shows the distinctive features of the author's creative writing. The book consists of two parts: Paris Violets and Argentinean Outskirts. Some of the stories were written in Prague, Czechoslovakia at that time, and the rest were written in the Soviet Union, the author's homeland. The stories have autobiographical features and characteristics of memoirs. Furthermore, the paper reveals the impartial and subjective features of O. Volkonskaya's writings, as well as the author's national and universal views presented in the stories. The paper draws a clear distinction between memoir and autobiographical features of the prose. It studies different female characters created by the writer and shows that the Argentinian cycle presents characters in more detail than the Paris one. The paper also provides a description of O. Volkonskaya's unpublished short stories, plays, and poetry. In her book, Volkonskaya touches upon the most topical philosophical, ethical, and moral issues. Her short stories show the reality in a very individual way. She describes people and their feelings, events strongly influencing their lives. In the stories, she expresses her own feelings and reflects her personal experience concerning religion, society, politics and culture. It is concluded that the unique and distinctive prose of Volkonskaya is a literary phenomenon, creating a synthesis of documentary, autobiographical, memoir, and art of literature features. Such a unique literary genre creates a full picture of the modern society and helps to understand the life of a person and the destiny of the whole generation.