The poetics of utopia vs dystopia in V.S. Loginov's prose

The article analyzes the features of the aesthetic and genre nature of V.S. Loginov’s “The Kingdom of Yal-Mal” and “The Truth of the Earth” against the background of the dichotomy of utopia and anti-utopia, which is key for the literature of the 20th century, and their partial synthesis in the form of dystopia. Dystopia emerged much later than utopia - at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries - as one of the ways to confront the “final realization of utopia” (N. Berdyaev). A distinctive feature of dystopia is the point of view of the narrator, who, using the mythologems of the totalitarian world, destroys them in the course of the narrative. The considered works realize the relations of the specified opposition and turn dystopia back into anti-utopia in the second case. The juxtaposition of two works - “The Kingdom of Yal-mal” and “The Truth of the Earth” - is achieved by changing the function of one of the characters, Grill. In the first case, he acts as a carrier and interpreter of the idyllic utopia of Yal-mal, and in the second, he becomes the inventor of a terrible weapon capable of destroying the globe. In both works, working with time and space becomes the most important principle. Their transformation allows the writer to freely leave the zone of the real and immerse the actors in the continuum of utopia and dystopia. Prose creativity of V.S. Loginov as a whole is marked by a constant search for his own creative style and face. The themes and motifs of his works include sketches of Siberian nature, the life of the Far Eastern emigration, the recent past of pre-revolutionary Russia, and the legends of Siberian pioneers, and the story of Vrubel’s fate, and much more. In this context, the antinomy of utopia and dystopia, captured in two works of the writer, is of indisputable interest to historians of Russian literature and, quite possibly, to a certain circle of readers.