A. I. Herzen's story “Legend”: story, narrative, intertext

The article is devoted to investigation of narrative and intertextuallity peculiarities of Herzen's “Legend”. This novel was published in 1835 and reflected esthetic and philosophical views of the young writer. The first part of the article contains comparison of Goethe's “The day of st. Rohus” and Herzen's “Legend”. It's presented mutual narration model and non-independent apprenticeship type of the novel. In the next part of the article hagiographic plots (by D. Rostovsky, F. Chernigovsky) are researched as original “material” of Herzen's story. The author took formal structure, but he changed a semantic of story. His text has modified story about st. Feodora, so we can call this novel an “experience of secularization and profanation”. Then Herzen's fiction story is compared with Chernyshevsky's belletristic and Turgenev'es masterpieces. There are common motifs and identical semantic in this context. We can explain that due to Barth's intertextual theory. So, Herzen's plot is anonymous formula that connected different culture layers. The author considers that "Legend" of Herzen allows to describe features of worldview and mentality of readers and writers of 30-40 of XIX century.