“Village of Vinci” of D.S. Merezhkovsky: the transformation of the text from the ego-document to artistic prose

In the article the author draws documentary sources to establish the real biographical basis of a little-known essay by D.S. Merezhkovsky “The Village of Vinci”. This essay was not included in Merezhkovsky’s books and collected works. It was created during his joint trip with Z.N. Gippius and A.L. Volynsky in the spring of 1896. The documentary authenticity of Merezhkovsky’s essay is confirmed on the basis of its comparison with the memoirs of two other participants of the trip on four aspects (the event line, the persons mentioned, the details of the landscape/interior, descriptive and evaluative characteristics). In the process of comparative analysis, we paid attention not only to the similarities we found between these texts, but also to differences. In addition, the article undertakes a detailed textual analysis of Merezhkovsky’s essay. As a result, we fully disclosed its artistic potential as a preparatory work for writing the novel “The Resurrected Gods (Leonardo da Vinci)”. The greatest similarity between the novel and the essay is found at the stylistic level: in the construction and verbal decoration of interior and landscape descriptions. Simultaneously, the character of the text’s transformations on the way from the ego-documentary genre to artistic prose is commented on. It is concluded that in the case of Merezhkovsky, the transfering his own thoughts and feelings to the literary character was not mechanistic, but artistically meaningful and aesthetically productive.