The reception of Alexander Blok's creative personality in Mikhail Zoschenko's collection of articles “At the turning point” and in the story “M.P. Sinyagin”

This article aims at exploring Mikhail Zoschenko’s views regarding Alexander Blok’s works. It analyses the remarks made by Zoschenko in his early literary criticism article about Blok titled “The End of the Knight of the Rueful Countenance” (1919) from the unfinished book “At the Turning Point” that was not published during his lifetime. The paper also analyses the role the allusions to Blok’s works in the structure of Zoschenko’s tale “Michel Sinyagin” (1930). The comparative analysis of these texts shows that both of them touch upon the same set of ideas that were crucial for Zoschenko’s artistic views in the 1920s. In both cases he polemicizes individualism and decadence motifs in the culture of the Silver Age, and creates a new ideal of literature. This article shows that for Zoschenko, Blok’s works and influence on the past culture were inextricably connected with the artistic potential of the Intelligentsia after the Russian Revolution of 1917 that Zoschenko mostly looked at with criticism. It also reveals the ethic assessment of his literary criticism. In relation to the allusions to Blok’s story “Michel Sinyagin” it is noted that the poet interested Zoschenko as a character of the epoch who inspired the Intelligentsia culture before the October Revolution. This article also shows the impact these views had on Sinyagin’s character which is regarded as a special, or a Zoschenko-style kind of character representing a common person, someone who has the psychology of a typical member of society. Methodologically, this article relies on the scientific works about the creative personality in Zoschenko’s works that were written by M. Chudakova, Ts. Volpe, and G. Belaya.