Genre features in Kuprin's 1980's novels

The article considers A. I. Kuprin’s early novelistic of the 1890s. During this period of his work, the writer is looking for his genre and style, so his early work is very heterogeneous in the genre. The end of the 1890s - the beginning of the 1900s is usually considered a period of A. I. Kuprin’s apprenticeship, the writer began his literary work on the pages of periodicals. Newspaper work became a good school for Kuprin who was a master of short story and dynamic plot. The demands made on the artist by weekly and daily press differed from those of the capital's magazines. They needed short and entertaining, the sharpness of the plot. Therefore, at this time the writer's novelty is very heterogeneous. However, Kuprin is ingenious even within the framework of the newspaper genre. Having begun his path in literature with a small epic form, the writer creatively transforms it, synthesizes elements of various genre forms in one work. In his early period A. I. Kuprin demonstrates the desire for creative exploration and experiment. The writer is searching hard for his genre, his theme, his hero. His work of the 1890s was marked by gravitation towards the creation of borderline genre forms. A. I. Kuprin turns to folklore sources («Al-Issa»), tries himself in a melodramatic genre («Autumn Flowers»). Fairy tales, tales, legends, parables, tragic and yet ridiculous incidents attract a young writer and determine the subjects of his early works («Al-Issa», «The Executioner», «The Confusion»). Kuprin goes in for study of romantic aesthetics. This is demonstrated by the choice of heroes marked by the exclusivity of their character («Al-Issa») or of the social status («The Executioner»). The influence of Romanticism was expressed in the writer's attention to the genre of the Oriental legend and in his interest to the era of the Middle Ages and the Ancient East. The conflict of Kuprin’s novelty of the 1890s has romantic nature: man and destiny. Later A. I. Kuprin will abandon the «eastern» stylization and exotic heroes. But the subject of the blind power of the accident, its fateful power in a person's life will still be very relevant for the author («The Confusion»). At the same time, the early prose of A. Kuprin is often unexpectedly tragic and shocks the reader with its surprise. The latter clearly contradicts the canons of fairy tales and legends, and, on the contrary, brings together in genre the small forms of Kuprin with the anecdotal short stories of Boccaccio. The writer uses common to the short story discouraging and turning upside down ending-denouement, the so-called «pointe», but the comic element of the Italian short story in Kuprin's work acquires tragic intonations («The Confusion»). The activity of a young writer’s creative search is illustrated by the variety of genre forms that he tries, for example, the genre of the Christmas story, the «charitable genre» (short stories «The Tapeur», «The Wonderful Doctor»), the epistolary form («Autumn Flowers»). The writer plays with forms, styles, creatively explores genres and types and characters within the genre forms: romantic («Al-Issa»), melodramatic («Autumn Flowers»), comic («Lilac Bush»), tragic («The Confusion»). That is why Kuprin's early work appears to be diverse in style, and his creative experiments are considered less («Autumn Flowers») or more successful («Lilac Bush»). An analysis of Kuprin’s novelistic of the 1890s makes it possible to determine the directions of the writer's creative search at the beginning of his literary career. Gradually special themes are confirmed in the writer's work, such as animalistic and circus novels.