POETICS OF CITY SPACE IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE OF 1920S (M. BULGAKOV, A. GRIN, S. KRZHIZHANOVSKIY)

The article studies artistic-aesthetic reflection of city space in Russian literature of 1920s in the works by M. Bulgakov, A. Grin and S. Krzhizhanovskiy, that shaped the vision of a city where one can find his place in life, make a career, see the world (Moscow in M. Bulgakov's and S. Krzhizhanovskiy's works, Petrograd in A. Grin's works). However, the writers occupied different artistic niches in the literary direction that is usually called the realism of the 1920s. On the one hand, they took the advantage of something fantastic in a much unexpected, eccentric way; on the other hand, they had different ideas about the preceding tradition. Bulgakov felt free to experiment and was sure that the traditions of Russian classical realism were not employed to full extent; Grin took the advantage of the symbolism epoch; Krzhizhanovskiy actualized the eccentricity of west European romanticism ad neoromanticism. The socio-political conditions of transition to different norms of public relation as provoked by the 1917 Revolution and the Civil war were significant for the artistic evolution of the writers in the focus. The time depicted in prosaic works by Bulgakov, Grin and Krzhizhanovskiy fits into the period between military communism and the NEP. Dynamic and socially relevant phenomena were reflected in the system of locuses and microtoposes in short stories and novels written by the given writers. One of the plots common for all of them was, for instance, the search of the dwelling place (“square meters”) and the attempt to keep these “meters”, that was not successful every time.