A Man “Resembling Sancho Panza”: Viktor Petrov's Self-Presentation in Letters to Sofiia Zerova

The original figure of V. Petrov (1894–1969) is still in the halo of mystery and unsolved. This is due to his remarkable personality and the scarcity of self-representative texts, including letters, available in the public domain. The purpose of the study is to try to identify V. Petrov's ways of self-presentation in letters to S. Zerova and analyse various strategies for forming one's image for the needs of the addressee, the Other (partner in the epistolary dialogue). It has been found that, unlike the epistolary of other writers, these letters do not reflect the historical and literary processes of their time or problems related to artistic creativity. The dominant themes in the correspondence are those of daily life and everyday life. It is through the prism of this topic that the addressee's personality expresses itself, his self-presentation as a man in love who is concerned with the daily troubles of a person dear to him. In his letters, Petrov is caring and persistent, romantic and self-ironic at the same time. For the addresser and addressee, who had not seen each other for months, letters were the only communication channel. The epistolary monologues of the letter writer reflect how he creates the effect of being present in the life of his beloved. It is shown that self-presentation highlights the image of the addresser within the shifting chronotopic framework of the day, revealing their unique character, and emotional state in a given context, and capturing impressions of recent events, facts, or phenomena. Everyday life and longing for his beloved become the basis for imagery and sensuality. It is proved that the "I" image presented by V. Petrov in his letters to S. Zerova reveals the inner world of the writer most deeply and unexpectedly and reflects different ways of conceptualizing himself. One of them is the image of a man who resembles Sancho Panza, hiding his romantic feelings under a purely prosaic shell.