The collision of personal and urban space in the works of Andrey Bely and Chavdar Mutafov

This article addresses a topic that has so far received little scholarly attention — comparing urban space representations in the works of Andrei Bely and the Bulgarian modernist Chavdar Mutafov. The analysis focuses on the interaction between the character and the city in the novels Petersburg (1913) and The Dilettante (1921), considered key works of two autonomously developing yet typologically similar modernist literary traditions. Relying on intertextual analysis, the author identifies parallels in the artistic conceptualization of the city as a universal phenomenon where existential, symbolic, and narrative meanings intersect. In both Bely’s and Mutafov’s works, the city is not merely a material environment but an autonomous artistic system imbued with philosophical depth. Central to this exploration is the carnivalesque nature of the urban scene, which transforms the subject into a puppet, a figure of play and masquerade. The concepts of “style” in Mutafov and “brain play” in Bely serve as key notions shaping the structure of urban space and its attributes in the literary text. Both authors avoid strictly mimetic representation: the city acquires a symbolic and ideal dimension, becoming a mise-en-scène and a philosophical construct equally significant to other narrative structural elements. In this context, urban space is viewed as an artistic precondition for narrative choices linked to identity and the problem of the urban subject’s liberation. The city here is not a mere background but an equal participant in the narrative, defining trajectories of subjectivity. The article interprets the urban image as the foundation of narrative design and a philosophical model of modern experience.