THE HERO AND THE AUTHOR OF “LIEUTENANT PROSE”

The article examines the features of the poetics of “lieutenant prose” in terms of the relationship between the positions of the author and the hero. The analysis of works written in different periods (1946, late 1950s— early 1960s, 2011) made it possible to define the boundaries of this literary movement, to determine artistic features of “lieutenant prose” as peculiar phenomenon in the history of modern Russian literature, and at the same time as a social and ethical phenomenon. The author’s closeness to the hero, the commonality of their life and war experience, and at the same time the author’s “non-involvement” in the hero’s actions determine the architectonics of the text as a whole and its genre specifics. Using the example of In the Trenches of Stalingrad (1946) by VictorNekrasov, the characterological features of the lyrical story are analyzed in detail; these features (orientation towards one’s own war experience, focus on documentary narration, attention to detail) will be developed in later works. The hero and the author of the “lieutenant prose” are representatives of the 1920s generation that played a special role in the history of the Great Patriotic War. This commonality between the author and the hero determines the lyrical tone of the narrative and its structure. This commonality also makes it difficul to distinguish the positions of the author and the hero, and to keep the distance between them that is necessary for the aesthetic completeness of the hero’s character, not allowing to subordinate the hero to the author or vice versa. In the first case the hero is treated as a contemporary of the author, while in the second one he is idealized. The dynamics and difficulties of the relationship between the author and the hero in the aesthetic process are revealed in the evolution of the ar tistic system of Vasil Bykov.