Strategies for building a professional reputation of Russian emigres and self-educated writers

Abstract

We analyze the ways of constructing a writer's reputation in exceptional cultural conditions related to displacement of entire generations of authors to the literary process periphery and their lack of a “right to creative work”. We compare the experience of two conditionally distinguished large and heterogeneous groups – writers from the people who tried to declare themselves at the beginning of the 20th century as an independent current, and representatives of the Russian literary emigration. In addition to a number of common features (falling into the “blind zone” of generally recognized literature, internal isolation, leading to the fact that the majority of readers belong to the same environment as writer, the lack of economic benefits from publishing works), self-educated writers and emigres resorted to similar strategies for building a reputation. We find that representatives of both groups formulated a noble mission uniting them, aimed at serving national literature, turned to the experience and poetics of predecessor writers to construct their own literary tradition, legitimizing their special creative path, and tried to structure their sub-field by creating associations and circles , as well as critical reflection of the current literary process.