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Poetics of expressionism in V. M. Garshin’s short story "A Red Flower": linguostylistic analysis (to the 170th anniversary of the birth)
https://doi.org/10.30515/0131-6141-2025-86-1-60-71
Abstract
The article focuses on such a little-studied phenomenon as Russian literary expressionism whose origins go back to works by Russian writers of the last quarter of the 19th century, in particular V. M. Garshin. The aim is to study the text of the autobiographical story "A Red Flower" and determine whether it is in agreement with expressionist tendencies. As the philological analysis of the literary work has shown, the constants of expressionist philosophy and aesthetics are found in the text. These include an alienated suffering hero as a reflection of the "convulsive" world; subject (deindividualization, deconstruction, transformation), object (personification, demonisation), and optical (an unhealthy person’s consciousness performing the anti-eye function) deformation; excessiveness expressed in the intensification of characteristics; an ambivalent attitude towards nature; the red flower image as an "objectified emotion" with a distinctive epithet – one of the main colours on the expressionist palette. A comparison with the expressionist literature poetics described by researchers on the linguistic material from works by German writers and poets leads to the conclusion that the story "A Red Flower" reflects the features of the "art of screaming" predicted by the sensitive nature of V. M. Garshin, the "progenitor of expressionism".
About the Author
V. V. Shelyakina
Moscow Pedagogical State University
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Valeriya V. Shelyakina, Graduate Student
Moscow
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Review
For citations:
Shelyakina V.V. Poetics of expressionism in V. M. Garshin’s short story "A Red Flower": linguostylistic analysis (to the 170th anniversary of the birth). Russian language at school. 2025;86(1):60-71. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.30515/0131-6141-2025-86-1-60-71
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