Отражение прошлого и метаморфозы настоящего в романе Саши Филипенко Кремулятор

Abstract

The article is an attempt at a deeper reading of the various levels of the diary kept by the novel’s main character, Peter Nesterenko, whose fate forms the basis of the plot. The writer’s skilful use of the documentary narrative method helps to decipher the events in the life of a real person, a white officer who, in 1927, headed up the first Moscow crematorium and eventually fell into the cogs of the repression machine. The historical material collected (investigation files, archival documents, quotations), the artistically significant composition of the work (the novel is constructed in the form of six interrogations interspersed with fragments of the protagonist’s diaries), the way the diary is addressed and its wide range of possible functions allow us to better understand not only the times of repression, the ‘inconvenient past’ (Nikolai Eple), but also provides opportunities to draw contemporary socio-political parallels to modern Russia.