Portrait and landscape in Boris Zaitsev’s publicistic writings: style and ethos

• Main Author: Marina B. Abdokova
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) 2020-12-01
• Series: RUDN Journal of Studies in Literature and Journalism
• Subjects: boris zaitsev; style; ethos; portrait; landscape; literary painting; publicism
• Online Access: http://journals.rudn.ru/literary-criticism/article/viewFile/23605/18158

The article represents genre-style etymology of Boris Konstantinovich Zaitsev (1881-1972) publicistic legacy (that includes essays, profiles and critical notes). Style-forming expressions of this outstanding representative of 20th century Russian literary abroad are analyzed within the context of his ethical and philosophical principles. Zaitsev’s portrait and landscape sketches are considered for the first time as figurative-poetic and genre-compositional components of the artist's “visual palette”. One of the effective methods of comprehending the style and ethos of the writer is the disclosure of multi-genre subtexts that reflects the creative worldview of B. Zaitsev, in which aesthetics is closely intertwined with metaphysics, and this, in turn, determines the adjacent disciplinary tools for the study of “literary painting”, actualizes parallels with non-verbal art forms (painting, music). The intertextual phenomenology of B. Zaitsev's publicistic texts is not limited to the artful, masterly and technical depiction. The nature of refined subject-figurative “painting”, as follows from the analysis, is based on the spiritual contemplation of the writer and reflects a rare for the art of the 20th century harmony of the artistic and transcendent.