Article

Name: The Plot of Yu. Trifonov’s Story “The House on the Embankment” and Its Biographical Subtext: Levka Shulepnikov and Mikhail Demin

Authors: Kirienko A. Yu.

Ural Federal University, Yekaterinburg, Russian Federation

In the section The Plot in Literature and Folklore

Abstract:

The article discusses the history of the relationship between Yu. V. Trifonov and his cousin Georgy Evgenievich Trifonov (known under the pseudonym Mikhail Demin), which in many respects complements the ideas about the formation of the storyline connected in the story “The House on the Embankment” with Levka Shulepnikov, one of the main her characters. The images of Georgy Trifonov and his relatives are reflected in the famous story, where, as you know, Yu. Trifonov told a lot about himself and his childhood. The prototypes of several characters (Anton Ovchinnikov, Sonya Ganchuk, Professor Ganchuk) have long been identi¬fied in the works of E. Hoffman, M. P. Korshunov and V. R. Terekhova, K. De Magd-Soep and other researchers.

However, the biographical implication of Levka Shulepnikov remains unclear - M. P. Korshunov’s assumption that Sergei Savitsky, Trifonov’s childhood friend, whose life story is really like Shulepnikov’s story, can be considered his prototype, is partly refuted by Korshunov himself, who admitted that Savitsky’s character is not at all like the character of Shulepnikov. Meanwile, none of Trifonov’s researchers paid attention to the presence and importance in his life of such a person as Georgy Trifonov. But it was Georgy who turned out to be Yu. Trifonov’s kind of double in the West, where he left in 1968 and turned into a Soviet defector. The facts related to the life of Georgy Trifonov (Mikhail Demin) remain clearly underestimated in the literary discourse devoted to Yu. Trifonov, although O. Yu. Trifonova-Tangyan, the daughter of Yu. Trifonov, wrote about G. Trifonov in some detail in her memoirs. Meanwhile, the difficult fate and difficult character of Georgy Trifonov, formed in childhood by an intelligent and enlightened family, and then deformed by fatherlessness, prison, war, a criminal environment, multiple arrests, and camps, could not but affect the creation of the artistic image of Shulepnikov.

Keywords: plot, storyline, Yuriy Trifonov, House on the Embankment, Mikhail Demin, Radio Liberty, Georgy

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