Masculine Gender. First Person. Singular Number

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Masculine Gender. First Person. Singular Number: The Diaries of D. Lukichov and D. Bespalov / Comp., ed., introduction and concluding article by S. Adonyeva. St. Petersburg. The Propp Centre, 2013. 288 pages. Illustrations. (Series ‘Primary signs or pragmemas’) (in Russian)

The aim of this publication is to show the reader the inner life of two men,  revealed by them in their diaries. It is astonishing, but we can far better imagine the daily routine of Pierre Bezukhov and Eugene Onegin than the daily routine of our rural ancestors. We imagine their life from the outside, through the Soviet cinema and Soviet literature. The peasant diaries published here are unique. Firstly, because these diaries show how the men work their way towards self-definition and the acquisition of those speech styles which can outline and fragment the landscape of their inner life. Secondly, because these diaries provide reliable proof that “little” or “simple” men, those bearded peasant-fellows from illustrations of the Russian village and brave front-line soldiers in faded quilted jackets, existed not only in posters, pictures and the cinema. They existed in real life and were neither smaller nor simpler than we ourselves are.

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