“And weeps with Dostoevsky until morning…”: specifics of the writers’ reception of M. Bakhtin’s personality and ideas

The problem of the reception of M. Bakhtin’s personality and ideas seems to be one of the most important in today’s Bakhtin Studies. We focus on the writers’ reception among the various forms of Bakhtin reception. By Bakhtin literary reception they mean the presentation of Bakhtin’s image as a literary character, the participation of Bakhtin himself in the literary and cultural life of Nevel, Vitebsk, Leningrad, Saransk and Moscow, the facts of the thinker’s specific relations with representatives of the Russian literary community in different periods of his life. Special attention is paid to the presentation of M. Bakhtin’s image in the literary works of K. Vaginov (“Satyr Chorus”), A. Losev (“The Woman-Thinker”) and in the letters of B. Pasternak. The letters of K. Fedin (the 1960s and early 1970s), containing assessments of M. Bakhtin’s work and personality, have been introduced into the scientific literature for the  first time. We also analyze A. Beck’s attitude to Bakhtin’s works. The article concludes that the study of the writers’ reception of M. Bakhtin’s personality allows us to abandon a number of biographical myths and determine the real place of Bakhtin in the literary and intellectual life of the country in the 1920s and 1970s.

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