Tretyakov’s biography interview in the light of the “literature of fact” theory

Abstract

   The article deals with a unique experiment, conducted by Sergey Tretyakov, one of the founders of the “literature of fact” theory, to create a new genre of a biography-interview, actualized in the second half of the 1920^s in the process of his communication with the Chinese student Dan Shi Hua. The issue of fiction and non-fiction correlation in the book “Dan Shi Hua: Biography-Interview” is considered in the context of the factography theory and the discussions of the 1920^s on the goals of literature, the genre crisis and “a living person”. The article analyzes the fight of the LEF group against such “belles-lettres vestiges” as the plot, typification, psychologism and figurativeness. Tretyakov’s biography-interview is the most natural and artistically significant attempt at implementing the LEF program. The article reveals some special features of the new documentary genre of polygenetic nature, which combines the traits of an autobiography, memoires, physiological sketch, travelogue, scientific guide and dictionary. We describe the particulars of its narrative structure and trace the techniques of modeling an image of an implicit interviewer. In the process of the stylistic analysis of the biography-interview, we examine the orientation of the text towards its interlocutor, the bearer of another culture, and the metaphorization pattern, drawing upon the empirical experience of the autobiographical narrator. The article highlights the markers of striving for factual exactness and objectivity. Besides, we note such fiction features as “natural storytelling” of a human life, a wide application of the alienation technique, and an abundance of distinctive metaphors and comparisons. The article concludes that by consistently implementing the factography theory postulates, Tretyakov indicates the boundaries of this type of literature capacity.