The Poetics of the Aleksey Eisner's Novel "An Affair with Europe"

In the present study I examine the poetics of the novel “An affair with Europe” (published in 1929 in the “Volya Rossii” (“Russia’s will”) journal. This novel is the only small prose work by Aleksey Eisner that remains. The author belonged to the literary association “Skit” (Prague). This study aims to determine the artistic originality of the said novel. In order to achieve that goal I had to solve the following problems: 1. Analyse different levels of literary structure of the novel “An affair with Europe”; 2. Interpret the results of the analysis and define the author’s position; 3. Define the correlation between the motive structure of the novel and that of Aleksey Eisner’s lyrics of the “Prague” period. In the first chapter of my work I examine the time and space organization of the novel, its plot, composition and its relation to the literary tradition. The novel’s narrative structure is built upon the correlation of symbolic images, which allowed me to distinguish a number of motive combinations, which could help understand the meaning of the work. In the second chapter I examine the motives of exile, return, parting, death and resurrection in the context of Aleksey Eisner’s lyrics of the “Prague” period. This allows to expand the observations of the literary language of the novel and of its author’s position, and also to see the variation of the same motives in Aleksey Eisner’s works of the second part of the 1920-s.