Mikhail Kuzmin as a Dedicatee of the Novel "Manon Lescaut of Turdej" by V. Petrov

The general purpose of this graduate thesis, in which the novel "Manon Lescut of Turdej" (1944) by Vsevolod Petrov is examined, is to reveal the meaning behind its dedication to the author`s mentor and friend Mikhail Kuzmin. The binary (two-part) structure of the work corresponds with the binary interpretation of the dedication as a token of following Kuzmin`s poetics and as a sign of rejecting other possible models. Intertextual analysis of the novel has evidentiated pointed rejection of the models suggested by soviet military prose concurrent with the novel, by the Lost Generation novels and by earlier prose by Petrov himself ("Philosophical stories"). This is due to the fact that these models are incompatible with Mikhail Kuzmin`s literary principles and ideas. The ones that are the most essential for "Manon Lescaut of Turdej" are the clarism (reflected, for instance, in Kuzmin`s poem "Inscription on a Book", which is one of the main intertexts of the novel), the emotionalism, and the principle of synthesis, and also the imagery and the motifs that are related to them. Having applied these principles to the novel by Petrov, I concluded that the dedication draws readers` attention to the fact that both the author and the narrator aim to depict the story as a replication of the general in a particular (clarism) and at the same time to emphasise the singularity of it (the story being inspired by real events), and, consequently, to establish a balance and to show that life has many facets and can be viewed from different perspectives (the principle of synthesis). In addition, the dedication is a token of the purely kuzminian renewal of an artist and a sign of him being independent and not defined by any finished model or literary school.