Baudelairean Motives in Parisian Novels of the Russian Emigration of the First Wave

The current paper presents the research on the topic of Charles Baudelaire’s influence on the Parisian novels of the Russian émigré writers and representatives of the “unnoticed generation” Gaito Gazdanov and Boris Poplavsky. Within the framework of the study such ideas as the émigré rhetoric and collective identity of the “unnoticed generation” are conceptualized, as well as the common context of the perception of Charles Baudelaire among the Russian writers and poets in the 20-30s years of the 20th century is formulated. Finally, the key aesthetic conceptions of Charles Baudelaire and the novels of Gaito Gazdanov and Boris Poplavsky are analyzed in a comparative perspective. The main results of the study include the detection of the explicit adoption of the certain Baudelairean motives and aesthetic categories in the works of the émigré writers. Among them the conceptions of flânerie, dandyism, distinctive image of Paris, associated with the motives of death and marginality, as well as the aestheticization of the ugly are distinguished.