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AUTOBIOGRAPHICITY AS A MECHANISM OF LITERARY CREATION: ANTONS AUSTRINSВ’ PROSE FICTION

A. Romanovska

Abstract

Autobiographicity is a peculiar form of writing based on the personal life experience of the author of a literary work reflecting its facts and events. Limits of the autobiographical character of a literary work are not easy to establish; its investigation requires deep knowledge of the biographical facts of the respective author that is drawn from the analysis of documents of extra-textual reality (letters, contemporariesВ’ memoirs and evaluations, reviews of the literary work, the biographical information provided by the author, etc.). Autobiographicity is a peculiar stylistically marked literary device that may be used in autobiographical works, chronicles as well as other literary genres. The prose fiction by the Latvian author Antons Austri?Вљ is marked by the autobiographical basis of almost all of his works. Austri?Вљ was active in writing between 1901 and 1934, his prose fiction manifests features of both Modernism and realism. The distinct use of autobiographicity in Austri?ВљВ’ writing was fostered both by his personal views on artistic creation and common Latvian and foreign culture trends. At the beginning of the 20th century the popularity of autobiographicity in Latvian literature was greatly facilitated by searching for Latvian culture identity as well as aesthetic conceptions of Russian symbolists that set a demand for merging of art and life based on the idea of the universal synthesis of life and religion, philosophy and art, etc.

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