Zakholustye literary fate: A. L. Tolstaya (Bostrom) "Lost Book"

Abstract

This article examines a local text embodied by the 1886 collection Zakholustye [The Provincial Backwater], published by the writer A. L. Tolstaya (Bostrom). Conceived as an attempt to present an objective picture of contemporary provincial life in the mid-1880s, the book failed to achieve its intended goals and was later recalled by its author solely as a "lost book." The authors attempt to determine what the creator of Zakholustye succeeded and failed in achieving. Through a sequential analysis of the poetics in the novella Izo dnya v den' [Day In, Day Out] and the sketch Den' Pavla Yegorovicha [Pavel Yegorovich's Day], they demonstrate that the writer generally depicted provincial daily life and characters accurately—capturing stopped time, static space, and the theatricality and somnambulistic quality of events. However, she did so with a delay of a decade and a half, which caused the failure of Zakholustye. Despite this, it represented the first attempt to create a "Samara text," an initiative subsequently adopted by contemporary writers following A. L. Tolstaya (Bostrom).