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THE SELF-REFLECTION OF EMIGRANT IN AYN RAND’S ART WORKS
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DOI: 10.26170/FK19-01-04
Abstract: The article is devoted to the research of exile elements in Ayn Rand’s art works (the American
writer and philosopher from Russia Alissa Rozenbaum). The hypothesis of the survey is in the fact that Ayn
Rand in the texts takes the self-reflection as an emigrant. The author formulated two stages of Ayn Rand’s
reflection as an emigrant in the art works. The first stage encompasses the period when Ayn Rand freshly
emigrated in the USA and the trauma of the October revolution was actual. As a reflection of this emotions she wrote the novel We The Living (1936) that (as the author of the article demonstrates gradually) fits
organically in the exile literature of the first wave (M. Aldanov, I. Shmelev). The author concentrated on the
more detail comparative analysis of Ayn Rand’s first novel and the novel The Sun of Deads (1923) by another
Russian emigrant writer I. Shmelev. The author discovered the familiarity of the art images in these texts that reflected the pain of both
emigrants. Having different ideological opinions, Rand and Shmelev nevertheless are close to each other in the traumatic experience
of the October revolution. The second stage of Ayn Rand’s emigrant self-reflection is the period of “American novels” that (as it is believed) have no common with Russian reality. But in the novels The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957) the layer of exile subtext
is evolved. It contains the allusion on the Soviet reality comprehended by the writer as the warning to the American capitalism. As the
result the author made the conclusion that Ayn Rand’s art texts ate the complicated mix of two mentalities (Russian and American ones)
that generates a new art model and is perspective for the research as an exile literature too. The results of the research can be used in
the practice of teaching at higher school education, on the special courses about the literature of Russian abroad. The methods of the
research are caused by its tasks and contains such traditional for the literary studies methods as biographical, cultural-historical, sociological, comparative-historical.
Key words: NOVELS; SELF-REFLECTION; AMERICAN LITERATURE; AMERICAN WRITERS; LITERARY CREATIVITY; IMMIGRANT WRITERS; RUSSIAN LITERATURE
For citation
Grigorovskaya, A. V. The Self-Reflection of Emigrant in Ayn Rand’s Art Works / A. V. Grigorovskaya . In Philological Class. 2019. №1 (55). P. 28-33. DOI 10.26170/FK19-01-04.