POETICS OF THE ARTISTIC WORK «THE LIFE OF JEAN-PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER» BY G. DE BRUYN

Abstract

The article analyzes the poetics of the artistic work of the contemporary German writer Gunter de Bruyn «The Life of Jean-Paul Friedrich Richter», based on the biography and activity of an extremely complex, controversial, multi-faceted artist of the word of the late 18th – the beginning of the 19th century. The writer of the twentieth century is interested in man of the past not only in connection with the era in which this man lived and the business he was engaged. The writer is interested in the personality itself as a personality with all the set of problems associated with him. Gunter de Bruyn looked at his predecessor in a new way. He tried to understand what the predecessor thought about the main thing in life and its essence. The author embraced predecessor’s phenomenon completely, such as he had been, and tried to understand and explain it, to learn all the sources that report about the life and work of Jean-Paul. Both the psycho-physiological and characterological approach, and in some way – even an idealistic direction, are presented in the image of the artist of the past, because G. de Bruyn models the biography of the hero, relying on the reductionist principle of factual reliability, and refraining from the idea of self-sufficiency of artistic (for example, novel) narrative fiction.