A pesquisa tem como objetivo analisar e relacionar as escritas de si do poeta e escritor russo Daniil Kharms (1905-1942): seus apontamentos em cadernetas, sua prosa quasebiográfica, como a novela A velha (1939), suas cartas e seus autorretratos, sobretudo na década de 1930, momento em que essas artes de si mesmo passam a interagir de forma mais pronunciada, quando o criador e sua obra se misturam de maneira muito peculiar. Como o estudo das cadernetas do escritor define ponto medular da pesquisa e este material ainda não foi publicado no Brasil, também será apresentada a tradução de parte de seus cadernos de anotações e do pequeno diário, que abarcam os anos de 1924 a 1940. Além disso, pelo próprio recorte do trabalho, foi delineada uma biografia cuidadosa do autor, um dos fundadores da Oberiu, o último grande grupo do vanguardismo russo, assim como foram definidos alguns diálogos (Krutchónykh, Khlébnikov, Bergson, Malévitch e tchinari) que marcaram o desenvolvimento artístico e filosófico de Daniil Kharms, um dos mais peculiares e talentosos artistas russos de vanguarda, hoje assemelhado a escritores como Franz Kafka, Eugène Ionesco e Samuel Beckett. / The objetive of this thesis is to analyse the self-writing of the Russian poet and writer Daniil Kharms (1905-1942): his notes in notepads, his almost-biographical prose, such as the novel Old Woman (1939), his letters and self-portraits, especially in the 1930s, a time when these arts about oneself start to interact in a more emphatic way, when the writer and his work mix up in a very particular way. As the study on his notepads defines the central element of this research and this material has not been previously published in Brazil, it will be also presented a translation of a part of his notepads and little diary, from 1924 to 1940. Furthermore, by the perspective taken in this study, a detailed biography of the author was conducted. Kharms was one of the founders of Oberiu, the last avant-garde Russian group. Hence, the study also debates the importance of the art and philosophy of Krutchónykh, Khlébnikov, Bergson, Malévitch e tchinari to the work of Kharms, who became one of the most singular and talented contemporary Russian authors, compared to Franz Kafka, Eugène Ionesco e Samuel Beckett.

A pesquisa tem como objetivo analisar e relacionar as escritas de si do poeta e escritor russo Daniil Kharms (1905-1942): seus apontamentos em cadernetas, sua prosa quasebiográfica, como a novela A velha (1939), suas cartas e seus autorretratos, sobretudo na década de 1930, momento em que essas artes de si mesmo passam a interagir de forma mais pronunciada, quando o criador e sua obra se misturam de maneira muito peculiar. Como o estudo das cadernetas do escritor define ponto medular da pesquisa e este material ainda não foi publicado no Brasil, também será apresentada a tradução de parte de seus cadernos de anotações e do pequeno diário, que abarcam os anos de 1924 a 1940. Além disso, pelo próprio recorte do trabalho, foi delineada uma biografia cuidadosa do autor, um dos fundadores da Oberiu, o último grande grupo do vanguardismo russo, assim como foram definidos alguns diálogos (Krutchónykh, Khlébnikov, Bergson, Malévitch e tchinari) que marcaram o desenvolvimento artístico e filosófico de Daniil Kharms, um dos mais peculiares e talentosos artistas russos de vanguarda, hoje assemelhado a escritores como Franz Kafka, Eugène Ionesco e Samuel Beckett. / The objetive of this thesis is to analyse the self-writing of the Russian poet and writer Daniil Kharms (1905-1942): his notes in notepads, his almost-biographical prose, such as the novel Old Woman (1939), his letters and self-portraits, especially in the 1930s, a time when these arts about oneself start to interact in a more emphatic way, when the writer and his work mix up in a very particular way. As the study on his notepads defines the central element of this research and this material has not been previously published in Brazil, it will be also presented a translation of a part of his notepads and little diary, from 1924 to 1940. Furthermore, by the perspective taken in this study, a detailed biography of the author was conducted. Kharms was one of the founders of Oberiu, the last avant-garde Russian group. Hence, the study also debates the importance of the art and philosophy of Krutchónykh, Khlébnikov, Bergson, Malévitch e tchinari to the work of Kharms, who became one of the most singular and talented contemporary Russian authors, compared to Franz Kafka, Eugène Ionesco e Samuel Beckett.

Écrite d’abord en russe puis en anglo-américain, l’œuvre romanesque de Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), écrivain américain d’origine russe, fascine ses lecteurs, mais leur participation à l’achèvement de cette œuvre artistique a été singulièrement restreinte par sa réception. La publication de Lolita (1955) le transforme en précurseur du postmodernisme américain. Aboutissement de la quête moderne de l’autonomie de l’art et triomphe de l’autotélisme artistique, sa création se trouve alors interprétée en poétique « tyrannique » sur laquelle règne l’auteur en « dictateur absolu ». Vladimir Nabokov, pourtant, n’a cessé d’identifier dans l’Histoire et de combattre dans son œuvre deux questions politiques du vingtième siècle : celle de la soumission de l’art à l’idéologie (quelle qu’en soit le nom) et celle de la tyrannie (actualisée par les régimes politiques nazi et soviétique). Dès l’origine, sa création de langue russe, puis anglo-américaine, est synchronisée avec les conséquences, tant en Russie qu’en Occident, de la Révolution bolchevique, l’événement historique qui change le « partage du sensible » (Jacques Rancière) vingtiémiste. La nature autotélique de sa création, dont les caractéristiques sont à redéfinir en opposition aux formes artistiques prônant l’engagement de l’art, indique en réalité que Nabokov propose une nouvelle « politique de la littérature » (Jacques Rancière) de l’émancipation qu’il a lui-même appelée du nom de « démocratie magique » et fait d’elle un « art critique » dont l’effet politique passe par sa distance esthétique, incluant « dans la forme de l’œuvre la confrontation de ce que le monde est avec ce que le monde pourrait être » (Jacques Rancière). / Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), American writer of Russian origin, was the author of fiction written first in Russian and then in American English. His work has been a constant source of fascination for his readers, but their interpretation has been limited by its reception. Upon the publication of Lolita (1955), Nabokov is seen as a precursor of American postmodernism. His writings are interpreted as the climax of the modernist quest for artistic autonomy and a triumph of autotelic creation, and a poetic of “tyranny” is identified in his work, with the author reigning supreme as an “absolute dictator.”However, Nabokov had never ceased to be preoccupied with two political issues in 20th century History, which he continuously denounced in his writings: the issue of the submission of art to any kind of ideology and that of tyranny illustrated by the Nazi and Soviet political regimes. From the very beginning of his career, in his Russian texts and later in his American texts, Nabokov’s work examines the consequences of the Bolshevik Revolution, seen as the historical event that changes the “distribution of the sensible” (J. Rancière) in the 20th century. The autotelic nature of his work, whose features should be defined in opposition to aesthetic forms that celebrate the commitment of art, actually indicates that Nabokov defines a new “politics of literature” (J. Rancière) based on emancipation, which Nabokov calls “a magic democracy” and considers to be a “critical art” whose aesthetic effect is predicated on its distance, thus including “in the form of the work the confrontation between what the world is and what the world may become” (J. Rancière).

The present work analyses the fiction of the post-Soviet Russian writers, Vladimir Sorokin, Vladimir Tuchkov and Aleksandr Khurgin against the background of the notion of post-Soviet Russian postmodernism. In doing so, it investigates the usefulness and accuracy of this very notion, proposing that of ‘post-Soviet neo-modernism’ instead. Common critical approaches to post-Soviet Russian literature as being postmodern are questioned through an examination of the concept of postmodernism in its interrelated historical, social, and philosophical dimensions, and of its utility and adequacy in the Russian cultural context. In addition, it is proposed that the humorous and grotesque nature of certain post-Soviet works can be viewed as a creatively critical engagement with both the past, i.e. Soviet ideology, and the present, the socially tumultuous post-Soviet years. Russian modernism, while sharing typologically and literary-historically a number of key characteristics with Western modernism, was particularly motivated by a turning to the cultural repository of Russia’s past, and a metaphysical yearning for universal meaning transcending the perceived fragmentation of the tangible modern world. Continuing the older Russian tradition of resisting rationalism, and impressed by the sense of realist aesthetics failing the writer in the task of representing a world that eluded rational comprehension, modernists tended to subordinate artistic concerns to their esoteric convictions. Without appreciation of this spiritual dimension, semantic intention in Russian modernist fiction may escape a reader used to the conventions of realist fiction. It is suggested that contemporary Russian fiction as embodied in certain works by Sorokin, Tuchkov and Khurgin, while stylistically exhibiting a number of features commonly regarded as postmodern, such as parody, pastiche, playfulness, carnivalisation, the grotesque, intertextuality and self-consciousness, seems to resume modernism’s tendency to seek meaning and value for human existence in the transcendent realm, as well as in the cultural, in particular literary, treasures of the past. The closeness of such segments of post-Soviet fiction and modernism in this regard is, it is argued, ultimately contrary to the spirit of postmodernism and its relativistic and particularistic worldview. Hence the suggested conceptualisation of post-Soviet Russian fiction as ‘neo-modernist’.