Vladimir Korolenko as Dickens Reader: Fiction and Metafiction

The article is devoted to interpretation a figure of explicit reader in Vladimir Korolenko’s “Story of my Contemporary” (chapter “My first Acquaintance with Dickens”). Short story moderated the trajectory of reading at distinguishing between narrative and perception modes. Representing the world of the Zhytomyr province, the writer shows reading as a specific activity that is part of the daily routine for inhabitants. The story of reading a little hero – from the “colorful” and “spicy” reading adventurous and detective novels to meaningful reading of Dickens’ book – demonstrates specific changes in the psychology of the little hero (from Oliver Twist to David Copperfield). A specific feature of this text is the reflection of the young reader on everything what is happening in the book in particular and on the nature of one’s own reading in general. At the beginning of the story, the main feature of the reading of the hero is noted, his abruptness, episodic, covering only the surface of the plot. Central motive of the struggle of two brothers, having as a biographical and mythopoetic sense. That is closely connected with a qualitative transformation Reader becoming a Writer. In addition, the older brother was an authority for the youngest, including in reading, therefore, in addition to the “episodicity” of reading, it was also secondary and in his perception of certain works the young the reader relied on the experience of his older brother, who does not mark the image of the ideal the reader, dividing everything into so-called κῶμος and τράγεος. Despite the fact that the main character is experiencing the text of Dickens as Revelation, experience reading his novel practically did not differ from previous reading experience. So the novel was without a name, also remained an unread hero and was not even understood by him until the end. And it is the figure of the elder brother-authority that changes the main trajectory “Anonymity” of children's reading, the first time calling the last name of the writer Dickens. In conclusion hypothesis about the specific metatext character of the fragment under consideration is presented. That allows to consider it as an auto-commentary on other works of the author, in particular, his story “In a Bad Society”.