ABSTRACT
The urban theme has a distinguished genealogy in Russian literature. The neudachnik as a type is descended from the downtrodden yet inherently spiteful underground man, who despises those whom he envies, and from Gogol”s secretly resentful and ambitious “little men”. He is, to use a more modern and apposite example, a Kavalerov type, mocking the practical Andrei Babichevs of this world, and yet unable to tear himself free of his fascination with the powerful and acclaimed. Kireev’s use of imagery taken from the interior of a house to refer to man’s existential, ephemeral condition, is a favoured conceit of urban writers. Characters are depicted surrounded by objects, dragged down by domestic needs, the claustrophobic confines of the average city apartment an apt metaphor for the coffin which awaits them, the grey walls of the cramped rooms, rather like the grey fence in Chekhov’s “Dama s sobachkoi”, a symbol of drab life.
