Titles of Russian memoirs of the XVIII - early XIX century as a meta-textual element of the narrative

Farafonova Oksana Anatol'evna ORCID: 0000-0003-4205-6793 PhD in Philology Associate Professor; Department of Russian and Foreign Literature, Theory of Literature and Methods of Teaching Literature; Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University (Novosibirsk, Russia). 630126, Russia, Novosibirsk region, Novosibirsk, Vilyuyskaya str., 28, building 3, room 308 oxana.faroks@yandex.ru

The memoir title not only names the text and indicates its belonging to a specific author, but also is a sign of author's reflection aimed at a potential reader. The meaning of the memoir title is often supported, enhanced, or clarified by the preface and/or epigraph. In cases where there is no memoir preface, it is the title that assumes the main meta-textual function.

In the XVIII century. the genre of memoirs was actively developing in Russian culture, the writing of which by the end of the century had become an integral part of the life of a nobleman ^{[1, 2]}. 

Most Russian memoirs of the second half of the XVIII century have an original author's title. The absence of a title is usually due to the time of creation, the form of the memoir entries and the goals of the memoirist. Thus, the autobiographical notes of G. P. Chernyshev (early 1740s) and V. A. Nashchokin (1759-1760) in the form of daily notes, or the autobiography of S. R. Vorontsov (1796-1797), contained in a letter to Count F. V. Rastopchin, do not have an author's title.

In most cases, the memoir titles of the XVIII century are detailed and informative. As a rule, they consist of several elements: an indication of the genre dominant (notes, a story, a chronicle, etc.), information about the author, brief information of a meaningful nature. The genre nomination (notes, life, description, lives, story, chronicle), which is an obligatory element of the memoir title, indicates the "pretexts" significant for the author, sets the perspective of perception of his memoirs necessary for the memoirist. Performing the function of a sign of the memoirist's cultural and literary self-identification, the genre nomination, which is part of the title, simultaneously determines his point of view regarding the choice of a narrative model, the perspective of the depiction of events and characters, leitmotivs and principles of plot organization. The repertoire of memoir titles of the second half of the XVIII century is diverse and reflects the conscious orientation of the authors towards certain cultural and aesthetic trends of the XVIII century.

In most of the titles of Russian memoir texts, the nomination "notes" is found. Russian Russian literature becomes a kind of identification mark of the memoir narrative, which is especially evident already in the XIX century, when all the memoir texts of the previous century are designated in the journals publishing them ("Russian Archive", "Russian Antiquity", etc.) precisely as "notes". But the emergence of the trend can be observed already in the publishing practice of the late XVIII century, when, for example, N. M. Karamzin, publishing in the Moscow Journal Memoirs of K. Goldoni, calls them "Goldonium notes", or N. Obleukhov defines as "Notes" the memoirs of Cardinal de Retz translated by him.

It should be noted that with a large thematic diversity, "notes" in Russia of the second half of the XVIII century were called works claiming to be reliable and aiming to "serve for the benefit" of contemporaries and future generations. A similar understanding of the specifics of the notes will remain in the editions of Russian memoirs in the XIX century. Calling their writings "notes" throughout the century, memoirists emphasize such qualities of their writings as the attitude towards authenticity, the almost documentary nature of the narrative and the objectivity of the writer. When comparing the works with the title "Notes", created in the first half of the XVIII century, with the texts of the authors of a later period, significant differences in the degree and methods of manifestation of the author's "I" are revealed.

The first Russian memoirs, entitled "notes", belong to Peter I's contemporaries A. A. Matveev, I. A. Zhelyabuzhsky, S. Medvedev, B. I. Kurakin. At the center of the narrative are not the authors themselves, but historical events and personalities. The memoirist, justifying the right to write such "notes", calls himself a "self-visionary". In the second half of the XVIII century. the attitude towards the truth and reliability of the memoir narrative remains, but the personality of the author and his perception of the event come to the fore, which affects, first of all, in changing the "formula" of the title. The traditional combination of a genre nomination and the author's name, indicating in some cases the object of description (personality or event), is complemented by individual author's marks (epithets, explanations reflecting the specifics of the author's concept, etc.). Even an indication that the notes are "self-written" or "handwritten", becomes not only a confirmation of the authenticity of the recorded, but a declaration of the author's will and the right to express one's own vision of the events described and understanding of oneself ("Handwritten notes of Empress Catherine II"). Preserving the reputation of documentary throughout the XVIII century, the nomination of "notes" in the second half of the century is increasingly associated with the individualization of the author's intentions in portraying himself as a private person.

Other genre nominations are found in memoir titles much less frequently than "notes" and mainly in works of the second half of the XVIII century. Such titles attract attention by the pronounced declarativeness of the author's intentions, as they become a direct indication of a certain tradition (cultural, literary, genre), close and understandable to the memoirist.

Unlike the "notes", which preserved thematic and functional diversity throughout the XVIII century, the nomination "life" was used either to designate historical and biographical works, or in the titles of original and translated novels. Russian Russian hagiography and Western European biographies combine in the experiments of Russian memoirists as a natural consequence of the processes taking place in the Russian literature of the XVIII century as a whole. In the titles of Russian memoirs, the nomination "life" or its variants can be combined with the nominations "journey" or "journey", referring to the tradition of walking (walking) in ancient Russian literature and Western European descriptions of pilgrimages of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Most often, such contamination is found in the autobiographical works of ministers of the church and the provincial nobility. The understanding of the life path reflected in such titles as a journey full of trials is characteristic of the Christian tradition. In the works of secular memoirist authors of the XVIII century, the hagiographic and pilgrimage literary tradition is reinterpreted, individualized and becomes a kind of formula describing the personal history of the author.

The repertoire of memoir titles of the second half of the XVIII century reflected the influence of the Old Russian chronicle tradition. The form of the chronicle at the initial stage of the formation of Russian memoiristics turned out to be the most understandable to the authors, the chronicle was an organic reference point for the memoirists of the XVIII century. The authors of the memoirs of the first half of the XVIII century (I. M. Gryaznovo, V. A. Nashchokin, G. P. Chernyshev, S. I. Mordvinov, N. Y. Trubetskoy, etc.) are guided by the chronicle form of weather records familiar to them. Such texts, as a rule, are brought by memoirists from childhood memories to the moment of writing notes, absorbing the material not only of the past, but also of the current reality at the time of writing. In some cases, the chronological narrative literally covers the entire life of the author and is brought by him to the last months (V. A. Nashchokin, S. I. Mordvinov) or even days (I. I. Neplyuev) of life. However, the actual nomination "chronicle" in memoir titles does not appear often and only in the second half of the century. Chronicled in their form and manner of narration, memoirs were more often described by the authors as "notes" or "stories".

The reader of the second half of the XVIII century was also familiar with ancient Russian novels and works of European literature, known in Russian publications as "novellas". The stories were called original and translated works having an adventurous love novel nature. Many philosophical or moral stories have been published. The repertoire of original and translated works, called novels, published in the second half of the XVIII century in various Russian printing houses is very extensive. But according to tradition, the story in the publishing and reading practice of the XVIII century was understood, first of all, as a historical work, a narrative about historical events that has a reliable basis, which functionally brings together the nominations "novella" and "notes" in memoir titles. The "story" (and the equivalent – the "narrative" nomination) in memoir titles is often supplemented with the characteristic "true" or other instructions from the author confirming the belonging of the text and the authenticity of what was recorded.

The nomination "life" in the memoir titles of the XVIII century is often found in combination with "adventure" or "adventure". Based on the translation and publishing practice of the second half of the XVIII century, it can be concluded that the nominations "adventure" and "adventure" in the Russian literary culture of the second half of the century are thought of as possible equivalents of each other. These nominations are most often found in the titles of novels or translated memoirs. The generally accepted designation of memoirs in Western Europe – "memoires" – in Russian publications, along with the variant "notes", is often translated as "adventure".

However, the similar and often used interchangeably "adventure" and "adventure" were interpreted differently by Russian memoirists. "Adventure" was used in the meaning of "chance", "an unexpected but real incident". "Adventure" correlated more with a biography containing in one form or another a story about a journey, which is connected with the etymology of the word meaning "journey", "journey" and in the context of Russian culture correlated with the genre of walking.

In the memoir texts entitled "the adventure", the described wanderings and travels are, as a rule, forced, due to the service of the hero-memoirist in the army, his participation in wars, and are one of the central (if not the main) narrative plan.

The nomination "adventure" in the titles of Russian memoirs of the second half of the XVIII – early XIX centuries is several times more common than "adventure". According to our observations, the memoir title, constructed precisely according to this formula, belongs only to A. T. Bolotov ^[3]. In other cases, the memoir titles are either more verbose, or the combination of "life and adventure" does not occupy a dominant position, and, therefore, it cannot be said that this is a reflection of a certain author's concept.

Going back to the Old Russian word "key" (to occur), the nomination "adventure" did not question the authenticity of the narrative (even the novel), indicating that only what happened was described, actually happened. The "adventure" in the title set the reader up for a non-fictional story. "The Adventure" was more associated in the XVIII century with the novel genre ^{[4, 5]}. A. T. Bolotov, for example, perceives the memoirs of P. Z. Khomyakov "The Adventure of a certain Russian, a true story written by himself." Bolotov includes Khomyakov's text in the critical review "Thoughts and impartial judgments about novels..." and evaluates its advantages and disadvantages in such a genre context ^[6].

Memoirs of the second half of the XVIII century, very different in goals, style, degree of aesthetic design and author's awareness, reflect the main trends of Russian culture, as can be seen from the memoir titles marking the proximity of the author's attitude to a particular cultural tradition. The specificity of the cultural situation in Russia of the XVIII century lies in the coexistence and interaction of genetically different cultural models – Ancient Russian, educational-classicist, sentimentalist.

The orientation towards the ancient Russian cultural and genre tradition can be traced in the memoirs, entitled by the authors as "life" ("life", "description of life"), "chronicle", "story". In rare cases, a memoir text focused on the ancient Russian hagiographic and chronicle narrative tradition has the title "Notes". For example, "Notes of a poor and vain human life" by the chamber junker Catherine I V. V. Golovin is the first memoir with the title "Notes ...", chronologically referring to the second half of the XVIII century. ^[7]. The memoirist does not say anything about the reason why he undertook the compilation of his autobiography, Golovin's "Notes ..." has no preface. However, the memoir title is very eloquent, and performs the function of a meta-text in relation to the main text of his memoirs, declaring the author's understanding of life (his own, in particular, and human life in general). The nomination "notes" indicates that the reader is actually facing a memoir narrative, but the figurative and philosophical part of the title prepares for the perception of the entire work in a certain way.

The generalized philosophical nature of the title of Golovin's memoirs, without the author's name, distinguishes them from similar works of the previous period. The nomination "notes", which traditionally pointed to the authenticity of the historical narrative, is applied for the first time to a text about a person's private life. Judging by the title, the memoirist understands himself and his story in the context of the formula of life according to Ecclesiastes – "Vanity of vanities, said Ecclesiastes, vanity of vanities, all is vanity!" [Ecclesiastes 1:2, 14]. Similarly, human life is characterized in the epistles of the Apostle Peter [Peter 1:18] and other biblical texts [Ps. 38:7], where the life of an individual is not so important in itself, there is something more and significant. The title given by Golovin to his notes is clearly not accidental and reflects the result of the author's reflections, setting a certain direction for the reader's perception of the entire work.

The general style of Golovin's work confirms that he conceptualized and described himself in the religious and philosophical categories of ancient Russian culture. The author calls himself "a sinful and cursed, poor man" ^{[7, p. 56]}. The plot of the memoirs is built up as a description of his "poor", i.e. unhappy, life and all sorts of misadventures experienced by Golovin when he was sent, like other young nobles, to Europe to comprehend the sciences. The memoirist does not report anything about his stay abroad, except for dry facts: when he left, where he was, when and how he returned. It is noteworthy against this background, a rather detailed description of departure, interpreted by the author as a forced and forced separation from the motherland, when "I am a sinner in my first misfortune" ^{[7, p. 45]}.

The departure "across the sea to Holland" appears in Golovin's memoirs as the beginning of all disasters, and the memoirist describes its consequences for his life as a carrier of ancient Russian consciousness. Leaving home is realized by him, if not an absolute catastrophe, then a misfortune that entailed an endless series of troubles and misadventures: the death of his brother, his own illness, the loss of all his "poor belongings", either sunk with the ship, or appropriated by "comrades" studying abroad, the royal disgrace from-It is interesting that the most terrible episode of his biography – the two–year arrest and torture in the dungeons of Biron - Golovin does not mention, ending the narrative with a description of the burial of his first wife in 1733. Was this a conscious decision of a memoirist who did not want to recall the horrors he experienced, or, taking up memoirs already during the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna Golovin may be keeping a secret that does not belong to him, it is unclear. But there is no doubt that these events influenced the general concept of the memoirs in a certain way. The title of Golovin's "Notes...", reflecting the author's reflection, sets a perspective based on the ancient Russian cultural tradition of reading his work, built as a cumulation of the events of "poor life". Yu. M. Lotman, referring to the "Golovin Family Tree" compiled by P. Kazansky, cites Golovin's lifestyle after all the misadventures described in his memoirs as an example to the point of absurdity reaching the theatricalization of the domestic behavior of a nobleman-landowner, calling "everyday life" in the Golovin estate "a mixture of a fairground farce, folk spells and conspiracies and a Christian rite" ^{[8, p. 547]}. The researcher concludes that the theatricality of the game, which Golovin surrounded himself with, was completely conscious and deliberate. Agreeing with the conclusions of the scientist, we add that by creating peculiar, daily recurring rituals, Golovin seems to be trying to convince himself and everyone around him that a "poor and vain life" may depend on the will of a "poor and sinful" person.

A very remarkable title of the memoirs of the landowner of the Kursk province, I. O. Ostrozhsky-Lokhvitsky – "Description of life, deeds, disasters and various adventures, that is, a Godeporik or a journey in this life" (1770s) - attracted the attention of the publisher of "Kiev Antiquity" F. G. Lebedinsky at the first, and still the only, publications of memoirs: "The notes have their own special, verbose title, indicating their autobiographical nature. Under this title, we offer their text, refusing to explain how the one-word name given to them by the author is fabricated and what it literally means: Godeporik (publisher's italics)" ^{[9, p. 355]}.

Lebedinsky adapts the title of Ostrogsky's memoirs, calling the publication "Notes of the Novo-Oskol nobleman I. O. Ostrogsky-Lokhvitsky." The original author's title, as can be seen from the above comment, is communicated to the public, but the refusal to explain it turns it into something secondary to the text itself. Russian Russian Memoiristics of the XVIII – first half of the XIX century by Tartakovsky also does not comment on the title of Ostrogsky's text, moreover, its full version is not indicated in Tartakovsky's key historical and typological study of Russian memoirs, the researcher is limited to the first part of the "wordy title", i.e. "Description of life, deeds, disasters and various adventures ..." ^{[10, pp. 51, 250]}. V. V. Muravyova does the same in her dissertation on hagiographic traditions in Russian memoiristics of the XVIII century ^[11].

The strange word "godeporik", combined in the title of Ostrogsky-Lokhvitsky with "life" and "journey", is a distortion of the Greek name of the genre of travel notes "hodoeporicon" (literally, "route", "path"), which appeared during the first Christian pilgrimages. And if such a genre nomination is not found in the ancient Russian tradition, then there are enough examples of such texts in the European literature of the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance. Hodoeporicon traditionally referred to pilgrimage literature and was a kind of account of the journey. One of the first known works of this kind is the "Godoeporicon" ("Hodoeporicon") of St. Willibald, which tells about his pilgrimage to Rome in 720-723, and his notes on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land (723-727) and Constantinople (727-729). We suggest that the first publishers of Ostrogsky's memoirs -Lokhvitsky could not identify and interpret the title, because such a designation of pilgrimage was not "heard of" in the Russian literary tradition. Ancient Russian literature knows the genre of walking, the new Russian literary culture of the XVIII century. He is mastering the genre nomination "journey".

One of the characteristic features of the hodoeporicon genre is the traveler's meticulous enumeration of all geographical points. Having started writing notes in his twenties, Ostrogsky-Lokhvitsky carefully describes his "journey in this life" for almost half a century, until his death in 1825. Whether the title of the memoirs was composite from the very beginning, or the second part appeared later, it is not possible to establish. However, it is obvious that the second part of the title is more conceptual than the first. The first one, the enumerative one, is related to the hagiographic-annalistic tradition of autobiographical texts. The second one, generalizing, reflects the author's understanding of his own life as a whole as a journey fraught with constant difficulties and suffering. Thanks to the metaphor of life as a path expanded in the second part of the title, the "monotonously unhurried chronicle story" about the origin of the genus and the weather autobiographical records are perceived as a complete narrative.

The obvious focus on the Old Russian literary tradition is demonstrated by the title of the memoirs of the military engineer-topographer I. G. Andreev "The House Chronicle of Andreev by their kind, written by Captain Ivan Andreev in 1789. Started in Semipalatinsk" ^[12]. The text of the "House Chronicle...", based on the author's diary entries, arranged in chronological order, is one of the most artless memoir works of the second half of the XVIII century. Russian Russian chronicler Andreev's chronicled narrative at the end of the XVIII – early XIX century looks archaic and ponderous against the background of rapidly developing Russian prose, but confirms the significant influence that the chronicle tradition had on the formation of the genre of memoirs in Russian literature.

Acting as a chronicler, whose author's "I", unlike Ostrogsky's text, is as "blurred" as possible, Andreev at the beginning of his memoirs, recalling the events of childhood, writes in the 3rd, then in the 1st person. Then, turning to the story of the years of service, he finally switches to the narrative from the 1st person, writes the events of his own life into the history of the family, and, in turn, constantly seeks to correlate it with the history of the state. The remoteness from the capital, the stay "on the outskirts" of the empire emphasized in the title, is one of the key factors that determined the structure of the unpretentious narrative of the "House Chronicle ...". The provincial nobleman Andreyev strives to show that both he and his ancestors are closely connected with the general state history. He begins the narrative with a historically significant event – the conquest of Siberia by Ermak, as if marking the first point of intersection between the history of the state and the history of the Andreev family. The chronicle narrative model set in Andreev's title affects the plot organization of his text, which is a cumulation of events and facts interspersed with additional and, apparently, extremely important details from the author's point of view. The events do not differ in importance, they literally cling to each other in the indiscriminate logic of the memoirist's memories.

However, Andreev's definite work on his text at the level of composition is obvious: "The House Chronicle ..." is divided into two unequal parts – in the first, the memoirist tells about "the extraneous origins of our surname", in the second, he describes "his life in an impartial way", bringing a shade of confessional into the chronicle narrative. The task of the first part of the "House Chronicle ..." was to convince a potential reader of the dignity and state significance of the Andreev family of nobles. The second part was supposed, according to the memoirist himself, to present "all the vices I committed in my youth and at the time of my conversion in good deeds, explaining, to give an example to my descendants" ^{[12, p. 74]}.

Setting a certain perspective on the perception of the world and man, the key educational and classicist paradigm for Russian culture of the XVIII century put the fulfillment of the duty of a citizen and a "useful son of the fatherland" in the first place, defined service to the state as the meaning of a person's life. The civil service itself became a factor determining the noble consciousness of the XVIII century. In the memoirs of the second half of the XVIII century. the life story of a memoirist is often depicted as the history of his service. Examples of works of this kind are "The Notes of Prince Yakov Petrovich Shakhovsky, written by himself" (1760s) and "The Life of Ivan Ivanovich Neplyuev, written by himself" (1770-1773) ^{[13, 14]}. In both texts, the service is central, organizing the plot, the motive and, in fact, the equivalent of life. The titles of Shakhovsky and Neplyuev, containing only the genre nomination, the author's name and confirmation of the text's belonging to him, do not bring the service to the fore and do not thereby set a certain perspective of perception. But neither Shakhovsky nor Neplyuev, as people who were born and raised in the Peter the Great era, who are aware of life and service as a whole, do not need such declarations. For them, service is a key concept of the value system and the beginning that defines life itself.

The service as a marker of the author's position appears in the titles of later memoirs of nobles of the Elizabethan and Catherine eras. Thus, in the titles of "Notes by M. V. Danilov, artillery major, written by him in 1771" (1771) and "Notes from some circumstances of the life and service of the real privy councilor and Senator I. V. Lopukhin, compiled by himself" (1809), it is the service and rank of the author that are brought to the fore. Performing a metatextual function, the title in both cases simultaneously separates the memoir work from any other works of this kind, fixes the author's name and status and includes the memoirist in the general cultural and ideological context of the epoch.

The title of Danilov's "Notes ..." ^[15], bringing to the fore the name and rank of the author, received by him on a "petition" after retirement, and focusing on the memoirist's life's work – "artillery science", focuses the main plans of the narrative.

The first outline of the narrative and its outline is the history of the genus. After a detailed and detailed account of the origin of the Danilovs and the ancestors of the memoirist, Danilov focuses on the story of his own life, and the leitmotif becomes honest service under Elizabeth Petrovna and Peter III. The second plan of the narrative is connected with the story of the vicissitudes of the service, where an officer who does not have profitable connections has to achieve everything himself. The third and, in fact, the main outline of Danilov's narrative is related to his role in the development of artillery in Russia – the memoirist was one of the first Russian fireworks, an inventor in the field of pyrotechnics, an artillery teacher, and the author of a textbook. All three plans of Danilov's narrative consistently reveal the aspects outlined in the title and "converge" in the final story about the memoirist receiving the rank of major in 1765 and retiring from service already in the reign of Catherine II.

The intention of the title of "Notes ..." by Danilov (honored rank) is reinforced by a discussion about the merits of a nobleman at the beginning of the memoirs, supported by quoting a fragment of A. Pope's poem "Experience about Man": "When your family is old, but inglorious, / / Not virtuous, idle and malicious, // Then at least it would still flood he lived before, // But it is better to keep silent that he was all mean, / / And not to inspire others that through a little time / / Your tribe did not show your merits at all. // Whoever is mad himself, is mean and lives in laziness, // The family does not color him, even if Howard was a grandfather" ^{[15, p. 283]}. Danilov describes his life as the perfect opposite of the image of the "dishonest" nobleman created by Pope, emphasizing in the title and developing throughout the narrative the motives of honest service and fulfillment of duty as the meaning of his entire existence.

The title "Notes from some circumstances of the life and service of the real privy councilor and Senator I. V. Lopukhin" reflects a different attitude of the author to the service ^[16]. The memoir title, on the one hand, brings it to the fore in accordance with the general cultural context, designating the rank of the memoirist, and, on the other hand, fixes the antinomy of "life and service" and declares the selectivity of the author and his right to describe only "certain circumstances". Lopukhin's memoir title reflects the changes taking place in Russian culture gradually, starting in the 60s of the XVIII century, after the signing of the decree on the freedom of the nobility. The life and service of a nobleman, inseparably perceived in Russian culture since Peter the Great, are gradually beginning to be understood as different spheres of life – personal and state. It should be noted that in the predominantly classical literature of the second half of the XVIII century. the antinomy of life and service is not traced. The hero, as a rule, is a whole person who does not distinguish between himself as a citizen and himself as a human being.

Lopukhin's memoir narrative is completely focused on the personality of the author. He does not describe the history of his kind, as Danilov does, for example, does not recreate in detail the "political" context of his service, like Shakhovskaya, does not carefully record the details of the everyday reality surrounding him. The story of Lopukhin's "life and service" in "Notes..." is the story of his life and his service. The memoirist is more focused on presenting his understanding of both, on thinking about essential things (the legality of the court and the adequacy of the punishment imposed for a crime, guilt and forgiveness, etc.) than on describing the vicissitudes of his presidency of the Moscow Criminal Chamber or relationships with colleagues. The "life and service" indicated in Lopukhin's memoir title in the text of "Notes ..." define each other as internal and external. Declaring in the title of "Notes ..." life and service as two sides – internal (processes of self–knowledge and self-improvement) and external (facts) - of his biography, Lopukhin draws the attention of future readers precisely to the fact that honest performance of official duty is based on the pursuit of an ideal in life, and "assumes that the most effective impact examples of virtuous behavior for the reader" ^{[17, p. 168]}.

At the end of the XVIII century, during the formation and heyday of sentimentalism, with a changed understanding of man and the ways of his literary depiction, memoir titles increasingly reflect the tendency to individualize the narrative, to isolate their history from the history of the public. Sometimes the titles in memoiristics mark cultural trends that have not yet manifested themselves in literature.

"The life of the unknown Timofey Petrovich Kalashnikov, described in a simple syllable from 1762 to 1794" (1794) is a natural consequence of the noted general cultural and ideological changes ^[18]. The nomination "life" indicates the acquaintance of the Siberian memoirist T. P. Kalashnikov with European biographical literature, the biographies of great people. Against this cultural background, the title of the memoirs of the court counselor, Nerchinsky, and then the Irkutsk official of the treasury chamber, T. P. Kalashnikov, looks as individualized and declarative as possible. The author not only characterizes his own style of writing, indicating that he writes "in a simple style", but also turns the title of the memoirs of a provincial official into a kind of declaration of the rights of a "little man", using the epithet "unknown" in relation to himself. The "ignorance" declared in the title of the memoirist and his ancestors is compensated in Kalashnikov's autobiographical work by correlating his own life with the general historical context of the epoch. Kalashnikov's above-mentioned indication of the artlessness of the narrative ("described in a simple syllable") is also a sign of the author's reflection and reflects the general cultural changes associated with the restructuring of the entire ideological system of the epoch. The author does not so much absolve himself of "responsibility" for imperfections of style, etc., as he draws the attention of a potential reader to the fact that in front of him is an "artless" story of an ordinary person, worthy, nevertheless, to be recorded already because this person actually existed, served honestly, loved his children, etc.

In line with the main cultural trends of the late XVIII century, the memoirs of I. G. Dobrynin, a native of the clerical environment, should also be considered ^[19]. Having started writing at the age of 35, the memoirist finished his work at the age of almost eighty in 1823. Its title – "The True Narrative, or the Life of Gabriel Dobrynin, written by himself in Mogilev and Vitebsk" – reflects the tendency towards confessionality common to literary culture at the end of the XVIII century.

Russians Russian Antiquity, M. I. Semevsky notes in the preface to the publication of The True Narrative ... in Russian Antiquity, Dobrynin was "very familiar with his modern translated and original Russian literature" and "mastered all the techniques of gifted writers" ^{[20, pp. 119-120]}. The grounds for talking about the well-read memoirist to Semevsky are given by direct references to Rousseau's "Confession" and Fonvizin's "Sincere confession of my deeds and thoughts" in the very text of the "True Narrative ...". In § XLIV of the second part, Dobrynin writes: "Glorious, but more than that, it is known that Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his book of confession, showed his frankness, even to such of his actions, which serve neither him nor the readers for anything but temptation; and our venerable Von Visin, according toapparently from imitation of Jean-Jacques, calling one of his works a “confession”, he confesses that he “composed an opera, and for reading it he was presented to the Empress Empress Catherine II”; as if this is such a sin that is worth more confession than fasting. Why should I not imitate these glorious people? I will also confess, with the only difference from them that my confession is, indeed, in sin, and not in the seductive idle talk of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and not in the fastidiousness of Von Visine" ^{[19, pp. 302-303]}. Dobrynin then describes in detail the circumstances under which he, a provincial lawyer, was tempted by a bribe, analyzing the reasons that prompted him to do so.

The "true narrative" indicated in the title is placed by the author in the context of confessional works in the spirit of sentimentalism and at the same time opposes the author's individual understanding of truth and confession to the "canon" already established in literature. Contrasting his repentance for the "real" sin with the far-fetched, in his words, confessions of Rousseau and Fonvizin, the memoirist designates the opposition of literary confession and confession as a "true narrative" of what he did.

Doubting the sincerity of the literary "style", Dobrynin quite often ironically compares the supposed literary description of something and how he prefers to do it himself. For example, he talks about how to write about the death of Catherine II: "The misfortune that the poets would explain: a gloomy cloud rose and in the middle of the day covered the night with darkness. Terrible vents of it erupted in the horizon, produced a cold and terrible flood throughout the empire. <...> But all such explanations would be nothing more than a shadow instead of a body, therefore, there is no need for storms, clouds, lightning, or thunder, but it is enough to say: the Empress Empress Catherine II died in November 1796 after a thirty-four-year reign" ^{[19, pp. 315-316]}.

The setting of the title to the "true narrative" is supported by the author's preface and developed by reasoning within the text. A literary confession is understood by a memoirist as a mask hiding the true face of the author. Comparing oneself with Rousseau and Fonvizin and constant self-irony become a kind of self-checking tool for Dobrynin.

In this sense, the title of the memoirs "The Life and Adventures of G. S. S. B. A fair story written by himself" (circa 1800) is interesting. The author "intrigues" the reader by encrypting information about his name and status in the title in initial letters. But, as B. L. Modzalevsky notes in the preface to the first publication, "this cipher was easily parsed when familiarized with the very content of the narrative: "Mr. State Councilor Baturin" [italics of the publisher]" ^{[21, p. 45]}. Hiding his own name and making a note that "all proper names and nicknames should be assigned only with initial letters" ^{[22, p. 48]}, the author hints that all participants in the described events can be recognized by the reader. Hiding a name becomes both a sign of authenticity and a narrative device. The attitude towards the literariness inherent in Baturin's title has already been noted by Modzalevsky: "The deliberate concealment of his name in the title, as well as some literary or bookish sophistication of this very title <...> give us reason to assume that the author, composing his true memoirs, pursued not only a memoir, purely historical task, but had in mind and literary goals" ^{[21, p. 48]}.

The full text of Baturin's notes, as evidenced by his first publishers, has not been preserved, but Modzalevsky notes that "his narrative, in its last part, was almost contemporary with the events described and brought the story about them to the very last years of the author's life" ^{[21, p. 47]}. It is unknown whether the memoirist wrote a preface to his text, whether he explained his intentions in any way, but the title of his work is very remarkable for its frank literariness.

Analyzing the repertoire of memoir titles of the second half of the XVIII – early XIX centuries, we found that the secularized and Europeanized literary culture of the XVIII century, of which memoiristics is certainly a part, does not create completely new narrative forms, but perceives them from previous traditions – Russian and European – and masters, transforming and contaminating in accordance with the new worldview. Being a part of the general cultural space of the epoch, memoiristics develops according to the same principles, reacting to the main cultural trends, combining ancient Russian and European traditions, which allows the authors to find the language of description most adequate to their understanding of their own life history.