«В круге первом»

The article analyzes the rhetoric roots of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s novel «The First Circle». It is proved that the rhetoric nature of the novel as a genre – as described by M. M. Bakhtin and Yu. M. Lotman – is characteristic for Solzhenitsyn’s novel. Research of the rhetoric «sources» of the novel together with other roots of large epic genres in Solzhenitsyn’s oeuvre is an important route to the comprehension of both the nature of the writer’s artistic method and the genre of the Russian novel of the XXth century in general.

The autobiographical character of Solzhenitsyn’s oeuvre, inseparable nature of ethical and aesthetic views, have shaped the author’s unique aesthetics. From the point of view of the author of this article, eliciting the meta-poetic principles defi nes the way of comprehension of Solzhenitsyn’s artistic world, of his ‘phenomenon’. The article presents the analysis of two of Solzhenitsyn’s signifi cant meta-poetic principles: self-meta-description and self-psychologism.