M. Bulgakov, A. Akhmatova and N. Gumilev as Literary Characters in Contemporary Russian Fantastic Fiction

This paper discusses a new tendency in contemporary Russian fantastic fiction: the transformation of the personalities of Russian writers and poets into literary characters. The analysis shows similar patterns of fantastic transformation in Bulgakov, Akhmatova and Gumilev. These patterns include the use of the biographic and auto-biographic myths about them, the transformation of their writings into storages of compositional devices, plots, motifs and characters, which are freely manipulated and projected onto their authors’ lives. Becoming literary characters, they often continue to write fiction or poetry. The newly created texts may enter into discussions with the texts-prototypes, confirming, contesting and/or recreating them