At the origins of epic work (to the history of the first chapter of V.P. Astafiev’s novel “Damned and Killed”)

The article is devoted to two early draft autographs of the first chapter of V.P. Astafiev’s novel “Damned and Killed”, discovered in the State Archive of the Perm Krai. They are compared in detail with each other and with the definitive text, which allows to clarify for the first time some essential aspects of the creative history of the work of Victor Astafiev at its initial stage. The analysis made it possible to understand the sequence and meaning of a number of author’s decisions. The artistic imagery and stylistics of the novel tightened. This was reflected in the alteration of the title complex, as well as in a change in the visual angle, in strengthening the epic principle, and the increasing role of sound. Biographically motivated was the change in the name and surname of the protagonist Lyosha Shestakov (originally - Tolya Mazov). At the same time, the identification of differences between handwritten drafts and the final version showed that they do not affect the conceptual essence of the epic novel. The idea of war as an unnatural state of the world, as a series of events that irreparably traumatize human nature, unites all options, acquiring great expressiveness during the course of Astafiev’s work on the book.