Authors
Ksenia Papazova1; 1 The University of Manchester, UK Discussion
Vsevolod Garshin, a Russian short story writer of the 19th century, made his literary debut in 1877 with a short story “Four Days”, which I examine as a matrix (invariant) for all his later works. I will demonstrate what characteristics of the first short story lie at the heart of the writer’s fictional world and how all subsequent Garshin texts inherit a constant set of characteristics and are created according to the scheme. I will discuss the main components of the fictional world of the story (characters, time, and space) and the most significant motifs that informed the entirety of Garshin’s works, such as motifs of the sky, the sun, and the wind and of violating the integrity of the (magic) circle.
“Four Days” demonstrates two vectors of Garshin’s narrative strategies: one continues traditions of realistic writing (Russian literary tradition), while the second follows traditions of folklore and folktales in particular. Such motifs are plot-forming in Garshin’s fairy-tales, but they are less important for his “realistic” writing. “Four Days” features both traditions, with the former being dominant in this text.
Drawing on the periodic table of chemical elements, which allows the prediction of properties of unknown elements, and my analysis of Garshin’s world-building, I suggest a model of Garshin’s fictional worlds, and compare its predictions to some of the writer’s unfinished drafts and sketches. 
