Ипостаси лишнего человека в русской литературы
Hypostases of a redundant man in Russian literature

Summary/Abstract: The theme of the redundant man is a red thread crossing the Russian literature even while it joins heroes apparently as far apart as Evgeni Onegin and Luzhin, Pechorin or Oblomov, or Ernest Bush. Exceptionally talented characters, they stand out against a background of mediocrity. Quite often their talents are wasted. Finding no use for their forces, they live on the margin of life. This paper presents a comparison of a few in a long line of redundant men in the Russian literature across the 19th and 20th centuries: Pushkin’s Evgeni Onegin, Pechorin of A Hero of Our Time by Lermontov, Goncharov’s Oblomov in his work by the same name, Luzhin in The Luzhin Defense by Nabokov, Ernest Bush in the short story Lishnii (The Redundant Man) by Sergei Dovlatov. The comparison brings out on the one hand the invariables of the redundant man, and on the other hand, the idiosyncrasies of the characters in the works of the authors mentioned. A point is made of the influence of the varied social and political regimes on the heroes’ development.

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