Text not Written by Sinyavsky, or “Apology of a Madman” Inside out

Abstract

The article examines the traditions of Russian dissidence and personality types of protesters on the example of P. Ya. Chaadaev and A. D. Sinyavsky. The analysis allows us to draw a number of parallels between thinkers, which are established thanks to such concepts as the memory of genre (letters to the lady), the memory of place (the question of the publication of the manuscript), the memory of lifestyle (walking as the boundary between metaphysics and physics). At the same time, a number of differences are outlined, including the impossibility for A.D. Sinyavsky to accept the “diagnosis” of “madness” as a given: the impossibility of such a reaction was predetermined by the story of the writer’s father, who suffered in the early 1950s.