The article specifically examines one of the types of poetological essays presented in the literary work of Mikhail Shishkin, containing the writer’s aesthetic self-reflection. In such essays the writer usually comments on the factors having encouraged him to write the text, and work circumstances as well. Sometimes he explains what the novel is about or discusses some particular features of his own poetics. Shishkin comments mainly on two of his novels: Taking Izmail (1999) and Venus’ Hair (2007). One of his special ways of poetical selfreflection is to weave some autobiographical facts into the narratives of his essays. Thus, a hybrid essay genre, combining documentary and fictional, biographical and aesthetic material, allows the writer to deepen his own interpretations of his literary work to the best advantage.
Mikhail Shishkin; contemporary Russian literature; literary self-reflection; poetological essay.