«Я рожден художником»: литературная исповедь А. К. Толстого.

The author of the article focuses on Literary Confession by A.K. Tolstoy. Confession in the form of a letter (1874) arose as a detailed response to the friendly request of Angelo de Gubernatis (Italian professor, poet and dramatist) to provide him with biographical details concerning the literary activity of the Russian writer. A.K. Tolstoy, when drawing up his confession, chooses as a defining strategy not so much the completeness of biographical truth, as conceptual harmony in understanding his own life and work in the version that he thought to be optimal in relations with this addressee. At the same time, confession, of course, is a valuable experience of the author's awareness of himself as a person and as an artist, where the purpose is determined, life and creative aspirations are clarified, and what has been achieved is evaluated. While actualizing his past, the writer does not strive for maximum accuracy and complete eventual reliability: some autobiographical facts are in the shadows, some are not mentioned at all, others, on the contrary, are highlighted and determine the content of the autobiographical concept. As a result, the author of the confession, uniting events, feelings, thoughts into a kind of unity, creates a self-conception that satisfies him at the moment as a set of established beliefs about himself.