’PLAYING AT BEING KNIGHTS’ IN THE PAGES OF NIKOLAJ P. ANTSIFEROV’S MEMOIRS

Abstract

Children’s engagement of imaginary worlds and events created when playing is thus a borderline phenomenon lying between game improvisation and artistic creation (the creation of texts, drawings, geographical maps and other artefacts associated with playful subjects and motifs). This kind of play is described in detail in the memoirs of the historian and literary scholar Nikolaj P. Antsiferov (1889–1958), which depict the realities and events of everyday life as a child growing up. In the second and especially in the third part of his memoirs Nikolaj Antsiferov describes in detail improvisational “playing at being knights”; this game harmoniously combined, for his friends and himself, certain historical events, fiction literature read by the company, and their own bright imagination. The fictional characters reflecting real historical and literary figures become especially dear to the players; biographies of such characters are developed thoroughly and logically with the help of historical and literature sources; the plots of the game remain in the memory of Nikolaj Antsiferov and his comrades in the game for a long time. We can assume that in the description of the playing at being knights we see the first manifestation of those individual creative and research features of Nikolaj Antsiferov, which later formed the basis of his scientific method.

Keywords: children’s play, utopia, biography, memoirs, local historical method, improvisation, creativity, Nikolaj Antsiferov