Abstract
The theme of a child and childhood is one of the key elements in Russian literature of the golden and silver ages. It is present in the works of almost all prominent writers of that era, namely in the works of L.
N. Tolstoy, F.
M. Dostoyevsky, and A.
P. Chekhov.
Fyodor Sologub, one of the most prominent Russian modernists, put extraordinary emphasis on this theme both in his novels and in many variations of a short epical genre which form a sort of pendant to his major epic works. The modernist thought of the Russian symbolist and decadent author was influenced by the philosophy of F.
Nietzsche and A. Schopenhauer as well as educational philosophy of E.
Key. Conditioned by a traditional social and psychological model of childhood which then prevailed in Russian and European realist literature, Sologub sees in a child primarily a symbol, a creator, and a magician opening the doors of imaginary worlds which provide relief from gloomy worldly existence.
The child in his works becomes a medium of his own vision of human destiny.