Poetics of the variant. N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky’s stories in the Samara periodicals of the 1890s-1900s.

The article considers the original versions of three stories by N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky, published in the 1890s–1900s in two Samara periodicals – «Samarskaya Gazeta» and «Samarsky Vestnik». Comparing these variants with later editions of these stories, known from book publications, the authors of the article reconstruct the process of writing, and also try to imagine the creative laboratory of the artist. Although he «wrote on the fly», while working on each story, he moved consistently from specifics to generalization, from observation to meaning, and from emotion to an image. Thus, comparing the original and edited versions of the story «Rebekah», the authors stated a significant text reduction by the writer, who in the editing process tried to shift the main focus from the everyday aspect of the heroes' drama to the inner, spiritual one. If the original version showed the whole story of the hero's madness, the edited text focuses on key points that allow readers to complete the whole story about the «martyrs to love» themselves. The other two writer’s stories considered in the article – «Adochka» and «Genius» – were also significantly changed. While editing these stories, N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky solved one main problem: the life truth was to become an artistic one that would speak for itself in its own language having little in common both with the specifics of real events and with attempts at rhetorical generalizations and philosophical insights.