UDC

821.161.1(092)+821.161.1(092)

Authors

Pospelova Olga Vladimirovna
Institute of Philology and Cross-Cultural Communication,
Northern (Arctic) Federal University named after M.V. Lomonosov
7 Smol’nyy Buyan, Arkhangelsk, 163002, Russian Federation;
e-mail: kary17@yandex.ru

Abstract

The article analyses the elements of mythologism in the works by Mikhail Prishvin and Evgeny Zamyatin, the creators of the Northern text of Russian literature. The author of this article turns to Prishvin’s essays In the Land of Unfrightened Birds (1907) and The Bun (1908) and Zamyatin’s novel North (1918) and short stories Ridges (1915), Africa (1916) and Yola (1928). The structure of these works in many respects resembles the mythological structure due to the transformation of linear time into the cyclic one; special syncretism of space; elements of the fantastic and miraculous; mythological principle of creating images of the characters; presence of mythological motifs and mythologems in these texts. The analysis of the mythopoetic elements led to the conclusion that the use of these elements perfectly matches the philosophical idea of all-unity valued by Prishvin. Prishvin’s mythmaking is a special way of understanding the world, whereas Zamyatin reconstructs mythological consciousness; his mythologism is mainly a literary technique allowing Zamyatin to implement the idea of synthesis developed by him in his theoretical works. The mythopoetic model of Zamyatin’s artistic world is based on metaphorization, mythological chronotope, and a special structure of subjective author organization. Mythopoetic elements appear at various levels of text structure in the works under study: plot and composition, time and space, as well as at the level of author’s presence or in the system of images. The mythopoetic nature of many elements of Prishvin’s and Zamyatin’s artistic worlds is discussed here as a kind of an integrating factor since it is mythologism that largely contributes to the creation of a unique artistic system in the works of these writers. This research is the first attempt to compare Prishvin’s and Zamyatin’s works within the study of the Northern text of Russian literature as a local supertext.

Keywords

mythologism, mythological structure, ontologization of name, the law of metamorphosis, syncretism of space, all-unity, synthetism

References

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