2 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION NABEREZHNOCHELNYI INSTITUTE (BRANCH) OF THE FEDERAL STATE AUTONOMOUS EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION OF HIGHER PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION "KAZAN (VOLGA SKY) FEDERAL UNIVERSITY" FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT OF GERMAN PHILOLOGY Specialty: 031001.65 - “PHILOLOGY” Specialization: “Foreign philology: English and literature" GRADUATE THESIS (Diploma work) Mythological elements in modern literature (using the example of the works of R. Riordan, S. Collins and L. Keith) Registration number Work completed: "__"______ 20__ __________ (E. I. Khadiullina) The work was approved for defense: Scientific supervisor Doctor of Philology, Professor "_____"______20__ _____________ (L.R. Sakaeva) Head of the Department of the Global Philology Doctor of Philology, Professor "_____"______20__ _____________ (L.R. Sakaeva) 3 2013 Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..…….....3 Chapter I. The concept of myth and mythology in domestic and foreign literary criticism ……………………..…………………………………………………….…...5 1.1 Myth as the basis of religion and fairy tales……………………….…. ……………….14 1.2 Artistic mythology……………….………………………….…….20 1.3 The use of mythological elements in literature…….…………….26 Conclusions for the first chapter………………………………………………………...28 Chapter II. Mythology in modern literature…………………………………30 2.1 Modernization of myth in the series “Percy Jackson and the Olympians”……..…35 2.2 Mythological motifs in Collins’ series “The Hunger Games”……. …….….42 2.3 Biblical myth and “The Fallen” by Laurel Kate …………………………………...50 2.4 Difficulties in translating modern literature from English into Russian …………………… ……………………………..…………..………………………52 Conclusions on the second chapter………………………………………………… ……...56 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….59 Bibliography…………………………… ………………………………………….62 3 Introduction This work is devoted to the study of modern foreign literature, in particular artistic mythology and mythological elements in literature. After conducting research, it was discovered that mythical stories and heroes are still relevant, despite the fact that they have undergone changes. The modern reader no longer looks for an explanation of the creation of the world and its origins in myths (in this case we are not talking about biblical mythology); the author only reinterprets them and uses them to his own advantage. The relevance of the study lies in the need to study this layer of literature and determine its value and possible potential for more detailed research. The purpose of the study is to identify the characteristic features of the mythological element in modern foreign literature, to determine the degree of dependence on primary sources and the degree of change in the plot and characters. Research objectives: 1. Identify the differences between the concepts of “myth” and “mythological element”. 2. Determine the relevance of mythical plots and heroes. 3. Study the most popular plots used in modern literature, and based on the research, determine the relationship with modern problems. 4. Analyze the changes that the plots and characters have undergone and identify the reason. 5. Reveal possible ways of developing this topic. Object of study: foreign works, the storylines of which contain mythical heroes or a plot. Subject of research: conveying the plot or meaning of a myth in modern language, as well as the use of heroes in modern literature. 4 The theoretical value lies in the study of a little-studied layer of literature, which provides further material for study for philologists and literary scholars. The practical value of the work is that it can be used in courses in literary criticism, stylistics, and interpretation of literary text. The material for the research of this study was the books “The Hunger Games”, “Catching Fire”, “Mockingjay” by Suzanne Collins, and the series of books by Rick Riordan “Percy Jackson and the Olympians”, as well as the series “Fallen” by Lauren Kate. The selected works for analysis were those that were called bestsellers, filmed and translated into Russian. Research methods. The research methodology of this work, due to the diversity of the problems under consideration, included various forms of analysis: descriptive-logical, structural, comparative-historical, biographical, sociological and others. Research structure. The first chapter is devoted to theoretical research, a detailed consideration of the concepts of “myth”, “mythology”, “mythological element”, “artistic mythologism”. The definitions and classifications of domestic and foreign linguists and literary scholars are considered. The second chapter provides a structural and semantic analysis of the works of Laurel Kate, Rick Riordan and Suzanne Collins, identifying similarities and differences with ancient myths, the presence of mythological elements and their changes, as well as the types of artistic mythologism used by the author. Chapter I. The concept of myth and mythology in domestic and foreign literary criticism 5 In the modern world, the concept of myth is interpreted as “a fairy tale, fiction, invention.” However, it should be taken into account that in primitive societies the concept of myth was interpreted as some kind of genuine, real event and myths served as examples to follow. It is also noteworthy that for primitive communities myth was like religion. In ancient times, when initial attempts were made to interpret myths, i.e. scientists of ancient Greece interpreted Greek myths, they had already begun to lose their sacredness and authenticity. Scientists found them implausible and incongruous. At the same time, a point of view emerged that myths are fiction that performs one or another function. Hence, it remains unclear how the mythological essence, with all its implausibility and absurdity, was accepted as the truth and at the same time was incomprehensible. For many centuries, from antiquity to the era of romanticism, the essence of myth was not understood. The presence of collective or folk art, in which there is no specific author of a particular work, was also unconscious [Toporov 1995:155]. During the times of ancient Greece, myths were interpreted by Greek scholars as allegories used by authors who decided to speak through allegory. Examples can be given. Empedocles, who lived in the 5th century BC, believed that the lord of the heavens, Zeus, was an allegorical form of fire, his wife Hera personified the air, Hades the earth. Other philosophers of ancient Greece also did not stand aside and continued this logical chain of interpretations. According to them, Zeus personified the sky, Poseidon the sea, Artemis the moon. The basic qualities of gods and goddesses were perceived as concepts. For example, according to the interpretation of Anaxagoras, Zeus personified reason, Athena - art, etc. For example, the ancient Greek myth about the Titan Kronos, who was predicted that he would be dethroned by one of his children and which was the reason that he devoured them immediately after birth, was interpreted 6 as follows: Kronos personified time, and his wife Rhea - earth, that is, the birth of something occurs only with the help of time, which why destroys everything. Myths were also moral teachings, expressed indirectly. In many myths, the gods did not observe marital fidelity and were punished for it - thus the myths instructed not to do this. Plutarch interpreted Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey in a similar vein [Toporov 1995:155]. Myths are further explained by allegory. In the Middle Ages, myths circulated due to the popularity of the works of Ovid and Virgil, in which Greek names were found in abundance. The interpretation of myths can be noted in Boccaccio, who dedicated his “Genealogy of the Gods” to this. The era of humanism brought a slightly different interpretation - it was believed that much attention was paid to human feelings and emotions. J. Bacon in the book “The Wisdom of the Ancients” gives his interpretation of ancient myths, which, in his opinion, are an allegorical form of expression of philosophical truths. Later, some scientists also adhered to this opinion. However, the understanding of myths changed only in the era of romanticism. The essence of the myth as a whole remained unchanged, was still accepted as truth, despite its improbability and remained incomprehensible. Western European scholars analyze myth from a different point of view than in the 19th century. They are interested in the meaning that was originally invested in it, that is, the myth as a real event, something sacred, an example to follow. Thanks to this, the meaning of the concept “myth” acquires duality. Myth becomes not only “fiction”, but also “a sacred tradition, an example to follow.” Myth is a very complex concept and can be interpreted in different ways. First of all, of course, it narrates events such as the origin of the Universe and also sets out how reality came to be the way it is. A myth cannot be interpreted negatively or positively. He serves to be a role model. The role of myth for human development is enormous. It was thanks to him that man discovered the rationality and interconnectedness of everything that happens. M. Eliade believes that myths partly constitute the very essence of a human being; they can change, adapt to modern times, but not disappear. Most of the characters in the myth are paranormal and supernatural creatures. Myth, like religion, describes the manifestations of everything sacred in the world. It is these actions that explain the creation of the world and its development to the modern stage. The same acts influenced the creation of man - they made him mortal, divided into two sexes [Golosovker 1987:145]. The myth was a sacred narrative and, like a real event, was relevant to what was happening. The following example can be given: the existence of the world was confirmed by the cosmogonic myth. Mythology (Greek μυθολογία, from Greek μύθος - legend, legend and Greek λόγος - word, story, teaching) is a set of myths included in the system of religion, that is, legends about gods and heroes, about extraordinary creatures and miraculous phenomena and events. Less commonly, the term “mythology” is used to denote the science of myths. Mythology has a rich and long history. Attempts to rethink mythological material were made back in antiquity. The study of myths in different periods of time was carried out by: Eugemer, J. Vico, F.V.Y. Schelling, W.K. Muller, A.N. Afanasyev, A.A. Potebnya, J.J. Fraser, E.M. Meletinsky, O.M. Freudenberg, Eliade and others. Of course, there are points of agreement in the works of researchers. Starting from these points of view, it becomes possible to identify the main features and functions of myth. It’s worth starting with the fact that representatives of different schools highlight different aspects of the myth. Thus, R. Raglan (Cambridge Ritual School) defines myths as ritual texts, A. Cassirer (a representative of symbolic theory) highlights their symbolism, A.F. Losev (theory of mythopoeticism) focuses on the coincidence in myth of the general idea and 8 sensory image, A.N. Afanasyev defines myth as the oldest poetry, R. Barth speaks of it as a communicative system [Andreev 2004: 559]. Mythology cannot be considered a human delusion. After conducting research, the regulatory function of myth becomes obvious, i.e. his organization of various aspects of the life of primitive society. Myth was a kind of science, it satisfied the need for knowledge, and it also contained instructions on how to behave (at an early stage, only myth controls the social life of a person, later other forms of ideology, as well as science and art, join it). Myth prescribes rules of behavior, designates value systems, and makes stress generated by natural phenomena, society, etc. less critical. It can be noted that myth is only the first stage of comprehension; the next step was rational-logical knowledge. But it does not follow from this that mythology has remained in the distant past and has no influence on the present. In addition to traditional archaic mythology, mythological components are also identified in religious systems, cultures and ideologies. The concept of “myth” is also interpreted differently in different dictionaries. One of the most accurate, in our opinion, is given by the Literary Encyclopedic Dictionary: “Myths are creations of a common national imagination that reflect reality in the form of sensory-concrete personifications and animate creatures that are thought of as real.” This definition contains the main provisions that most researchers point to. In his work A.V. Gulygin lists the following “signs of a myth”: 1. Merging of the real and the ideal (thoughts and actions). 2. Unconscious level of thinking (by mastering the meaning of the myth, the myth itself is destroyed). 9 3. Syncretism of reflection (i.e.: the inseparability of subject and object, the absence of differences between the natural and the supernatural) [Gulygin 1985: 275]. According to O.M. Freudenberg, myth has the following characteristics: “A figurative representation in the form of several metaphors, where there is no our logical, formal-logical causality and where a thing, space, time are understood indivisibly and concretely, where a person and the world are subject-objectively united - this special constructive system of figurative ideas, when expressed in words, we call myth.” This definition brings mythological thinking to the fore, since it is it that determines the essence of myth [Freidenberg 1987: 28]. In their works, other linguists highlight the following characteristics of myth: the elevation of the mythical “time of first creation” to the rank of sacred, which is the reason for the established world order (Eliade); integrity of image and meaning (A.A. Potebnya); animation and personalization of the inanimate (A.F. Losev); close connection with ritual; cyclical time model; metaphorical nature; symbolic meaning (E.M. Meletinsky). Let's consider the five main types of myth identified by Nagovitsyn. 1. Ritual myth. A well-known fact is that a large number of texts from which humanity learned about myths were found in the caches and archives of various temples. Thanks to these texts, it became clear about the complex rituals that were performed by the inhabitants of Egypt and Mesopotamia. These rituals were performed by priests. The rituals were quite complex; the sequence and duration of each ritual could not be violated. The priests were the most enlightened in this area. It was believed that the performance of such rituals would lead to the prosperity of the community, protect people from natural disasters, etc. The ritual was also accompanied by various words and songs. These words and songs were believed to have magical powers. Thus, the ritual was divided into two parts: the first, the so-called "dromenon", consisted of actions, and the second "muthos" (myth) - of words. The myth was a narrative, 10 a description of what was happening, but was not intended to entertain anyone. The words contained power, strength, authority. The repetition of words could create certain conditions and situations. Ritual played an important role in the life of society; the reliability of the myth was not an important criterion. History, but not mythology, deals with an adequate biography of peoples in the past. The myth prioritized the survival of the community and therefore described the actions necessary to accomplish this task. Already in primitive times, before the advent of science and history, myth played an important role in human life. As has already been clarified, without myth the ritual on which people’s peace of mind depended was impossible. The myth was part of the ritual and therefore received the name ritual. It is likely that this type of myth was the earliest. 2. Myth of origin. This type is also considered one of the oldest. This type of myths provided an explanation of the origin of the world, custom, object, etc. For example, the myth of Enlil and the hoe explained the origin of agricultural tools - they were believed to have appeared due to the activity of the gods. Or another striking example is the myth of the ancient Jews about the quarrel between Jacob and a higher being, which resulted in the refusal of certain foods. 3. Cult myth. Later, in connection with the development of religion, another type of myth appeared. Previously, three festivals, the celebration of which was mandatory according to the holy book, were held in sacred places. The ceremonies and rituals performed during these holidays were carefully preserved and passed on in the families of the clergy. As with the ritual myth, the rituals were accompanied by words, but this time the focus of the priesthood was on the climax of Israel's history. One such moment for the Israelis is liberation from Egyptian oppression. An ancient ritual was performed to honor this event. The ritual included a myth that described events from the point of view of other myths about the same event. He, of course, also argued that there was divine intervention in past events. Magical power was not attributed to this myth, as it was a ritual myth. Myth still plays an important role in the life of society, provides clues and examples of behavior, ensuring the existence of a given community. 4. The myth of prestige. The next type of myth is not similar to the previous ones. The main function of this myth is to surround the birth and existence of a particular hero with a veil of mystery and magic. An example is the birth of Moses. The lives of many famous heroes are surrounded by such a veil. The same category of myths includes the myth of Samson and his exploits, the myth of Elijah, etc. Similar myths appear in connection with the emergence of large cities. 5. Eschatological myth. Such myths tell of the imminent end of the world. The scriptures and numerous literature tell of a catastrophic end of the world. Prophets increasingly turn to myths when speaking about the end of the world, and this passes from one religion to another [Nagovitsyn 2005: 656]. Next, you should pay attention to the main types of myth in terms of content, identified by some scientists as a separate classification. 1. Etiological myths are myths that primarily tell about the origin of all natural phenomena (animals, plants, death, etc. This also includes cult myths. This type is more sacralized than etiological. 2. Cosmogonic myths are myths , touching on such topics as the emergence of space and its parts. Characteristic of such myths is the description of the transformation of chaos into space. In it we can also notice ideas about the structure of space and its components, as well as the Earth. Key elements (fire) are usually involved in the origin , water, earth and air). The world arises from some primary element or superbeing. Cosmogonic myths include anthropogonic ones - the myth of the origin of people. As a rule, people are a transformation of sacred animals or an improved version of some creatures. Often the emergence of the feminine gender is described somewhat differently than the male one. 12 Cosmogonic myths also include astral, solar and lunar myths, telling about the stars, the sun and the moon. Let's start with astral myths. Astral myths are myths about stars and planets. The life of many heroes in myths ends with them ascending to heaven and becoming constellations, or those unworthy are expelled from the sky. Thus, each star and constellation is assigned its own myth and deity. Modern astrology, ideas about the influence of stars on a person’s destiny, originate precisely from mythology. Solar and lunar myths are myths about the Moon and the Sun, which are often interpreted in myths as brother and sister. Most often, the Moon is a negative character, and the Sun is a positive one. It was also believed that the Moon (Month) refers to the masculine principle, and the Sun – to the feminine. You can find stories in which the appearance of the Moon and the Sun was preceded by the adventures of a pair of heroes. 3. Twin myths - about supernatural creatures that are twins and often give rise to one or another tribe. The birth of twins, considered something unnatural, gave rise to such myths. Widespread myths were about twin brothers who were at first rivals, but then certainly friends and allies. In other myths, they were complete opposites and personified two different principles. 4. Totemic myths are myths that talk about the kinship of people and totemic animals and plants. The plot of such myths is simple. In the description of the main characters, one can note the characteristics of both animals and humans. Similar myths are characteristic of the primitive tribes of Australia and Africa. Similar traits are also found in the gods (Huitzilopochtli, Quetzalcoatl, Kukulcan). Later, similar totemic myths were found in Egyptian and Greek mythology (for example, the myth of Narcissus). 5. Calendar myths are myths that are a description of the rituals necessary to ensure a rich harvest, as well as about the changes of the seasons (myths about Dionysus, Persifon, etc.). 13 6. Heroic myths are myths that tell about the birth, life and, most importantly, the exploits of a hero. The hero, as a rule, is given a difficult task; often the hero also leaves or is expelled from the tribe in which he grew up. He must go through the most difficult tests arranged by the gods, sometimes even through death. Heroic myths are an important stage in the formation of fairy tales and legends. 7. Eschatological myths are myths about the end of the world. They are the opposite of cosmogonic myths. They are difficult to distinguish from catastrophes and subsequent renewal of the world. They are most clearly visible in the myths of the tribes of America, Christian, Hindu mythology, etc. In myths, the world perishes in fire and suffering [Fritsche 1930: 768]. The main types of myth were considered, but its specificity does not end there. For a complete analysis, it is also necessary to know the functions of myth. As already noted, myth replaced science for primitive people and, accordingly, its main function was cognitive. But the functions of myth do not end there. Ideological function – i.e. myth creates a role model, close to ideology. Myths are entertaining and their heroes are popular, so they become role models. Myths are extremely attractive, and for this reason their heroes become role models. Myth served as one of the ways to consolidate power. Attractive characters, an interesting plot were invented and surrounded by rituals. The heroes supported the government ideologically and, being role models, strengthened the existing one. The evaluative function arises in connection with the need to establish a person’s self-esteem and his place in society. Myth is also a means of praising a person, although this is not always obvious. Compensatory function. A myth, like any other fantasy, realizes dreams of something more, of secret desires, of what people lack in life. This is one of the most important functions of myth. Therefore, the process of 14 mythologization was active at all times - subconsciously all people consider themselves unusual and strive to be like heroes. Metaphysical function. This is a belief in a single myth about the creation of the world. The theological function forms the purpose and meaning of life [Nagovitsyn 2005:656]. 1.1. Myth as the basis of religion and fairy tales Thus, we can note the similarity of myth, as a system of primitive beliefs, with religion, what is their difference? Let's start by considering the history of the study of this issue. The concept of “myth” has many definitions. According to one of them, myth is an explanation of what is happening with an admixture of fantasy. According to dictionaries and encyclopedias, a myth: is “a legend that conveys the ideas of ancient peoples about the origin of the world, about natural phenomena, about the gods...”. According to V.G. According to Plekhanov, the structure of religion is as follows: myth constitutes ideas, moods and actions, ideas serve mythology, moods serve religion, actions serve worship. He also said about myth: “A myth is a story that answers the question: why? and how? Myth is the primary expression of man’s consciousness of the causal relationship between phenomena.” Thus, a myth is a story about primitive beliefs. Different scientists have addressed the issue of the relationship between religion and mythology in different ways. The old (naturist school) did not study this issue purposefully; religion at that time was considered complex creeds, such as Christianity, Judaism, etc. Myths were ancient creativity, poetry. For the first time, the Christian faith was called a myth by the theologian Strauss ("The Life of Jesus", 1835), who tried to separate the layers of the mythical from the "historical Jesus". The similarity between myth and religion was also noted by representatives of the evolutionist school. According to F.U. Taylor, religion takes its content from mythology. Many other scientists, such as A.N. Kharuzin, D.G. Brinton and A.P. Preuss emphasized the connection between religion and 15 mythology, noting that religion originates from mythology, because religion reflects many early beliefs [Zaitsev 2004:190]. Since the 19th century religion and mythology were not only differentiated, but also tried to be opposed to each other. Of course, this was done in favor of religion, in order to free it from the mythological element, which had already acquired its modern meaning of “fiction.” So, according to U.S. Jevons, myth is a primitive philosophy mixed with fiction and has nothing to do with religion. T. sharply distinguished between myth and religion. Reinach, he believed that mythology is only a collection of stories, while religion has emotions and their expression in actions. According to such scientists as W. Lang and T. Schmidt, religion does not have those base motives characteristic of myths; it is a purely moral worldview. In the 20th century The following view on this issue has been established - mythology and religion are closely related, but at the same time remain independent. Their occurrence is also explained by various reasons. In religion one can notice man's fear and powerlessness before social and natural forces, while mythology arose in connection with man's need to find an explanation for the world around him [Wundt 1913:156]. If you pay attention to the myths of the ancient tribes of Australia, Africa and America, you will notice that there is nothing religious in the myths. They are more like fairy tales that answer questions about why this or that animal has such characteristics or explain certain natural phenomena. It can be noted that although mythology contributed to the formation of religion, it is not its core. R. Smith believed that the main thing for ancient religions was not faith, but some rituals, in which the entire community necessarily participated. Although mythology plays an important role in the history of religion, as if providing material for the content of religious beliefs, it is not the most essential element of religion. What are the similarities and differences between myth and religion? We should start with the fact that both of these areas are personal. But in religion the main thing is self-affirmation of the individual, faith in eternal life, and the possibility of salvation. In myth, this is not observed. Mythical characters are always very active, energetic, they do not seek consolation and salvation. Thus, for mythical heroes the spiritual side fades into the background, if present at all, but in religion it is the basis of all foundations [Pismanik 2009:280]. Religion did not play any role in the formation of myth, whereas myth played a very important role for religion. In some national religions, mythical heroes are included in their belief systems. Traces of mythology are also noticeable in modern religions (about the creation and end of the world, about heaven, etc.). If a myth is further developed, it becomes a dogma. Thus, it can be noted that although religion and myth contain similar features, and myth played the role of religion in the early stages of the development of society, they are still completely different types of creativity and an attempt to combine them would be a grave mistake for the researcher. The distinction between the concepts of myth and fairy tale is also important for our research, since we can note the similarity of these two concepts. A fairy tale is a purely artistic element, while in myth there is a connection with rituals, and an attempt to analyze reality is also clearly visible. Fairy tales, like religion, originate from mythology and therefore the difficulty in distinguishing them is obvious. Scientists have repeatedly pointed out this difficulty in their works. For example, F. Boas and S. Thompson, who studied the mythology of the Indians, believed that myth is a type of fairy tale, while others, on the contrary, considered a fairy tale to be a type of myth. Thus, the term “mythological tale” appears. It is obvious that the concepts of fairy tale and myth are mixed, and this happens not only in primitive times. Some Greek myths have also been interpreted as fairy tales or legends. A folk tale based on a traditional plot belongs to prosaic folklore (i.e. fairy-tale prose). A myth that has lost its functions becomes a fairy tale. The following distinctive features are distinguished: 17 1. Profaneness - sacredness. Myth is closely related to ritual, and accordingly it reveals knowledge to the enlightened; 2. Reliability - unreliability. It can also be noted that the fairy tale moved away from the ethnographic nature characteristic of mythology, and the consequence of this was the emergence of the artistic side of the myth to the fore. In a fairy tale, the main thing is the plot, while for a myth it is historicity. The location of the action in a fairy tale is fabulous, not connected with the real [Dalgat 1981:456]. A folk tale has its own specific poetics. The following clichés are used for construction: 1. “Once upon a time...”, “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state...” - phrases to begin the narrative; 2. “Soon the tale is told, but not soon the deed is done” - occurs in the middle of the story; 3. “And I was there, I drank honey and beer, it flowed down my mustache, but it didn’t get into my mouth” - at the end of the fairy tale; 2. “Common places” - episodes used in most fairy tales; 3. The arrival of Ivan Tsarevich to Baba Yaga, where phrases often used in fairy tales are also used; 4. Portrait of some heroes - “Baba Yaga, bone leg”; 5. Typical questions and answers - “where are you heading,” “stand facing me, with your back to the forest,” etc.; 6. Characteristic locations for the fairy tale: “on the Kalinov Bridge, on the Currant River”; 7. Descriptions of the characters’ actions, for example, the use of a “flying carpet”; 8. Description of the fairy tale heroes themselves: “a beautiful maiden,” “a good fellow.” We can name three main features of a fairy tale: 1. Orality - passed on from mouth to mouth for many generations 2. Collectivity - a large number of people love and pass on fairy tales; 3. Anonymity – the author of a fairy tale, as a rule, remains unknown; It is very important to distinguish between a fairy tale and a myth. Myth represents a primitive ideology, including a religious one. A fairy tale is a purely artistic phenomenon, and in myth one can note the beginnings of scientific ideas about the world, as well as connections with rituals. As already noted, it is very difficult to distinguish between ancient, primitive fairy tales and myths, because the fairy tale as a genre was only at the stage of formation. The difficulty of making the distinction has been noted by scholars. F. Boas and S. Thompson, who studied the mythology of the Indians, believed that myth is a type of fairy tale, while others, on the contrary, considered a fairy tale to be a type of myth [Tronsky 1934:155]. However, primitive folklore is not the only example of a mixture of fairy tale and myth. If we turn to ancient Greek culture, we will find that many myths can be considered as fairy tales. And the term itself is translated as a story, fable, etc. This understanding of myth is also not erroneous, because initially myths are only ideas, descriptions, etc. Thus, we can conclude that myth is etiological and narrative in nature. The central place in the myth is not the narration of the achievements of this or that hero (although this is of course also present), but rather the presentation. Although it was thanks to the actions of certain heroes that the world became what it is. Therefore, a complete separation of myth and fairy tale, claiming that one is a purely worldview and the other a narrative is impossible. Thus, we can distinguish the following differences between a fairy tale and a myth: 1. Plot. The myth has a rather simple plot: the hero performs a feat and undergoes an initiation rite, while in the fairy tale the hero goes through a large number of tests that precede the main one. 2. Semantics. In myth, the semantics are more complex, everything has its own parallel meanings, whereas in a fairy tale this process is much simplified. 3. Archetypes. In a fairy tale, clearly defined heroes and their experiences are given, in myths, attention is paid to the psychological types of heroes. 4. Location. If the entire Universe appeared in the myth, then in fairy tales the scene of action is significantly narrowed. 19 5. Reliability. A myth implies that what happens in it is reliable, whereas for a fairy tale this is not so important; its main function is instructive. 6. Exclusiveness of the plot. In myths, the plots are simple, but they are not repeated. Events happened with a specific hero and only once. The fairy tale suggests events that can happen to anyone. 7. Connection of actions from the social environment. In a myth, the hero performs actions based only on his own beliefs, that is, on his character, while in a fairy tale a model is shown, right or wrong, which is revealed in the course of history. 8. Goals. A myth always talks about its own world, gives an understanding of the world, how and with the help of whom it became what it is. The fairy tale is primarily addressed to the reader, aimed at the inner world. 9. End. In a myth, the ending is arbitrary; you can also meet this hero in another myth, where his story ends. In a fairy tale, the ending is either happy (“and they began to live happily and make good things,” “they began to live and chew bread,” “they lived long and merrily,” “and they all lived happily ever after”) or simply logically completed. As it was found out, there are a large number of differences between fairy tales and myths, which were not so clearly visible in the early period. Most researchers still agree that the fairy tale originated from myth and, in a sense, adopts its traditions. After the myth became more widespread and its audience increased, a focus on fiction appeared and a corresponding decrease in the reliability of the text. The sacred “core” of the myth disappears. Thus, we can say that the fairy tale and the myth are distinguished by their metaphorical nature; they have some similarities, given that the fairy tale originated from the myth, but in the course of development, the fairy tale genre acquired its own distinctive features, which made it independent. 20 1.2. Artistic mythologism Undoubtedly, the formation of myth at the origins of all literature, it was mythological motifs that helped the formation of subsequent images, themes and plots, and many scientists still interpret myths. As mentioned earlier, myths gave rise to fairy tales. The idea of myths is brought to mind by tales about the hero’s marriage to a wonderful girl in animal skin - a pronounced totemic myth. Or tales about children who got lost and fell through disobedience into the hands of a cannibal monster - motifs characteristic of mythology are noticeable. Of course, when transitioning into a fairy tale, the myth changes and loses its original features. What happens is that rituals are abandoned, the text loses its sacredness, time is replaced by an indefinite-fabulous one, new functions of the heroes appear, the action does not take place in the entire universe, it narrows. The heroes' wedding becomes a goal, as it increases the hero's status. Myth is also the progenitor of the epic. In the early epic there are also a large number of spirits and gods, the action takes place during the first creation, as in myth, and the enemies are monsters, the features of ancestors are obvious in the hero. Heroes are not deprived of magical abilities, which are often more important than military ones. During the heyday of the epic, military strength and power became important characteristics of the hero, completely replacing witchcraft. Historicism appears in stories, which begins to occupy a central position and pushes aside myth. The time of first creation is also replaced, becoming the time of statehood. But it cannot be said that mythological elements completely disappear from the epic; they are preserved. The Middle Ages in Europe saw a rejection of the sacredness of ancient myths and the adoption of the mythology of Christianity, including its rituals and lives of saints. The Renaissance is characterized by a return to the ordered ancient myth, but at the same time, folk demonology is actively spreading. A so-called “carnival culture” emerges, in which 21 parody, festive rituals and games are used. It can be noted in the works of W. Shakespeare, F. Rabelais and others. In the 17th century, biblical motifs are again activated (one can recall J. Milton), while ancient myths undergo changes and are formalized (for example, in the literature of classicism). The literature of the Enlightenment in the 18th century uses Mythological plots are mostly like conventional plots into which completely new philosophical content is invested. Traditional stories occupied a central place in Western culture until the 18th century, and in the East even longer. Their plots went back to ancient myths, but chose slightly different motives. At the same time, the belief in the authenticity of myth began to weaken; they became an artistic element serving mainly for entertainment purposes. Then completely new stories appear. In the 19th century, during the era of romanticism, there was a renewed interest in mythology, especially noticeable in German literature. Then mystical tendencies became widespread. However, the interpretation of myths was too free, and was practically a process of creating new myths. When realism arose in the 19th century, the process of demythologization flourished, as it strives for a scientific analysis of the surrounding reality. Later, the movement of modernism arose, and it reawakened interest in mythology, which gave rise to its new interpretations, treatments and interpretations. In the works of such writers as T. Mann, J. Joyce, F. Kafka, W. Faulkner, there is a tendency towards myth-making. A new type of novel is emerging, the so-called mythical novel, in which ancient mythical plots and archetypes are reconstructed to suit the author’s requirements [Andreev 2004:335]. In the second half of the 20th century, due to the large amount of literature based on myths, domestic linguists were engaged in a more detailed study of artistic mythology. At the same time, a number of questions and difficulties associated with the theory arise. One of the 22 most important is determining the boundaries of this concept. The most convincing and reliable, in our opinion, is the opinion of S.S. Averintsev, who identifies the criterion for the presence of mythological elements in a work. According to his opinion, the presence in a work of various monsters, gods, demons and heroes is a distinctive, but by no means a productive feature, since in this case one should only talk about images and names. But we must not forget about other signs, such as numbers, body parts, animals and plants, which are interpreted in a special way and endowed with a meaning that is unusual for them. That is why S.S. Averintsev believes that the most correct approach would be to focus on the structure, which is distinguished from the rest by the presence of a fantastic beginning. He also believes that if you do not pay attention to the fantastic beginning, and take the connection with the archetypes of thinking as the main criterion, then the number of motifs that can be considered mythological according to this criterion will become too wide and the possibility of defining artistic mythologism in literature will be lost [ Averintsev 1972:125]. According to this criterion, two types of structure of artistic mythology can be distinguished: 1. Explicit structure. In this case, the content of the images is revealed as the work progresses. 2. Implicit structure. In this case, we are talking about signs, the meaning of which often helps to understand not the work itself, but the religious and mythological tradition. It is necessary to know history to correctly perceive and analyze the text. Both of these levels form the “mythopoetic subtext” of the work. In the 20th century, there is a large number of writers whose work in one way or another came into contact with mythology - D. Joyce “Ulysses”, T. Mann “Joseph and His Brothers”, J.L. Borges “Three Versions of the Betrayal of Judas”, A. Camus “ The Myth of Sisyphus”, D. Updike “Centaur”, L. Meshterhazy “The Riddle of Prometheus”, G. Garcia Marquez “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, P. Suskind “Perfume. The story of one murderer”, M. Karim “Don’t give up fire, Prometheus”, Part 23 Aitmatov “The Scaffold”, S. Geim “Agasfer” M. Bulgakov “The Master and Margarita” and others. It is thanks to the large amount of literature, which provides linguists with a wide field for research, that such interest in artistic mythology was generated. In each of these novels one can observe a close connection between literature and myth, which forms a completely new artistic image, despite the fact that the authors belonged to different nations, beliefs, etc. With the help of poetry and science, restoring the forms of thinking of antiquity, writers manage to achieve a connection between their literary hero and the archetypal content of the myth, an element of which he took as a basis. It is impossible not to note the influence of mythology on modern literature and life. Let us turn to the history of the study of myths. It cannot be said that myths and their motives are completely a thing of the past. P. Valery in his “Letter on Myths” expresses the point of view that myths greatly influence the development of the spiritual life of mankind. This position is shared by European-American literary criticism, and the same trends are observed among Russian authors. The American critic M. Cowley in his work “Three Cycles of the Development of Myth in American Literature” notes that most American writers are involved in the process of myth-making, as they create myths about American life. Thus, it can be noted that the points of view of the two scientists are somewhat different; M. Cowley expands the concept of mythology and neo-mythology. As a result, an even greater number of mythological interpretations and interpretations arose that captivated a new generation of scholars. However, there were also advantages to this. Works appear that are focused on ancient myths, but which are completely new in the field of motive and evaluation, related to the so-called “neo-mythologism” - all this forced scientists to talk about a new stage in the development of mythology [Fritsche 1999:768]. It is impossible not to mention the role played by the views of such scientists as F.V.Y. Schelling, F. Schlegel, I. Herder, J. Grimm. According to F.V.Y. Schelling needed to create a new mythology, since 24 such heroes appeared, whom he classifies as mythological - Faust, Don Quixote and Sancho Panzo. Even in the works of writers classified as realism (F.M. Dostoevsky, N.V. Gogol), mythological elements are found. It is impossible not to recognize the enormous role played by mythological archetypes in literature, but panmythologism, that is, the equation of myth and literary text, is another matter. Myth and artistic type cannot be considered the same thing, although they may have similar features. Works in which fantasy or heroes are considered mythological belong to mythological elements; they cannot be classified as myths, because the same fantasy is by no means perceived as reality, but is symbolic or conditional. But in such stories traces of more ancient myths are noticeable. You can recall some writers and works of the 20th century - the poem by J. Milton, and the tragedy of Hölderlin's Empedocles, and the work of Hoffmann. Such images and stories ultimately become generalizations. One might assume that neo-mythological heroes and plots are found only in modernism and postmodernism, but this would be wrong. They are quite widely used in the 20th century. But why were writers interested and interested in mythology? One can only guess. 1. The cosmogony of myth is an extremely convenient form for generalizations. 2. The presence in nature and the human world of content that cannot always be rationally explained. 3. Typologization of myth. 4. The generalizing nature of the myth. This also includes the author’s desire to realize the relativistic possibilities of the new mythology (relativism is the principle according to which knowledge is relative and conditional, objective knowledge is considered impossible). The positive aspects of this trend include the fact that myth helped writers move to macrohistorical and even metanetoric scales [Tolmachev 2003:215]. 1.3.Use of mythological elements in literature As already noted, it is difficult to give an exact definition of myth and therefore the study of mythology in literature is difficult. Mythological elements are not only mythological characters and plots. The structure of myth should be highlighted as something that distinguishes it from other genres. Therefore, in order to clarify the concept of “mythological element”, one should first of all start from the structure. The mythological element is sometimes something quite real, depending on the interpretation. In the words of R. Barth: “Anything can be a myth.” Before we begin to talk about mythological elements, we should again mention the archetypes of thinking. V.A. Markov, in his work “Literature and Myth: the Problem of Archetypes” gives them the following definition: archetypes are “primary, historically perceptible or unconscious ideas, concepts, images, symbols, prototypes, structures, matrices, etc., which make up a unique “zero cycle” and at the same time “reinforcement” of the entire universe of human culture.” He also identifies three types of archetypes: 1. Paradigmatic archetypes - these are archetypes designed to ease human consciousness from historical catastrophes and offer examples for behavior. 2. Jungian archetypes are the same thing that the average reader refers to as mythology: heroes, plots, rituals, etc. 3. “Physicalist” archetypes. They combine cosmic and mental-psychic, conceptual and artistic-figurative structures [Markov 1990:137]. 26 Thus, it was found that archetypes as part of mythology have always been in human consciousness. Next we should consider the concept of “mythological element”. Here it is worth remembering the name of such a scientist as E.M. Meletinsky. He attributed to mythological elements, in addition to the characters and plots themselves, the humanization of nature, the unification of people and animals into one being [Meletinsky 1976: 406]. Speaking about mythological elements, it can be noted that humanity tends to “award” real individuals with these traits. One has only to remember that the main task of myth is to create an example for a person, then it can be noted that many real historical figures also became role models and turned into a kind of archetype. The process of mythologizing history is even enshrined in the Literary Dictionary, which also affirms the possibility of the reverse process - the historicization of myth. Even in ancient times, the so-called euhemeric interpretation of myth arose, according to which the appearance of mythical heroes is nothing more than the deification of real historical figures. According to R. Barth, “...mythology is necessarily based on a historical foundation...”. As has already been noted, the myth that the writer uses in the work changes, acquires new features and meanings in accordance with the needs of the author. Author's thinking is mixed with mythological thinking and a completely new myth appears, different from the previous one. Thus, the author expresses his idea, for the sake of expression of which the author used the form of myth. To interpret such a text, it is necessary to know how mythological elements can be displayed in the work. There are only 6 types of artistic mythologism: 1. The author creates completely new myths, filled with meanings and symbols that are not characteristic of mythology. 27 2. The author conveys in his work the depth of ancient mythological thinking, revealing the meaning of existence, which often defies comprehension (violation of cause-and-effect relationships, unusual combination of different names and spaces, duality, werewolf characters). 3. The author introduces ancient mythological subjects into the fabric of his modern narrative. 4. The author includes mythological characters in his narrative, also giving them a different meaning and symbolism. 5. The author addresses such layers of human consciousness in which the mythological worldview is alive. 6. The author refers to archetypes that are associated with constant elements of human life: house, bread, road, water, hearth, mountain, childhood, old age, love, illness, death with parable-like elements. Thus, it should be emphasized that the mythological element is a fairly widespread phenomenon in literature and can be expressed in different forms - from mythological heroes (or the use of their name as a symbol) and plots, to the philosophical interpretation of everyday things. These points of view will help us in the future in the process of identifying mythological elements in literary texts. Conclusions on the first chapter Taking into account all of the above, we can draw the following conclusions: Myth is a concept that lives in the human mind in the form of motifs and symbols. Thanks to myth, new genres of literature appeared, such as fairy tales, epics, etc. At an early stage of development, they were not much different from each other, but then they completely separated from the myth, becoming independent. 28 In the course of history, myth also loses many of its distinctive features, such as sacredness. Having reached the masses, it begins to be interpreted as a fable and fiction. Myths and mythological elements have been used in literature for a long time; authors transformed the myth according to their needs, choosing the most convenient form for expressing their ideas. To understand the author's idea, you need to know the types of artistic mythology - the author can use both complete modernization of the plot and characters, and the use of only some details. In literature, one can observe a fairly frequent use of mythological elements, since they are convenient for expressing the author’s thoughts, for several reasons - starting with their symbolism and ending with the generalizing nature of myths. Chapter II. Mythology in modern literature 29 The meaning of the concept of “mythological element” was determined, as well as the types of artistic mythologism. This material should be considered with examples. Three modern works intended for different target audiences were taken as research material. The first episode is Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. Let's start the analysis with the biography of the author and the creation of the cycle. American writer Rick Riordan was born in San Antonio in 1964, his parents were teachers. The family was quite creative - Mrs. Riordan was into music and drawing, and Mr. Riordan was into sculpture. After graduating from high school in his city, Rick Riordan wanted to become a guitarist and even went to college to achieve this goal, but then changed his mind and transferred to the University of Austin. At the university he received two higher educations, studying at the faculty of history and foreign languages. R. Riordan wrote his first story while still at school. When he was 13 years old, he wrote a story, but then he did not plan to publish it, although his opinion later changed. During his school years, he became interested in the mythology of Ancient Greece and Scandinavia. It was in college that he came up with the idea for Camp Half-Blood. R. Riordan worked as an artistic director at a summer camp. R. Riordan began his career as a teacher in the small town of New Braunfels in Texas. His family then lived in San Francisco for eight years before returning to their hometown, and for about six years R. Riordan worked as a teacher and then made a very important decision for him to become a writer. His first book was published in 1997. The novel is called “Big Red Tequila”, it is a detective story with elements of mysticism. The novel was highly praised by critics and readers and won the highest awards in the field of detective novels. The novel tells the story of a private investigator who is skilled in martial arts and is a professor in the field of English literature. 30 The first book, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, was published in 2005. Almost immediately after its release, the book became one of the most popular, the same applies to the entire series of books - the series ranks first on the bestseller lists. It was decided to film the first book - in 2010 the film “Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief” was released. The second book in the series, published in 2006, was recognized as the best children's book. The circulation of the fourth book was more than a million copies. Since 2008, R. Riordan began writing another series of books, “39 Keys,” which was also quite successful; Spielberg’s studio immediately acquired the rights to its film adaptation. Currently, R. Riordan lives in his hometown of San Antonio, Texas. And a little about the book series in question. This series consists of 6 books: 2005 - Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief 2006 - Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters 2007 - Percy Jackson and the Titan's Curse 2008 - Percy Jackson and the Labyrinth of Death 2009 - Percy Jackson and the Olympians. The X-Files 2009 - Percy Jackson and the Last Prophecy It should be noted that the story of Percy Jackson and the Olympians did not originate on the pages of books, but during bedtime stories. R. Riordan composed them for his son Hayley, who suffered from dyslexia and ADHD. Hayley, like his father, liked myths at one time and he asked his father to come up with fairy tales based on them. And R. Riordan came up with it. Knowing Greek mythology very well, he came up with Percy Jackson, the son of Poseidon, god of the seas, and suffering from the same diseases as his son. It was his son who asked him to write a book about the adventures of the half-breed and his friends. . As already noted, in the books we are talking about a boy, Percy Jackson, his father is the ancient Greek god of the seas Poseidon, and his mother is an ordinary mortal woman. All monsters are attracted to demigods and Percy was no exception. Escaping from them, he ends up in Camp Half-Blood, where he meets other demigods, finds loyal friends and treacherous enemies, and dizzying adventures begin. In this series, the following type of mythologism can be noted - the reconstruction of ancient mythological subjects, interpreted with a degree of free modernization. This is one of the reasons why this work was chosen for analysis. The second reason is the large number of mythological heroes and creatures, which is undoubtedly the use of mythological elements in the novel. This topic will be discussed in more detail below. The second cycle is a series of books by Suzanne Collins. This series consists of three books. 1. The Hunger Games (09/14/2008) 2. Catching Fire (09/01/2009) 3. Mockingjay (08/24/2010) This trilogy is intended for older audiences, as it contains scenes violence and cruelty. Let us first consider the biography of the author and the history of the creation of the trilogy. American writer Suzanne Collins was born in the small village of Sandy Hook in 1962. Susan's father was an Air Force officer and she spent her childhood constantly moving. Collins eventually attended New York University, where she studied playwriting and received her master's degree there. Susan's career began with scripts for children's programs. She began working on the Nickelodeon channel, being responsible for such projects as Clarissa Knows Everything, The Curious Case of Shelby Wu, Little Bear. Her career took off in 1991, when Susan began writing scripts for various children's series, shows and animated series on television. The writer began working on the Nickelodeon TV channel, where she worked on the following projects – “Clarissa Knows Everything”, “The Mysterious Case of Shelby Wu”, “Little Bear” and others. Collins also became the main author of “Clifford’s Puppy Days” and created 32 co-authors of “Generation O!” for the Kids WB TV channel. Working on the last project became fateful for her - she met James Proimos, it was he who convinced her to try to write her first book. Suzanne Collins's first book was published in 2003. It was a book for children, “Gregor Nadzemny”. The idea for the book came to Susan while reading Alice in Wonderland and is a modernized version of the fairy tale (for example, instead of a rabbit hole there is a manhole). The book turned out to be quite popular and the author continued it, as a result of which a whole series consisting of five books appeared - “Dungeon Chronicles”. The first three books were translated into Russian and released in 2008. After finishing this series, Susan decided to write a book for an older audience. Thus, in 2008, her new book, “The Hunger Games,” appeared. In the preface to the novel, the writer says that the book is based on the ancient Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, as well as her father’s stories about the terrible consequences of the war. The Hunger Games spent sixty weeks at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Collins was also included in the list of the most influential people in 2010. By 2011, the circulation was more than 12 million copies. In 2009, the second part, the novel Catching Fire, was published, and in 2010, the third and final part of the trilogy, Mockingjay. Soon they decided to film the book; Suzanne Collins worked on the script in collaboration with Gary Ross. She was also present at the casting and filming of the film. The second part of Catching Fire is currently being filmed. Today, S. Collins lives in Connecticut with his family. She has two children - a son and a daughter. The trilogy is about Katniss Everdeen, who becomes a participant in the brutal annual Hunger Games (her sister was supposed to participate, but Katniss, wanting to save her life, volunteers). 33 Katniss's family lives in District 12, which is involved in coal mining. The second participant turns out to be Peeta Mellark, Katniss is trying to survive, but to do this she needs to attract spectators who are sponsors and able to help her. In this cycle, the following trend is clearly visible - the introduction of individual mythological situations and characters into the fabric of a realistic narrative, the enrichment of specific historical images with universal meanings and analogies. For this reason, this work is also of interest to our research. And the last writer is Lauren Keith. American writer Lauren Kate was born in Ohio, in the city of Dayton, but she spent her childhood in Texas. She attended college in Atlanta, Georgia. The writer claims that it was Atlanta with its history that inspired her to choose the setting for the novel “Fallen.” Lauren Kate's novels have been translated into more than 30 languages and are on bestseller lists. The writer currently lives in Los Angeles. In addition to “Fallen,” Lauren Kate is also the author of the “The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove” series, also one of the bestsellers in the field of children's literature. "Fallen" spent more than a year on the New York Times bestseller list. The second novel is called "The Doomed" and was published in 2010. It went to number one on the bestseller list immediately upon publication and remained there a week later. The third novel, Passion, was published in June 2011. Most of the books in the trilogy were published in both paperback and hardcover. A film adaptation of the first book by the Disney studio is planned soon. The novel is about a young girl, Lucy, who ends up in the Sword and Cross reform school, where her attention is immediately attracted by two 34 guys who later turn out to be fallen angels. Moreover, she has a long history with one of them. The cycles were considered, but a more detailed analysis will be presented below, since books represent a rich field for research. 2.1. “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” This cycle is a reconstruction of mythological stories, which are interpreted by the author with a dose of modernization. This statement can be proven through analysis. Let's start by looking for mythological elements, and then move on to the structure of the cycle itself. The very name Percy - from the name Perseus, as the main character explains, immediately evokes certain associations. First of all, we should consider the structure of the myth and the work in order to identify similarities and differences. Let's start with the birth of Perseus. From the very beginning one can notice a discrepancy with the ancient source - Perseus was the son of Zeus, born to Danae, the wife of Polydectes, king of Argos. Polydectes was predicted to die at his hands, so he wanted to get rid of him, but, as is typical for myths, he could not. Then he comes up with something else - he sends him after the head of Medusa the Gorgon. It may be noted that Riordan recreated this feat of Perseus. Percy also goes on a journey - but not for Medusa's head. He encounters the monster completely by accident during his search. In Riordan's book, Medusa appears to us from a different perspective - she lives not on an island abandoned by everyone, but in a city, and she even has her own business, even a business. The characteristic American approach is obvious. So now Medusa is Aunt Em who sells garden gnomes. “Then the door creaked, opened, and a tall woman from the Middle East appeared on the threshold - at least I assumed that she was from the Middle East, since she was wearing a long black robe that hid 35 everything except her hands, and her head was completely covered by a veil . Only the eyes shone from under the black muslin. The dark, coffee-colored hands looked old, but were well-groomed and manicured, so I imagined that I was seeing a grandmother who retained traces of her former beauty. Her accent also had faint oriental notes” [Riordan 2010:400]. « Then the door creaked open, and standing in front of us was a tall Middle Eastern woman-at least, I assumed she was Middle Eastern, because she wore a long black gown that covered everything but her hands, and her head was completely veiled . Her eyes glinted behind a curtain of black gauze, but that was about all I could make out. Her coffee-colored hands looked old, but well-manicured and elegant, so I imagined she was a grandmother who had once been a beautiful lady.” In this passage, the modernization of the ancient myth is noticeable - the same storylines, but the location of the action and the system for evaluating the heroes change. Thus, Medusa ceases to be a frightening mythical monster, her image acquires comical features characteristic of negative heroes of children's literature and there is no doubt that the main character will easily defeat her, due to his intelligence. The myth itself also pushes readers towards the result of the fight. Percy, like his namesake, uses a sword to fight, but that's the only similarity. He does not have the gifts that the gods gave Perseus. Like the mythical Perseus, he defeats Medusa, but unlike the myth, Riordan’s monsters do not die - their essence falls into Tartarus and is reborn after some time. It should be noted that during his exploits, Percy remembers myths and it is with their help that he defeats monsters. The author himself directly gives a hint to the reader and educates him, many myths are mentioned in the novel, the author, as it were, makes a short discourse on ancient literature, without interrupting the course of the novel, and the cycle itself performs an educational function. 36 The next adventure of Perseus, according to myth, is his meeting with Atlas, which supports the firmament. For his participation in the war of the Titans against the Olympian gods, Atlas was forced to hold the firmament as punishment. There is also another version of this myth, according to which, after losing the battle with Zeus, his grandson Hermes came to the wounded Atlas and made him an offer to shake the firmament so as to throw off the Olympian gods from there, but it was just a trap and he could not touch the firmament Atlas take his hands away from him. According to another version of the myth, Perseus, after a duel with Medusa, used her head, which has the power to turn everything into stone, and turned Atlas into a rock (a mountain with that name actually exists - Mount Atlas in northeast Africa). One day, Hercules entered into a deal and unwittingly became a replacement for Atlas, he had to temporarily hold the sky for him, since only the Titan could get the golden apples of the Hesperides for him, and Atlas cut the apples and gave them to Hercules. In a later version of this myth, he became more cunning and no longer wanted to hold up the sky, he tried to deceive Hercules and leave him to hold up the sky. With the apples of the Hesperides, the titan Atlas planned to return his former strength to his fellow titans who were imprisoned in Tartarus. As a result, he was also deceived and he continued to hold the sky; Hercules received the apples. According to Riordan's version, Atlas did not turn into stone - it still supports the vault of heaven, far from human eyes. It is noteworthy that ordinary people do not see much of what happens to the heroes. This is explained by the influence of “fog” (here one involuntarily recalls Harry Potter and the Muggles, who also did not see or feel much). Atlas still tries to trick the heroes into holding up the firmament for him, but in the end he fails. He still holds the skies. Percy does not turn him into a mountain, as in one of the first myths, if only because he does not have the head of Medusa with him, and his meeting with the titan does not take place in the first book. 37 Next, according to the myth, follows the meeting of Perseus with Andromeda and her salvation. Note that Riordan has a completely different sequence of adventures, but to make our task easier, the sequence of the myth was chosen. This meeting does not take place in R. Riordan, although the queen herself is mentioned. But she meets with a completely different hero. Therefore, myths associated with Andromeda will not be considered. This is followed by the return of Perseus home, the deliverance of his mother from oppression. This ends the adventures of Perseus, but not Percy. When comparing these heroes, it should be mentioned that Percy also has physical strength like his namesake, but, being the son of Poseidon, has a number of other qualities - he sees the past and present in his dreams, has an empathic connection with his friend Grover, in "The Last Prophecy "becomes practically invulnerable after plunging into the waters of the Styx. His weak point is the “Achilles heel” - a point at the base of the back. And also, while in the water, he receives a surge of strength, knows how to control water, breathe under water, can remain dry under water, and can create sea water from some sea thing. (For example, from a shell in the “Labyrinth of Death”), can communicate with horses, knows coordinates while at sea, control a ship with the power of thought, cause a hurricane, heal oneself in the water element, shake the earth. He also meets and performs the deeds of other heroes. Percy meets and defeats the Minotaur (a feat attributed to Theseus), losing his mother in the process, cleansing the Augean stables (which according to legend Hercules does), etc. Rick Riordan tries to capture as many myths as possible, making the narrative more colorful and exciting. Riordan “modernized” many myths, transferred the time and place of action to modern America, and gave the characters names that were consonant with the ancient ones, but which are widely used today. They seem quite adapted to modern life. This creates a strong contrast with the world of antiquity, which is a key component of the novel. The entire cycle is built on this contrast. 38 So, comparing the primary structure of the myth and the modern version created by Riordan, one can note a large number of inconsistencies and alterations. Riordan does not create a new myth, he tries only to slightly alter its structure, making it understandable for a modern reader. But let us also note other demigod heroes present in the books. As already noted, they are in the same camp, training and preparing for exploits. Let's characterize several main characters. Annabeth Chase is the daughter of Athena. According to the book, Annabeth is grey-eyed, blonde, tanned, smart and strong. Like most children in the camp, she ran away from home and wandered with two demigod friends - Thalia, daughter of Zeus and Luke, son of Hermes. She was in love with him and did not want to give up, even when he took the side of evil. Found in all books. She, along with Percy, searched for the missing rod of Zeus, was in the Underground Kingdom of Hades and even came out of there alive, took part in the Search along with Percy and Tyson, who is the son of Zeus and half-brother of Percy, across the Sea of Monsters. She was kidnapped by a manticore (a mythical creature with the body of a lion, the head of a man, the tail of a scorpion) and she was forced for a short time, like Hercules in his time, to hold the heavens instead of the Atlas (which was mentioned earlier), which was an impossible task for her and from which she developed a few gray strands of hair. She played the role of leader in her search, went through the entire Labyrinth, and there she met Daedalus, also the son of Athena. But she was very disappointed in him, since he had lost all his courage; in her opinion, the main thing for the children of Athena is wisdom, and not simple intelligence. He heeded her words and went over to the side of the demigods. But the battle was fatal for him - however, he managed to give his notes to Annabeth. According to myth, Athena had no children, since she took a vow of celibacy; only in later myths does she have a son, Erichthonius. But Riordan in this case does not adhere to the source - Athena has many children and he explains their appearance by an intellectual connection. Annabeth has weapons - a sword and an invisibility cap. In this case, we are not talking about remaking or “modernizing” the myth; it would be more appropriate to use the term “mythological elements.” Annabeth is only Riordan's heroine; there is no mention of her in the myths. Nico di Angelo is the son of Hades. According to the book, he has unkempt black hair, olive skin, and black eyes. He was born in the 20th century. Together with his older sister Bianca, after Zeus attempted to kill him and the death of their mother, he was sent by Hades to the Lotus Casino. From there they were taken on behalf of Hades by the Fury (Fury is one of the goddesses of revenge; here there is a mixture of ancient Greek and Roman culture, since in Ancient Greece it corresponded to Erinyes). Grover finds them there. Percy Jackson, Annabeth and Thalia take them from there, and then they are attacked by Manticore. In the fight, she was almost defeated by the hunters of Artemis, but the monster survives and kidnaps Annabeth. Thus, Niko ends up at Camp Half-Blood. According to myth, Hades and Persephone had one daughter, Macaria, the goddess of blessed death, who sacrificed herself. Significant differences in the images of the heroes are evident, but there is a widespread use of mythological elements. All the inhabitants of the camp are children of demigods, have (partial) the strength of their parents and perform feats. It should be noted that the author slightly typified the inhabitants of the houses - they have similar qualities and appearance, obviously, therefore only one main character is taken, as a rule, a leader, a representative of one kind or another. The main conflict of Riordan's series is quite interesting. Kronos (Riordan's god of time) is opposed to Percy. Kronos wants to come to life and overthrow Olympus (which is located on the top floor of the Empire State Building). Riordan is based on a myth - Rhea, who was expecting the birth of Zeus, did not want to lose her child and decides to give birth and raise him in secret. Thus, Zeus is born in a cave on Crete, and his cruel father, who swallows his children, is given a stone. This stone became a landmark of Delphi. The Petrah rock is also associated with this stone. This stone is called Agadir. Soon Kronos realized that he had been deceived, he began to look for Zeus all over the earth, but the Kuretes did not allow him to find the baby; when he began to cry, they knocked their spears on their shields, so Kronos did not hear his cry. When Zeus grew up, as predicted, he began to fight with his tyrant father. The result of the ten-year war was that Kronos was overthrown by Zeus and imprisoned in the underground kingdom of Tartarus. According to one legend, Zeus fought for power with Kronos in Olympia and won. According to one version, Zeus, following the advice, gave Kronos honey to drink so that he would fall asleep, then castrated him (castrated). There is also a version that thanks to this castration, the goddess of love Aphrodite was born from his seed. After the war with the Titans, Kronos and his supporters were imprisoned by Zeus in Tartarus. Riordan did not use the myth itself, he only suggested its logical continuation. Kronos is in Tartarus, he is angry and wants to recover and take revenge. To do this, he needs a body and accomplices. Who should I turn to if not the demigods? With his help, a war is brewing that has turned half of New York City into ruins and destroyed many lives. The use of a mythological basis and heroes is also a mythological element that must be noted. There are many examples of the use of myths and heroes by R. Riordan. In general, it should be noted that the mythological elements in the novel are quite obvious: it is of interest only to children, and for an older and more educated person, most of the mysteries will be obvious secrets, for example, who is Percy’s father (“The Lightning Thief”) and who is the main villain, the solution becomes obvious until the end of the story. The denouement of each novel can be called interesting, when the motives and essence of negative characters are revealed that have nothing to do with myths, and which gives rise to the next secret and book in the series. It is impossible not to note Riordan's skill - he skillfully weaves heroes and monsters into the fabric of his narrative, making the heroes more multifaceted, although moving away from the original. The main goal of the author is obvious, as indicated in the theory - the author does not write to talk about the myth itself, but uses artistic mythologism to better express his ideas and thoughts. In this case, artistic mythologism and mythical characters reveal such eternal concepts as friendship and love. 2.2. Mythological motifs in Collins's "The Hunger Games" series As stated earlier, this trilogy was chosen for the following reason - it represents the introduction of individual mythological motifs and characters into the fabric of a realistic narrative, enriching specific historical images with universal meanings and analogies. Let's look at this with examples. In the introduction to The Hunger Games, Collins talks about where she got the idea for the novel. She talks about the ancient Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, which says that the Athenians sent seven young men and women to the island of Crete to be devoured by the terrible monster Minotaur, a man with the head of a bull. She also mentions her father, who served in the Air Force, with whom she traveled to battle sites. And lastly, Collins mentions a time when she was switching from channel to channel and came across a report about military events in Iraq straight from a reality show. Let's look at the basis of the plot and make a comparison. The book is about the future. The setting is Panem, which is located in the former North America. A catastrophe occurred (which one is not mentioned in the novel), as a result of which the Capitol arose, around which there are 12 districts, they supply the capital with everything necessary. The description of the class division of society is very clearly given: residents of the Capitol live in prosperity, while residents of the districts die of hunger. It also says 42 that previously there were 13 districts, and the thirteenth district rebelled. The uprising was suppressed, the district was destroyed, and the rest, as a warning, must give one boy and one girl every year to participate in the Hunger Games. The procedure for selection and games is not complicated: lots are cast (the names of the participants are placed in a glass ball and a representative of the Capitol draws out one name), the selected participants (and there are a total of 24 people) become participants in a reality show, the goal of which is to stay alive. To participate, it is necessary that the name of the future tribute be drawn from among others. But there is a catch here - the name is written more than once. The older the child, the more pieces of paper with his name. Thus, sixteen-year-old children have a much higher chance of being selected than others. “The harvest is unfair, and it is the poor who suffer the worst. According to the rules, people begin to participate in the Harvest at the age of twelve. The first time your name is entered once, at the age of thirteen - twice, and so on until you turn eighteen, when your name is written on seven cards. This applies to all citizens of Panem, without exception, in all twelve districts” [Collins 2010:384]. In the districts there was also a procedure according to which a boy or girl could ask for rations, provided that his or her name was written on several additional cards. Tributes are not left to their own devices after the draw. They are taken to the Capitol, where they are brought into the “proper” appearance by stylists, and mentors act as mentors. Mentors are the same players who previously won the Hunger Games. They can provide players with an invaluable service - to attract sponsors to their side, because in the arena every gift, every package counts, as it can save a life. But this requires that the participant be liked by the crowd, no matter his appearance or eccentricity; for this, stylists and makeup artists are also needed. For the games, a special arena is built, where there are cameras everywhere, and the games themselves are watched throughout Panem (residents of the districts are forced to watch them) . Similar storylines are also found in Takami's novel Battle Royale, with which many compare The Hunger Games. The main character of the trilogy, 15-year-old Katniss Everdeen, volunteers to participate in the games (the lot fell on her younger sister, in order to save her Katniss volunteers). The second participant in District 12 is Peeta Mellark, whom Katniss must also kill in order to survive, but this is not easy, because he once saved her and her family from starvation. However, the mentor and Katniss were able to achieve a change in the rules of the game, where previously only one could survive - the public likes their game of lovers so much that the game managers make an exception - there can be two winners, but with the condition that they come from the same district. But this turns out to be just a trick - the stewards have thus prepared a dramatic ending. But Katniss found a way out - faced with the choice of two winners or none, the game managers decide in favor of the first, thus breaking the order that has existed for more than 74 years, and this event heralds the beginning of a storm. "- Show them. “Let everyone see,” Pete asks. I open my palm; dark berries glisten in the sun. With my other palm I squeeze Pete’s hand, as a signal and as a farewell, and begin to count: “One.” - What if I'm wrong? - Two. - What if they don’t care if we both die? - Three! There is no turning back. I bring my hand to my mouth and take one last look at the world. The berries barely hit my tongue when the trumpets start blaring. Their roar is drowned out by the desperate voice of Claudius Templesmith: - Stop! Stop! Ladies and gentlemen! I am pleased to introduce you to the winners of the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games - Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark! Long live the tributes of District 12!" [Collins 2010: 390]. "Hold them out. “I want everyone to see,” he says. I spread out my fingers, and the dark berries glisten in the sun. I give Peeta’s hand one last squeeze as a signal, as a good-bye, and we begin counting. "One." Maybe I'm wrong. "Two." Maybe they don’t care if we both die. "Three!" It’s too 44 late to change my mind. I lift my hand to my mouth, taking one last look at the world. The berries have just passed my lips when the trumpets begin to blare. The frantic voice of Claudius Templesmith shouts above them. “Stop! Stop! Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present the winners of the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark! I give you - the tributes of District Twelve!” [Collins 2008:380]. Collins combined in her trilogy what seemed impossible - sharp social criticism based on artistic mythology and love. At the same time, the love line does not occupy a leading position, as in most novels. It is very easy to identify the mythological basis of dystopia. Capitol plays the role of Crete, the hunger games are a kind of labyrinth. But unlike the myth, Collins only gave one player a chance to survive, but at what cost? It was the surviving player who became the minotaur, since in order to save himself he had to kill the rest of the participants. The main character Katniss, just like in the myth, was not chosen for the terrible tribute, she volunteered to save her sister. In the myth, Theseus wanted to help the Athenians and so went to Crete. But Theseus manages to save all the participants, while for Katniss this is basically impossible. She is also unsure about her life, expecting death every minute. “Katniss, it’s just like hunting. And you hunt better than anyone I know. - This is not just hunting. They are armed. And they think. - You too. And you have more experience. Real experience. You know how to kill. - Not people! - Do you think there's a difference? - Gail asks gloomily" [Collins 2010:384]. “Katniss, it’s just hunting. You’re the best hunter I know,” says Gale. “It’s not just hunting. They're armed. They think," I say. 45 “So do you. And you’ve had more practice. Real practice,” he says. "You know how to kill." "Not people," I say. “How different can it be, really?” says Gale grimly." In this passage, it becomes clear that Katniss, like the mythological Theseus, is quite agile and strong, she is not a simple helpless girl from the District. In the myth, Theseus is helped by Ariadne. In love with the young hero, she cannot even imagine his death. Collins took a similar plot - Peeta, the second tribute, in love with Katniss, is ready to do anything to help her survive. With the help of mutual support, they achieve the impossible - for the first time at the Hunger Games there are two winners, not just one. Peeta and Katniss have a long history of acquaintance and during the course of the story it can be noted that neither of them has forgotten her. It is Pete who throws her a loaf of bread, saving her from starvation, and gives her hope. Since then, every time Katniss sees a dandelion, she thinks of Peeta and his bread. Theseus and Ariadne could in no way have known each other before the incident that brought them together. In addition to the myth that forms the basis of the work, Collins uses a large number of other mythological elements in his trilogy. Let's start with the tribute weapons. Katniss' weapon is a bow and arrow, which is typical for myths. It’s worth remembering at least Artemis. The weapon of another tribute, Finnick Odair, is a trident. Finnick is closely associated with the water element and the choice of weapon is logical and brings to mind Poseidon and his subordinates. Despite the fact that this is the future, the heroes use primitive weapons, which is a reminder of the mythological basis of the myth. It is impossible not to note the peculiar names of the heroes. Some are symbolic (for example, the name of the main character), while other names are taken from Greek times - Plutarch, Seneca and others (the interesting thing is that the inhabitants of the Capitol bear these names). 46 The image of Finnick Odair is noteworthy. The following analogy can be traced. Let's remember how Finnick won: “Finnick Odair is a living legend of Panem. Having survived the sixty-fifth season of the Hunger Games at the age of fourteen, he remained the youngest of the winners. In District Four, he was raised like a pro, so the chance of success was initially high, but not a single coach can boast of endowing the young man with unprecedented beauty. While the rest of the players had to almost beg for a handful of grain or matches as a gift, tall, well-built Finnick with his golden skin, bronze hair and stunning eyes knew no need for food, strong medicine or weapons. After about a week, the rivals belatedly realized: they had to kill him first. The guy was already excellent with spears and knives obtained from the Cornucopia, but when a trident landed on him on a silver parachute, it decided the outcome of the Game. The main occupation of the residents of the Fourth District is fishing. Finnick has been boating since early childhood. He immediately wove a net from a vine, caught all the opponents with it and stabbed them one by one with a trident. A couple more days and he had the crown.” But this is how it was in ancient times: the retiarii armed themselves with a dagger, a net and a trident. In most cases, the gladiators were naked. Sometimes they were given a tunic or a light stole; their attire always included a leather sleeve that covered the shoulder and chest. The net was also not a random accessory; the fight ended when it was thrown over the opponent’s head. Collins turned to ancient stories and moved them into the future, which added drama. It should also be noted that Collins does not use mythological monsters - but they are replaced by degenerates, animals artificially bred by the Capitol for the war, but survived after it and became a valuable addition to the Hunger Games. “For a second the monster freezes in place, and then I understand what it was about the appearance of the degenerates that haunted me. Green eyes burning with hatred 47 are not like the eyes of a wolf or a dog. They are unlike the eyes of any animal I have ever seen. Because they are human. This thought barely reaches my consciousness when I notice a collar with the number 1, lined with multi-colored stones, and the truth reveals itself to me in all its terrifying completeness. Blonde hair, green eyes, number... it's a Diadem! [Collins 2008:375]. « For a moment it hangs there, and in that moment I realize what else unsettled me about the mutts. The green eyes glowing at me are unlike any dog or wolf, any canine I’ve ever seen. They are unmistakably human. And that revelation has barely registered when I notice the collar with the number 1 inlaid with jewels and the whole horrible thing hits me. The blonde hair, the green eyes, the number. It's Glimmer." [Collins 2008:375]. In addition to mythological elements, Collins uses a large number of symbols. Let's look at some. Katniss (plant). Katniss was named after a plant (katniss) that grows from a tree and is shaped like an arrow. She mentions this in her thoughts while in the forest, near the river where she often went with her father. This plant has a root that looks like a potato and is edible. Her father said she wouldn't starve if she found "herself", which she recalls when her family was on the brink of it. Katniss (the plant itself and the girl) becomes a symbol of survival and archery, because... the plant after which she is named looks like an arrow, apparently her father predetermined her fate immediately after birth. Bread (Pete's bread) is a symbol of life, friendship, survival and love. When Peeta and Katniss were 11 years old, Peeta deliberately ruined 2 loaves of bread when he saw Katniss completely hungry outside in the rain, and it was thanks to his bread that she and her family survived, and he gave her hope. Also the meaning of passing the bread signifies the beginning of strong love and family. The book Catching Fire also talks about a traditional wedding taking place in District 12: the newlyweds bake and share bread among themselves. Peeta and Katniss constantly share food with each other in the trilogy: they share 48 food in the arena, Peeta bakes bread for Katniss's family. You can also share food with the symbolism of sharing troubles and adversities together. . Thus, the main mythological elements of this trilogy were identified and the author’s use of artistic mythology was proven, which made the trilogy more expressive and dramatic. 2.3.Biblical myth and “The Fallen” by Lauren Kate Lauren Keith’s novel is also of interest from a literary point of view. It presents a slightly different myth than in the novels presented earlier. In this case, we turn to the biblical myth, and more specifically, to the myth of angels. The plot of the novel is quite banal and typical of teenage novels. A young girl, Lucy, finds herself in a new school (Sword and Cross Reformatory School). Where there is a new school, there are new acquaintances. Lucy's attention is immediately drawn to the mysterious stranger Daniel. But she soon realizes that they are connected by a much older history. Daniel is a fallen angel. One of his punishments was that over and over again he meets Lucy, they fall in love with each other again and again, after which she dies, only to return again. As already noted, this book uses three ancient biblical myths: the myth of angels, of rebirth and of the soul. Let's take a closer look at them. Myths about angels are quite common in the Christian tradition; they are protectors, guardians and advisors. They served as intermediaries between God and the rest of the world. Angels are more perfect than people and were created before the creation of the world. They informed people about His will. Despite their perfection, they also succumbed to temptation, since they were created free and could choose 49 and succumb to temptation. Those who did not succumb remain light, while others remain fallen. The clearest example of a fallen angel is Satan, aka Lucifer. There are an innumerable number of angels, in Christianity they even came up with a classification - the highest Hierarchy: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, the middle Hierarchy: Dominions, Powers, Powers, the lower hierarchy: Principalities, Archangels, Angels. According to myths, there are four supreme angels who support the throne of God. Myths also say that each person has his own guardian angel, who helps people in difficult situations and makes sure that the person develops spiritually. In the analyzed text, angels appear to us in a slightly different way. Angel Daniel is also fallen, but the author in the first book does not tell us why he fell. Of his angelic qualities, he retained only his main attributes - wings and superpowers. The second angel that appears in the novel, Cam, is obviously fallen. If in the case of Daniel one can guess that serious reasons forced him to fall, then in the case of Cam this cannot be said. Moreover, the author gave them too much humanity, forgetting about the essence of the divine being. It can be assumed that the author chose angels, continuing the fairly widespread idea of \u200b\u200bthe love of unsuitable creatures, one of which, as a rule, is a person. Further, it should be noted that this theme is also supported by the names of the characters - Daniel, Gabriela, Sofia. The book also mentions the Nephilim - mythical creatures similar to Greek heroes - demigods. Nephilim are people born as a result of the connection between an angel and a human. They also have superpowers. They are mentioned in the Bible, where they have two names - giants and nepholems. According to the legend, they were of enormous height 50, as a result of which they received the name giants. According to the Bible, such a union was unnatural. The angels who entered into such a union became fallen. “And the angels who did not retain their original position, but left their proper home, he preserves in eternal chains under the cover of impenetrable darkness for the judgment of the great day.” Nephilim are also found in films and literature. First of all, L.A. Marzulli publishes a novel called “Nephilim” (2005). It is about a young man who finds himself caught up in a struggle between good and evil. The novel also talks about creatures that appeared as a result of the union of a mortal woman and a supernatural being, including the Nephilim. In modern literature, they are also found in Rachel Mead’s “Georgina Cade” series and in Melissa de la Cruz’s “Blue Bloods” series, in which the same angelic theme is present, because according to the author, all vampires are fallen angels, but the main character of the series is Schuyler is a half-breed. Mention of the Nephilim can also be found in the series “Infernal Mechanisms” by K. Clare, “What the Angels Are Silent About” by B. Fitzpatrick, etc. This theme is also popular in the films - “Fallen”, “The Devil’s Tomb”, “The X-Files”, "Supernatural" etc. In the novel, the characters are somewhat simplified; they are not very tall, but they are not ordinary people either. The author gives them unusual abilities and places them in a special school where they are taught history and the use of power. Thus, it can be noted that the biblical myths of Lauren Kate transfers mythological heroes to the modern world, leaving only their main features prescribed for them by myth, without using their history and without repeating the events that happened in mythology. 2.4. Difficulties in translating modern literature from English into Russian 51 As stated earlier, all series are works of foreign authors and have been translated into many languages of the world. Let's try to consider the translation difficulties faced by the translator. First of all, the names of the works. Often, authors, in order to give the work symbolism, choose a concept that is specific to a particular nation. And the translator has no choice but to try to find an equivalent in the target language or, in the absence of one, to convey the meaning. In our case, the task turned out to be quite easy, and the translator did not have to resort to translation transformations. The translator left the title of Rick Riordan's first book - Percy Jackson and The Lightening Thief - unchanged - Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, replacing only the rude word thief with the neutral epithet thief. The titles of other books also did not pose a problem; the translation was made by analogy. Let's look at another series. Translating the title of Suzanne Collins' first book - Hunger games - was also not a problem; the translator quickly found an adequate option - The Hunger Games. It is also interesting that English. the word game has a second meaning - game, prey, so Collins, perhaps without realizing it, gives the name symbolism, because the people living in the Districts themselves are like hungry game, ready to rush and gnaw the throat of the predator, the Capitol. Translating the title of the second book could be very difficult; before the official translation was recognized, there were several English versions. “Catching fire” in the official translation sounds like “and a flame will break out,” in this case being an obvious translation transformation, since there is no gerund in the Russian language, the translator replaces it with another construction. And the translation of the last part - “Mockingjay” also could not but present difficulties, since this word is the author’s neologism, resulting from the mixing of two words - Mockingbird - mockingbird and jay - jay. The translator followed the same path 52 as the author, combining two words, but for a better sound, swapping them, and the result was mockingjay. Translating the title of Lauren Keith's book could not cause problems for the translator, since it consists of one word that is mentioned both in connection with angels and quite often in colloquial speech - Fallen (fallen). Next we should talk about the names of the main characters. Let's start again with the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. Quite often, symbols and concepts embedded in the names or surnames of characters are lost during translation, since translators in many cases prefer to use transliteration. Let's consider our case. The name of the main character Percy Jackson does not undergo changes, the same can be said about the names of his friends - Annabeth Chase, Nico di Angelo and others. Only in the name of Grover Underwood can we note the loss of the forest meaning - wood, which is acceptable, but in other cases the translation of names was not difficult. Now let's see how they coped with this task when translating The Hunger Games. First of all, the name of the main character Katniss undergoes some changes during translation and becomes Katniss, which may also be done for better consonance. The name of her partner Peeta is translated as Pete; in this case, the translator’s actions can be explained by the fact that this name could cause misunderstanding among readers, because in Russian most male names end with a consonant sound. To avoid this, the translator made a compromise. The names of other characters in the trilogy - Primrose, Gale, Madge, etc. do not undergo such changes. I would like to note the translation of the surname of one of the characters, Effie Bryak. In the original language, the author called her Effie Trinket, trinket is translated as a trifle, a trinket, that is, the author gives her a meaningful name. The translator plays on this meaning. Who is Effie? She is empty, not thinking, she will say and not think, as in the case of “coal turning into pearls under strong 53 pressure,” in the Russian language there is a stable phrase “to blurt out without thinking.” Thus, the translator conveyed the meaning and, using transformation, played out the meaning. The translator leaves the key concept of the novel tribute unchanged, using only such a technique as transliteration - tribute. In this case, the word is also symbolic and knowledge of its meaning helps the reader more accurately understand the state of affairs. Tribute is translated as tribute, due, offering. Which in turn also refers the reader to the myth of the Minotaur, since the analogies are obvious. Let's turn to the "Fallen". The main character's name is Luce, which in different sources is translated in two ways - Lucy or Luce. In other cases, there is no disagreement - Arriane, Cam, Daniel, etc. Let us turn to the names of the places of action, which often also pose difficulties for translation. The setting of Percy Jackson and the Olympians takes place in the real world, the author even gives us the names of specific places - America, New York, Manhattan, East Side, Long Island. From the mythological heritage, the author uses only Mount Olympus, which constantly moves along with the gods; from the author’s, only Half-Blood Hill can be noted. The use of real locations in the narrative gives the story realism; the same technique was once used by JK Rowling in the Harry Potter series; it is not for nothing that these works are constantly compared, although they have more differences than similarities. What they have in common is that they are about boys endowed with power, both of whom have predictions according to which they must change the fate of the world. In both works, the real setting is America and England, the characters are shown in the process of growing up, for the same reason the novels are often classified as novels of education. Both series are about the struggle between good and evil, in which higher powers are involved, while ordinary people (or Muggles) remain ignorant of what is happening, since 54 fog or magic hides everything from their eyes, but there is a logical explanation for the events. But this is perhaps where their similarities end. Next, consider the Collins series. The action takes place in post-apocalyptic America. America is now divided into 12 Districts, the country is called Panem, the capital is the Capitol (from the English Capital). The closer the District is to the Capitol, the more affluent its residents are. Katniss and her family live in District 12, where the residents are desperately poor and often starve to death. The District supplies coal to the Capitol. It can be noted that the translator used only transliteration, even for the word district, which is translated as area, district, locality. Panem is a Latin word translated as bread, which is also a kind of symbolism. One has only to remember the Latin catchphrase panem et circenses! (bread and circuses!) it becomes clear that it was not chosen in vain, because this is what, in essence, the inhabitants of Panem are. All the Districts work for them, starve, give their children to the monstrous hunger games - all to ensure the well-being of the Capitol. It comes as a shock to Katniss and Peeta, who grew up hungry, when they learn that during feasts, a special liquid is served to make the drinker vomit so that he can fill his stomach with food again. Consider “The Fallen.” In this book, the action also takes place in America, at the Sword & Cross School. The locations of the action are also given as real ones, which greatly simplifies the task of the translator and makes the story realistic. Conclusions on the second chapter This chapter examined three series - “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” by Rick Riordan, “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins and “The Fallen” by Lauren Kate. 55 The novels use various mythological elements and types of artistic mythologism from different mythologies: Greek and biblical. Regarding "Percy Jackson", the following can be said - Rick Riordan transferred many characters from Greek mythology to modern America. Of course, the heroes themselves have changed - their language and views are understandable to the modern reader, the author has greatly simplified the myths for the reader, although the main characters have not lost their features. The gods remained the same “human”, i.e. having human characters. Demigods with superhuman abilities and strength fight monsters. It is curious that in his cycle America is called the center of Western culture (that is why Olympus is located there), the patriotism characteristic of Americans is obvious. “The Hunger Games” is a deeper work; in this case, we can even talk about the creation of a unique system of mythologies, albeit based on ancient myths. One can highlight the mythological “framework” of the work – the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, as well as the author’s extensive use of mythological elements, such as weapons and robes. "Fallen" uses myths about angels and the Nephilim. The author also transfers the action to the modern world, but leaves them with unusual abilities and wisdom. It should be noted that modern works no longer often turn to primary sources; more often, authors still resort to their own characters and concepts, using mythological heroes and motifs to embody the author’s ideas and give the text a deeper meaning. When examining literature, it should be noted that mythology has firmly entered into it and has not given up its position for many centuries. The authors used the myth in different ways, reconstructed its plots and changed the inner world of the heroes to better explain reality. The fusion of myth with literature is a natural process, during which the aesthetic and philosophical understanding of reality occurs at a qualitatively different level of artistic generalization. Thanks to this “perseverance” of the authors, scientists began to study myth and mythology. Various definitions and classifications have been given. Such terms as “artistic mythology” and “mythological element” arose. The distinctive features of artistic mythologism were recognized as: recognition of the plot, the author's reconstruction of the plot, difficulty and versatility; it was these features that helped in the analysis of the works. 57 Conclusion Having analyzed the works of Rick Riordan “Percy Jackson and the Olympians”, Suzanne Collins “The Hunger Games” and Laurel Kate “Fallen”, the following conclusions can be drawn: 1.. Myth is a complex artistic structure, characterized by symbolism and aimed primarily at explanation reality. Myth replaced science for primitive peoples and offered a model of behavior through attractive and understandable heroes. Myth and religion have more differences than similarities. Religion, first of all, is aimed at human psychology, the main idea is the idea of saving the soul, heroes often fight with themselves rather than with monsters. 2. The concepts of “myth” and “fairy tale” are close, and there is no doubt that a fairy tale appeared through myth. Primitive fairy tales and myths are inseparable, but over time the fairy tale acquires structural and plot features that are characteristic only of it, which makes it possible to distinguish it as a separate genre. 3. Myth performs the following important functions in a work: myth is used to create symbols and symbolism; myth is a means of generalizing literary material; myth is used as an artistic device; myth serves as a clear example, rich in meaning; myth also determines the structure of the work. 4. Using artistic mythology, it is possible to cover any field of literary activity - from children's adventure stories to serious works containing social criticism and dealing with other problems of our time. 5. It is a mistake to consider only mythical characters and the plot as mythological elements; one should also take into account the presence of objects and images endowed with symbolic meaning. 58 6. During the analysis of the selected works, the following was discovered: – The fusion of myth and literature, during which the aesthetic and philosophical understanding of reality occurs at a qualitatively different level of artistic generalization; – In the series of books by Rick Riordan “Percy Jackson and the Olympians”, it is obvious that the characters and plot are modernized and transferred to the reality around us. To clarify the difference from the myth, a comparative analysis of ancient myths about this hero with the events that happen to the literary hero was carried out. In the process of modernization, the myth has undergone significant changes; the writer adapts to the reader, simplifying the plot lines and the characters themselves, their feelings and experiences, turning the ancient myth into a fascinating story. – In the Hunger Games series, Suzanne Collins used a different type of artistic mythology - its elements are woven into the fabric of the narrative, which takes place in the future. The mythological plot about Theseus and the Minotaur is quite clearly expressed, although the author himself never mentions either mythology or myths in the novel; he develops a completely new world, with new concepts and values. The analysis noted numerous mythological elements used by the author, in addition to the main storyline. The heroes carry weapons characteristic of myths, have similarities with gladiators, and in addition, the author uses another type of artistic mythologism - many everyday things are endowed with symbolism; –yu “Fallen” by Laurel Kate is a modernization of biblical mythological creatures, angels, which are harmoniously woven into the narrative and the modern world; – The difference between an ancient myth and an author’s one contains the meaning, the idea that the author wanted to express and why he used the myth in his work. To understand the hidden meanings and meanings that the author intentionally or subconsciously lays down, it is necessary to know how the mythological element can be reflected in the work. 59 Thus, the relevance of mythologism in modern literature is not questioned. The author of each subsequent generation gives his own interpretation, different from the previous ones. 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LITERATURE AND MYTHS LITERATURE AND MYTHS
The constant interaction between literature and art occurs directly, in the form of the “transfusion” of myth into literature, and indirectly: through the fine arts, rituals, folk festivals, religious mysteries, and in recent centuries - through scientific concepts of mythology, aesthetic and philosophical teachings, and folklore. . This interaction takes place especially actively in the intermediate sphere of folklore (see. Fairy tales and myths). Folk poetry, by type of consciousness, gravitates towards the world of mythology, however, as a phenomenon of art, it is adjacent to literature. The dual nature of folklore makes it a cultural mediator in this regard, and the scientific concepts of folklore, becoming a fact of culture, have a great influence on the processes of interaction between literature and culture.
The relationship between myth and written fiction can be considered in two aspects: evolutionary and typological. The evolutionary aspect provides for the idea of myth as a certain stage of consciousness, historically preceding the emergence of written literature. Literature, from this point of view, deals only with destroyed, relict forms of myth and itself actively contributes to this destruction. Myth and the art and literature that gradually replace it are subject only to opposition, since they never coexist in time. The typological aspect implies that mythology and written literature are compared as two fundamentally different ways of seeing and describing the world, existing simultaneously and in interaction and only manifested to varying degrees in certain eras. Mythological consciousness and the texts generated by it are characterized, first of all, by the non-discreteness, unity, iso- and homomorphism of the messages conveyed by these texts.
That which, from the point of view of non-mythological consciousness, is different, dissected, subject to comparison, in myth appears as a variant (isomorph) of a single event, character or text. Very often in myth, events do not have a linear development, but only repeat themselves eternally in a certain given order; the concepts of “beginning” and “end” are fundamentally not applicable to them (see. Cyclicality). So, for example, the idea that a narrative “naturally” begins with the birth of a character (god, hero) and ends with his death (and, in general, highlighting the interval between birth and death as some significant segment) apparently belongs to a non-mythological tradition. In a mythological type narrative, the chain of events: death - funeral feast - burial is revealed from any point and equally any episode implies the actualization of the entire chain. The principle of isomorphism, taken to the limit, reduced all possible plots to a single plot, which is invariant to all mythic-narrative possibilities and all episodes of each of them. All the variety of social roles in real life in myths was “collapsed” in the extreme case into one character. Properties that in a non-mythological text appear as contrasting and mutually exclusive, embodied in hostile characters, within a myth can be identified in a single ambivalent image.
In the archaic world, the texts created in the mythological sphere and in the sphere of everyday life were different in both structural and functional respects. Mythological texts were distinguished by a high degree of ritualization and narrated about the fundamental order of the world, the laws of its origin and existence. Events, the participants of which were gods or the first people, ancestors, etc., once accomplished, could be repeated in the constant cycle of world life. These stories were fixed in the memory of the collective with the help of a ritual, in which, probably, a significant part of the narrative was realized not through verbal storytelling, but through superlinguistic means: through gestural demonstration, ritual play performances and thematic dances, accompanied by ritual singing. In its original form, the myth was not so much told as it was acted out in the form of a complex ritual performance. Texts serving the everyday practical needs of the team, on the contrary, were purely verbal messages. Unlike texts of the mythological type, they talked about excesses (deeds or crimes), about the episodic, about the everyday and the individual. Designed for instant perception, if necessary, they became mythologized and ritualized to consolidate in the minds of generations the memory of some important excess. On the other hand, mythological material could be read from the position of everyday consciousness. Then the discreteness of verbal thinking, the concepts of “beginning” and “end,” and the linearity of temporal organization were introduced into it. This led to the fact that the hypostases of a single character began to be perceived as different images. As myth evolved and literature developed, tragic or divine heroes and their comic or demonic counterparts appeared. The single hero of the archaic myth, represented in it by his hypostases, turns into many heroes who are in complex (including incestuous) relationships, into a “crowd” of gods of different names and different essences, receiving professions, biographies and an ordered system of kinship. As a relic of this process of fragmentation of a single mythological image, a tendency has been preserved in literature, coming from Menander, Alexandrian drama, Plautus and through M. Cervantes, W. Shakespeare and the romantics, N.V. Gogol, F.M. Dostoevsky, which reached the novels of the 20th century ., - provide the hero with a double companion, and sometimes with a whole bunch of satellites.
The gradual emergence of the area of convergence of mythological and historical-everyday narrative texts led, on the one hand, to the loss in this area of intermediate texts of the sacred-magical function inherent in myth, and on the other, to a smoothing out of the directly practical tasks inherent in messages of the second type. Strengthening, through the development of discrete verbal means of expressing the modeling function and meaning of aesthetic attitudes, which previously played only a subordinate role in relation to sacred or practical tasks (in relation to myth, one cannot talk about the actual artistic techniques, means of expression, style, etc.), the emergence, due to the fragmentation of a single mythological image of a plot language, led to the birth of artistic storytelling, marking the beginning of the history of art and literature.
If in the preliterate era mythological (continuum-cyclical and isomorphic) consciousness dominated, then in the period of written cultures it turned out to be almost suppressed during the rapid development of discrete logical-verbal thinking. However, it is in the field of art and literature that the influence of mytho-poetic consciousness, the unconscious reproduction of mythological structures continues to retain its significance, despite the seemingly complete victory of the principle of historical and everyday narrative. Some types and genres of fiction - epic (see. Epic and myths), knightly and picaresque novels, cycles of “police” and detective stories - especially gravitate towards the “mythological” nature of artistic construction. It is found, in particular, in the interweaving of repetitions, similarities and parallels. The whole in them is clearly isomorphic to the episode, and all episodes are to some common invariant. So, for example, in “Tristan and Isolde” all the battle episodes (Tristan’s fight with Morolt of Ireland, the fight with the Irish dragon, the fight with the giant) represent variants of a single battle, and the analysis of the fight between Tristan and Isolde reveals an even more complex similarity to the battle and love scenes. In picaresque and adventure novels, the plot takes on the character of an endless buildup of episodes of the same type, built according to an invariant model (cf. “Moll Flanders” by D. Defoe, where a long chain of marriages and love adventures of the heroine, strung one after another, is nothing more than cyclical repetition mythopoetic consciousness, involuntarily dictating its laws to the author in contradiction with the protocol, dry orientation towards everyday, factual verisimilitude, characteristic of the poetics of this novel as a whole). The mythological essence of literary texts, breaking up into isomorphic, freely growing episodes (series of short stories about detectives, elusive criminals, cycles of anecdotes dedicated to certain historical figures, etc.), is also reflected in the fact that their hero appears as the demiurge of a certain conventional world, which, however, is imposed on the audience as a model of the real world. Associated with this is the phenomenon of the high mythogenicity of cinema in all its manifestations - from mass commercial films to masterpieces of cinematography. The main reason here is the syncretism of the artistic language of cinema, the high importance of non-discrete elements in this language. An important role, however, is also played by the involuntary cyclization of various films with the participation of the same actor, forcing us to perceive them as variants of a certain single role, an invariant character model. When films are cyclized not only by an actor, but also by a common hero, genuine film myths and film epics arise, similar to those created by Chaplin - in antithesis to the Hollywood myth of success, in the center of which the “man of fortune” invariably stood, - the myth of the loser, the grandiose epic of the inept, but an “unlucky” person who gets his way.
Along with the spontaneous influences of mythological consciousness on the creative process that arise in addition to the subjective orientation of the authors, each era in the history of art is characterized by a certain awareness of the relationship between art and mythology. The functional opposition of L. and M. takes shape in the era of writing. The most ancient layer of culture after the emergence of writing and the creation of ancient states is characterized by a direct connection between art and mythology. However, the functional difference, which affects especially acutely at this stage, determines that the connection here invariably turns into rethinking and struggle. Mythological texts, on the one hand, are the main source of subjects in art during this period. However, on the other hand, archaic mythology is conceived as something pre-cultural and subject to ordering, bringing into a system, and a new reading. This reading is carried out from the position of consciousness, already alien to the continual-cyclical view of the world. Myths turn into many magical stories, stories about gods, stories about demiurges, cultural heroes and ancestors, are transformed into linear epics, subordinate to the movement of historical time. It is at this stage that such narratives sometimes take on the character of stories about violations of the basic prohibitions imposed by culture on human behavior in society - prohibitions on incest and the murder of relatives: the dying - the born hero can appear as two persons - father and son, and self-denial of the first hypostasis for the sake of the second may become parricide. The “continuous” marriage of a dying and reborn hero turns in some stories into an incestuous union of son and mother. If previously the dismemberment of the body and ritual torture was an honorable act - a hypostasis of ritual fertilization and a guarantee of future rebirth, now it turns into a shameful torture (the transitional moment is captured in stories about how ritual torture - cutting, boiling - in some cases leads to rejuvenation, and in others - to painful death; cf. the myth of Medea,“Folk Russian Legends” by A. N. Afanasyev, No. 4-5, the ending of “The Little Humpbacked Horse” by P. P. Ershov, etc.). When read linearly, the mythological narrative about the established and correct order of life turned into stories about crimes and excesses, creating a picture of the disorder of moral norms and social relations. This allowed mythological stories to be filled with a variety of socio-philosophical content.
The poets of the Greek archaic subjected myths to radical revision, bringing them into a system according to the laws of reason (Hesiod - “Theogony”), ennobling them according to the laws of morality (Pindar). The influence of the mythological worldview persists during the heyday of Greek tragedy (Aeschylus - “Chained Prometheus”, “Agamemnon”, “Choephors”, “Eumenides”, making up the “Oresteia” trilogy, etc.);
Sophocles - “Antigone”, “Oedipus the King”, “Electra”, “Oedipus at Colonus”, etc.; Euripides - “Iphigenia in Aulis”, “Medea”, “Hippolytus”, etc.). It affects not only the appeal to mythological subjects: when Aeschylus creates a tragedy based on a historical plot (“Persians”), he mythologizes history itself. Tragedy, through the revelation of the semantic depths of mythology (Aeschylus) and its aesthetic harmonization (Sophocles), comes to a rationalistic criticism of its foundations (Euripides). A kind of coincidence of opposites in the approach to mythology, characteristic of all Greek classics, manifested itself in Aristophanes in the combination of a deep commitment to mythological motifs and archetypes with an extremely daring mockery of myths.
Roman poetry gives new types of attitudes towards myths. Virgil (“Aeneid”) connects myths with a philosophical understanding of history, with religious and philosophical issues, and the structure of the image he developed largely anticipates Christian mythologems (the predominance of the symbolic significance of the image over its figurative concreteness). Ovid (“Metamorphoses”), on the contrary, separates mythology from religious content. He completes a conscious game with “given” motives, transformed into a unified system; in relation to an individual myth, any degree of irony or frivolity is allowed, but the system of mythology as a whole retains its “sublime” character.
With Christianity, a specific type of mythology entered the horizons of the Mediterranean and then the pan-European world (see. Christian mythology). The literature of the Middle Ages arises and develops on the basis of the pagan mythology of “barbarian” peoples (folk heroic epic), on the one hand, and on the basis of Christianity, on the other. The influence of Christianity becomes predominant. Although ancient myths were not forgotten in the Middle Ages, medieval art was characterized by an attitude towards myth as a product of paganism. It was at this time that pagan mythology began to be identified with an absurd fiction, and words derived from the concept of “myth” were painted in negative tones. At the same time, the exclusion of myth from the realm of “true” faith to a certain extent facilitated its penetration as a verbal and ornamental element into secular poetry. In church literature, mythology, on the one hand, penetrated into Christian demonology, merging with it, and on the other hand, it was used as material for searching for encrypted Christian prophecies in pagan texts. The purposeful demythologization of Christian texts (i.e., the expulsion of the ancient element) in fact created an extremely complex mythological structure in which the new Christian mythology (in all the richness of its canonical and apocryphal texts), a complex mixture of mythological ideas of the Roman-Hellenistic Mediterranean, local pagan cults the newly baptized peoples of Europe acted as constituent elements of a diffuse mythological continuum. The images of Christian mythology often underwent the most unexpected modifications (for example, Jesus Christ in the ancient Saxon epic poem “Heliand” appears as a powerful and warlike monarch).
The Renaissance created a culture under the sign of secularization and de-Christianization. This led to a sharp increase in the non-Christian components of the mythological continuum. The Renaissance gave rise to two opposing models of the world: an optimistic one, gravitating towards a rationalistic, intelligible explanation of the cosmos and society, and a tragic one, recreating the irrational and disorganized appearance of the world (the second model directly “flowed” into Baroque culture). The first model was built on the basis of rationally ordered ancient mythology, the second activated the “lower mysticism” of folk demonology mixed with the extra-canonical ritualism of Hellenism and the mysticism of side heretical movements of medieval Christianity. The first had a decisive influence on the official culture of the High Renaissance. The fusion of the myths of Christianity and antiquity with the mythologized material of personal fate into a single artistic whole was accomplished in Dante's The Divine Comedy. The literature of the Renaissance adopted Ovid's style of approach to myths, but at the same time it absorbed a tense anti-ascetic
mood (“The Fiesolan Nymphs” by G. Boccaccio, “The Tale of Orpheus” by A. Poliziano, “The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne” by L. Medici, etc.). To an even greater extent than in “book” literature, myth is visible in folk carnival culture, which served as an intermediate link between primitive mythology and fiction. Living connections with folklore and mythological origins were preserved in the drama of the Renaissance (for example, the “carnival” of W. Shakespeare’s dramaturgy - the clownish plan, crownings - debunkings, etc.). In F. Rabelais (Gargantua and Pantagruel) they found a vivid manifestation of the tradition of folk carnival culture and (more broadly) some general features of mythological consciousness (hence the hyperbolic, cosmic image of the human body with the oppositions of top - bottom, “travels” inside the body, etc.) The second model was reflected in the writings of Ya. van Ruysbroeck, Paracelsus, visions of A. Durer, images of H. Bosch, M. Niethardt, P. Bruegel the Elder, the culture of alchemy, etc.
Biblical motifs are characteristic of Baroque literature (the poetry of A. Gryphius, the prose of P. F. Quevedo y Villegas, the dramaturgy of P. Calderon), which at the same time continues to turn to ancient mythology (“Adonis” by G. Marino, “Polyphemus” by L. Gongora, etc.). English poet of the 17th century. J. Milton, using biblical material, creates heroic and dramatic works in which tyrant-fighting motifs are heard (“Paradise Lost”, “Paradise Regained”, etc.).
The rationalistic culture of classicism, creating the cult of Reason, completes, on the one hand, the process of canonization of ancient mythology as a universal system of artistic images, and on the other, “demythologizes” it from the inside, turning it into a system of discrete, logically arranged allegory images. Appeal to a mythological hero (along with a historical or, more accurately, pseudo-historical hero), his fate and deeds is typical of the “high” genres of classicist literature, primarily tragedy (P. Corneille - “Medea”, “Oedipus”, J. Racine - “Thebaid”, “Andromache”, “Iphigenia in Aulis”, “Phaedra”, “biblical” dramas - “Esther”, “Athaliah”). Burlesque poetry, which parodied classicist epics, often also used mythological subjects (“Virgil in Disguise” by the French poet P. Scarron, “The Aeneid, translated into the Little Russian language” by I. P. Kotlyarevsky, etc.). The consistent rationalism of the aesthetics of classicism leads to the formalization of the methods of using myth.
The literature of the Enlightenment less often uses mythological motifs and mainly in connection with current political or philosophical issues. Mythological subjects are used to construct a plot (“Merope”, “Mohammed”, “Oedipus” by Voltaire, “Messiad” by F. Klopstock) or to formulate universal generalizations (“Prometheus”, “Ganymede” and other works by J. V. Goethe, “ The Triumph of the Winners”, “The Complaint of Ceres” and other ballads by F. Schiller).
Romanticism (and before it - pre-romanticism) put forward slogans of turning from reason to myth and from the rationalized mythology of Greco-Roman antiquity to national-pagan and Christian mythology. "Opening" in mid. 18th century for the European reader of Scandinavian mythology, MacPherson's "Ossian", folklorism of I. Herder, interest in Eastern mythology, in Slavic mythology in Russia in the 2nd half of the 18th - early. The 19th centuries, which led to the emergence of the first experiments in a scientific approach to this problem, prepared the invasion of images of national mythology into the art of romanticism. At the same time, the romantics also turned to traditional mythologies, but they manipulated their plots and images extremely freely, using them as material for independent artistic mythologizing. Thus, F. Hölderlin, the first in the poetry of modern times to organically master the ancient myth and become the founder of new myth-making, included, for example, among the Olympian gods the Earth, Helios, Apollo, Dionysus, and his supreme god is Ether; in the poem “The Only One,” Christ is the son of Zeus, brother of Hercules and Dionysus; in “The Death of Empedocles” Christ draws closer to Dionysus, the death of the philosopher Empedocles is interpreted both as a cyclical renewal (death - rejuvenation) of a dying and resurrected god and at the same time as the painful death on the cross of a stoned prophet.
The natural philosophical views of the romantics contributed to an appeal to lower mythology, to various categories of natural spirits of the earth, air, water, forest, mountains, etc. Emphatically free, sometimes ironic play with images of traditional mythology, the combination of elements of various mythologies and especially experiments with their own literary myth-like fiction (alraun from L. Arnim’s story “Isabella of Egypt”, “Little Tsakhes” by E. T. A. Hoffmann), repetition and duplication of heroes in space (doubles) and especially in time (heroes live forever, die and are resurrected or are incarnated in new creatures), a partial shift of emphasis from the image to the situation as a certain archetype, etc. is a characteristic feature of the myth-making of the romantics. This often manifests itself even where heroes of traditional myths act. For example, in G. Kleist’s tragedy “Pentesilea” (the plot is the unhappy love of the queen of the Amazons Penthesilea for the hero Achilles), it’s not so much about mythological characters, but about some archetypal situation of gender relations. The tragedy implicitly contains a “Dionysian”, simultaneously archaizing and modernizing interpretation of ancient mythology, which to a certain extent anticipates the Nietzschean one. From “Pentesileia” a thread stretches to numerous examples of romantic and post-romantic drama in Germany and Scandinavia, turning to the mythological tradition (for example, the young G. Ibsen, F. Grillparzer, the German writer K. F. Hebbel - a tragedy based on the biblical story “Judith” , the Nibelungen trilogy, etc.). Hoffmann's myth-making was especially unconventional. In his stories (the stories “The Golden Pot”, “Little Tsakhes”, “Princess Brambilla”, “The Lord of the Fleas”, etc.) fantasy appears as a fabulousness, through which a certain global mythical model of the world is visible. The mythical element is included to some extent in Hoffmann’s “scary” stories and novels - as a chaotic, demonic, nocturnal, destructive force, as “evil fate” (“The Devil’s Elixir”, etc.). The most original thing about Hoffmann is the fantasy of everyday life, which is very far from traditional myths, but is built to some extent on their models. The noble war of toys led by the Nutcracker against the mouse army (“The Nutcracker”), the talking doll Olympia created with the participation of the demonic alchemist Coppelius (“Sandman”), the little freak protected by the fairy who miraculously appropriates other people’s talents (“Little Tsakhes”), and others - various options for mythologizing the ills of modern civilization, in particular soulless technicalism, fetishism, social alienation. In Hoffmann's work, the tendency of romantic literature in relation to myth was most clearly manifested - an attempt at a conscious, informal, unconventional use of myth, sometimes acquiring the character of independent poetic myth-making.
At the beginning of the 19th century. There is a strengthening of the role of Christian mythology in the general structure of romantic art. “The Martyrs” by A. Chateaubriand marks an attempt to replace ancient myth with Christian myth in literature (although the very consideration of Christian texts as mythological testifies to the deep process of secularization of consciousness). At the same time, atheistic sentiments became widespread in the system of romanticism, expressed in the creation of the demonic mythology of romanticism (J. Byron, P. V. Shelley, M. Yu. Lermontov). The demonism of romantic culture was not only an external transfer into the literature of the beginning. 19th century images from the myth of the hero-fighter of God or the legend of the fallen rejected angel (Prometheus, Demon), but also acquired the features of genuine mythology, which actively influenced the consciousness of an entire generation, created highly ritualized canons of romantic behavior and gave rise to a huge number of mutually isomorphic texts.
Realistic art of the 19th century. focused on the demythologization of culture and saw its task in liberation from the irrational heritage of history for the sake of natural sciences and the rational transformation of human society. Realistic literature sought to reflect reality in life forms adequate to it, to create an artistic history of its time. Nevertheless, she (using the possibility of a non-bookish, life-like relationship to mythological symbols, opened by romanticism) does not completely abandon mythologizing as a literary device, even on the most prosaic material [the line going from Hoffmann to the fiction of Gogol (“The Nose”), to naturalistic symbolism E. Zola (“Nana”)]. In this literature there are no traditional mythological names, but the moves of fantasy, likened to archaic ones, actively reveal in the newly created figurative structure the simplest elements of human existence, giving the whole depth and perspective. Titles such as “Resurrection” by L. N. Tolstoy or “Earth” and “Germinal” by E. Zola lead to mythological symbols; The mythology of the “scapegoat” can be seen even in the novels of Stendhal and O. Balzac. But in general, realism is 19th century. marked by "demythologization".
The revival of general cultural interest in myth occurred at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 19th century. 20 centuries, but the revival of the romantic tradition, accompanied by a new wave of mythologizing, began already in the second half of the 19th century. The crisis of positivism, disappointment in metaphysics and analytical ways of knowledge, criticism of the bourgeois world coming from romanticism as heroless and anti-aesthetic gave rise to attempts to return a “holistic”, transformative volitional archaic perception of the world, embodied in myth. In the culture of the late 19th century. “neo-mythological” aspirations arise, especially under the influence of R. Wagner and F. Nietzsche. Very diverse in their manifestations, social and philosophical nature, they largely retain significance for the entire culture of the 20th century.
The founder of “neo-mythologism” Wagner believed that it is through myth that people become the creators of art, that myth is the poetry of deep life views that have a universal character. Turning to the traditions of German mythology, Wagner created the opera tetralogy “The Ring of the Nibelung” (“Das Rheingold”, “Die Walküre”, “Siegfried”, “Twilight of the Gods”). If Hebbel, who was guided by the historical school in folklore, based his “Nibelungs” on the Austrian “Song of the Nibelungs,” already devoid of pagan attire, then Wagner, who was guided by the solar-mythological school, relies almost entirely on a more archaic, Scandinavian version. Wagner strives, through archetypal musical and mythological leitmotifs, to express the “eternal” issues so capaciously that they would include the cardinal social and moral conflicts of the 19th century. He makes the motif of “cursed gold” (a theme popular in romantic literature and marking a romantic criticism of bourgeois civilization) the core of the entire tetralogy. Wagner's masterly intuition was reflected, for example, in reconstructing the image of water as a symbol of the chaotic state of the universe (the beginning and end of the Ring of the Nibelung). Wagner's approach to mythology created an entire tradition (which was subject to gross vulgarization by the epigones of late romanticism, who strengthened the features of pessimism, mysticism and nationalism characteristic of Wagner's work).
Appeal to mythology in con. 19 - beginning 20th centuries differs significantly from the romantic (although initially it could be interpreted as “neo-romanticism”). Emerging against the background of a realistic tradition and a positivist worldview, it is always in one way or another (often polemically) correlated with this tradition. Initially, the philosophical basis of “neo-mythological” searches in art were irrationalism, intuitionism, partly relativism and (especially in Russia) pantheism. Subsequently, “neo-mythological” structures and images could become the language for any literary texts, including those that were meaningfully opposed to intuitionism. At the same time, however, this language itself was restructured, creating different, ideologically and aesthetically very distant directions within myth-oriented art. At the same time, despite intuitionist and primitivist declarations, “neo-mythological” culture from the very beginning turns out to be highly intellectualized, aimed at self-reflection and self-description; Philosophy, science and art strive here for synthesis and influence each other much more strongly than at previous stages of cultural development. Thus, Wagner’s ideas about mythological art as the art of the future and Nietzsche’s ideas about the saving role of the mythologizing “philosophy of life” give rise to the desire to organize all forms of knowledge as mythopoetic (as opposed to analytical comprehension of the world). Elements of mythological structures of thinking penetrate into philosophy (Nietzsche, Vl. Solovyov, later the existentialists), psychology (Z. Freud, K. Jung), into works about art (cf. especially impressionist and symbolist criticism - “art about art”) . On the other hand, art oriented towards myth (symbolists, in the early 20th century - expressionists) gravitates towards philosophical and scientific generalizations, often openly drawing them from the scientific concepts of the era (cf. the influence of Jung’s teaching on J. Joyce and other representatives “neo-mythological” art from the 20-30s of the 20th century).
“Neo-mythologism” reveals an equally close connection with panaestheticism: the idea of the aesthetic nature of being and aestheticized myth as a means of the deepest penetration into its secrets - and with pan-aesthetic utopias. Myth for Wagner is the art of the revolutionary future, overcoming the herolessness of bourgeois life and spirit; myth for Vyach. Ivanov, F. Sologub and many other Russian symbolists of the beginning. The 20th century is the beauty that alone is capable of “saving the world” (F. M. Dostoevsky).
Modernist mythologism is largely generated by the awareness of the crisis of bourgeois culture as a crisis of civilization as a whole. He was fueled by both a romantic rebellion against bourgeois “prose” and fear of the historical future, and partly of the revolutionary disruption of the established, although experiencing a crisis, world. The desire to go beyond socio-historical and spatio-temporal boundaries in order to identify “universal” content (“eternal” destructive or creative forces arising from human nature, from universal human psychological and metaphysical principles) was one of the moments of the transition from realism of the 19th century. to the art of the 20th century, and mythology, due to its original symbolism, turned out to be a convenient language for describing eternal models of personal and public behavior, certain essential laws of the social and natural cosmos.
A common feature of many phenomena of “neo-mythological” art was the desire for an artistic synthesis of diverse and multidirectional traditions. Already Wagner combined in the structure of his innovative operas mythological, lyrical, dramatic and musical principles of constructing an integral text. At the same time, the mutual influence of myth and various arts turned out to be natural, for example, the identification of the repetition of ritual with repetitions in poetry and the creation of a leitmotif technique in music (Wagner’s opera), and then in the novel, drama, etc. at their intersection. “Syncretic” genres arose: “myth novel” of the 20th century, “Symphonies” by A. Bely on mythological or myth-imitating plots, where the principles of symphonic composition are used, etc. (cf. the later statement of K. Lévi-Strauss about the musical-symphonic nature of myth ). Finally, all these aspirations for a “synthesis of arts” were embodied in a unique way in the beginning. 20th century in cinema.
Revived interest in myth throughout the literature of the 20th century. manifested itself in three main forms. The use of mythological images and plots, coming from romanticism, is sharply increasing. Numerous stylizations and variations are created on themes set by myth, ritual or archaic art. Wed. the role of the mythological theme in the works of D. G. Rossetti, E. Burne-Jones and other Pre-Raphaelite artists, such dramas of Russian symbolists as “Prometheus” by Vyach. Ivanova, “Melanippe the Philosopher” or “Famira-Kifared” Inn. Annensky, “Dead Protesilaus” by V. Ya. Bryusov, etc. At the same time, in connection with the entry of the art of non-European peoples into the arena of world culture, the circle of myths and mythologies that European artists are guided by is significantly expanding. The art of the peoples of Africa, Asia, and South America is beginning to be perceived not only as aesthetically valuable, but also, in a certain sense, as the highest norm. Hence the sharp increase in interest in the mythology of these peoples, which is seen as a means of decoding the corresponding national cultures (cf. Nazim Hikmet’s thought about the deep democracy of the “new art” of the 20th century, getting rid of Eurocentrism). At the same time, a revision of views on their national folklore and archaic art begins; Wed I. Grabar’s “discovery” of the aesthetic world of the Russian icon, the introduction of folk theater, fine and applied arts (signs, artistic utensils) into the range of artistic values, interest in preserved rituals, legends, beliefs, conspiracies and spells, etc. Undoubtedly decisive the influence of this folklorism on writers like A. M. Remizov or D. G. Lawrence. Secondly (also in the spirit of the romantic tradition), there appears an attitude toward the creation of “author’s myths.” If realist writers of the 19th century. strive to ensure that the picture of the world they create is similar to reality, then the early representatives of “neo-mythological” art - the symbolists, for example, find the specificity of artistic vision in its deliberate mythologization, in the departure from everyday empiricism, from a clear temporal or geographical location. At the same time, however, the deep object of mythologizing even among the symbolists turns out to be not only “eternal” themes (love, death, loneliness of the “I” in the world), as was the case, for example, in most of M. Maeterlinck’s dramas, but precisely the collisions of modern reality - the urbanized world of an alienated personality and its object and machine environment (“Octopus Cities” by E. Verhaeren, the poetic world of Sh. Baudelaire, Bryusov) or the kingdom of eternally motionless provincial stagnation (“Nedotykomka” by F. Sologub). Expressionism (cf. “R. U. R.” by K. Capek) and especially the “neo-mythological” art of the 2nd and 3rd quarters of the 20th century. only finally cemented this connection between mythologizing poetics and the themes of modernity, with the question of the paths of human history (cf., for example, the role of “author’s myths” in modern utopian or dystopian works of so-called science fiction).
Most clearly, however, the specificity of the modern appeal to mythology was manifested in the creation (in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, but especially from the 1920s-1930s) of such works as “myth novels” and similar ones “ drama-myths”, “poems-myths”. In these strictly “neo-mythological” works, myth is fundamentally neither the only line of the narrative nor the only point of view of the text. It collides and is difficult to correlate either with other myths (which give a different assessment of the image than it does), or with themes of history and modernity. Such are the “myth novels” of Joyce, T. Mann, “Petersburg” by A. Bely, the works of J. Updike, etc.
The largest representatives of the mythological novel of the 20th century - the Irish writer Joyce and the German writer T. Mann - gave examples of literary “mythologization” characteristic of modern art, which in many respects oppose each other in their main ideological orientation. In Joyce's novel Ulysses, the epic-mythological plot of the Odyssey turns out to be a means of ordering the primary chaotic artistic material. The heroes of the novel are compared with the mythological characters of the Homeric epic; numerous symbolic motifs in the novel are modifications of traditional symbols of mythology - primitive (water as a symbol of fertility and femininity) and Christian (washing as baptism). Joyce also resorts to unconventional symbols and images that represent examples of the original mythologization of everyday prose (a bar of soap as a talisman, ironically representing a modern “hygienic” civilization, a tram “transformed” into a dragon, etc.). If in Ulysses mythologism provides only additional support for the symbolic interpretation of the “naturalistically” presented material of life observations (the immediate plot of the novel is one day of city life in Dublin, as if passed through the consciousness of the main characters), then in the novel Finnegans Wake a complete (or almost complete) identification of characters with their mythological counterparts (motifs from Celtic mythology are used here). For the mythological modeling of history, Joyce most often uses the mythologem of the dying and resurrecting god-man - as a “metaphor” for the cyclical concept of history. In the novel “The Magic Mountain” by Mann, ritual-mythological models predominate. The process of educating the main character (the main theme of the novel) is associated with the initiation rite, some episodes are comparable to common mythologies of the sacred wedding, have ritual and mythological parallels (the ritual killing of the king-priest, etc., the “magic mountain” itself, in a certain sense, can be compared with kingdom of the dead, etc.). In Mann's Joseph and His Brothers, as in Joyce's Finnegans Wake, the plot itself is mythological. Mann's plot is taken from the Bible and presented as a “historicized” myth or a mythologized historical legend. Joyce's idea of the meaninglessness of history is opposed here by the concept of the deep meaning of history, which is revealed as culture develops, artistically realized with the help of images of biblical mythology. The mythologization of the historical past entails a poetics of repetition. It is presented by Mann, unlike Joyce, not as an evil infinity of historical processes, but as a reproduction of patterns presented by previous experience; cyclical ideas are combined with linear ones, which corresponds to the specifics of this mythological material. The fate of Joseph is metaphorized through ritual mythologies, and initiation motives recede here into the background before the cult of the dying and resurrecting god. The poetics of mythologizing in Mann (as in Joyce) is not a spontaneous, intuitive return to mythological thinking, but one of the aspects of an intellectual, even “philosophical” novel and is based on a deep knowledge of ancient culture, religion and modern scientific theories.
The myth-making of the Austrian writer F. Kafka (novels “The Trial”, “The Castle”, short stories) is specific. The plot and heroes have a universal meaning for him, the hero models humanity as a whole, and the world is described and explained in terms of plot events. In Kafka’s work, the opposition between primitive myth and modernist myth-making is clearly evident: the meaning of the first is to introduce the hero to the social community and to the natural cycle, the content of the second is the “mythology” of social alienation. The mythological tradition, as it were, turns into its opposite in Kafka; it is, as it were, a myth inside out, an anti-myth. Thus, in his short story “Metamorphosis,” which is in principle comparable to totemic myths, the hero’s metamorphosis (his transformation into an ugly insect) is not a sign of belonging to his clan group (as in ancient totemic myths), but, on the contrary, a sign of isolation, alienation, conflict with family and society; the heroes of his novels, in which a large role is played by the opposition of “initiated” and “uninitiated” (as in ancient initiation rites), cannot pass the “initiatory” tests; “celestial beings” are given to them in a deliberately reduced, prosaic, ugly form.
The English writer D. G. Lawrence (“Mexican” novel “The Plumed Serpent” and others) draws ideas about myth and ritual from J. Fraser. For him, turning to ancient mythology is an escape to the realm of intuition, a means of salvation from modern “decrepit” civilization (chanting of pre-Columbian bloody ecstatic cults of Aztec gods, etc.).
Mythology of the 20th century. has many representatives in poetry (the Anglo-American poet T. S. Eliot - the poem “The Waste Land”, where reminiscences from evangelical and Buddhist legends, “Parzival”, etc. organize the plot fabric; at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries - the Irish poet and playwright W.B. Yeats and other representatives of the “Irish Renaissance” with their dominant interest in national mythology, etc.).
In Russian symbolism, with its cult of Wagner and Nietzsche, the search for a synthesis between Christianity and paganism, myth-making was declared the very goal of poetic creativity (Vyach. Ivanov, F. Sologub, etc.). Poets of other movements of Russian poetry at the beginning of the century also turned to mythological models and images very widely. For V. Khlebnikov, mythology became a unique form of poetic thinking. He not only recreates mythological stories of many peoples of the world (“The Maiden God”, “The Death of Atlantis”, “Ka”, “Children of the Otter”, “Vila and the Goblin”), but also creates new myths, using the model of the myth, reproducing its structure ( “Crane”, “Granddaughter of Malusha”, “Marquise Dezes”), O. Mandelstam, with a rare sensitivity to historical and cultural phenomenology, operates with the primary elements of ancient mythological consciousness (“Take for joy from my palms...”, “Sisters - heaviness and tenderness...", "On the stone spurs of Pieria..."). The work of M. I. Tsvetaeva often intuitively penetrates into the very essence of archaic mythological thinking (for example, the recreation of the cult-magical image of the strangled goddess of femininity - the tree - the moon in the 2nd part of the Theseus dilogy, brilliantly confirmed by scientific research of Greek religion). Mythological motifs and images occupy a large place in the poetry of M. A. Voloshin (poetry cycles “Cimmerian Spring”, “The Ways of Cain”).
Mythologism is also widely represented in the drama of the 20th century: French playwright J. Anouilh [tragedies based on biblical (“Jezebel”) and ancient (“Medea”, “Antigone”) plots], P. L. TTT Claudel, J. Cocteau (tragedy “Antigone”, etc.), J. Giraudoux (plays “Siegfried”, “Amphitryon 38”, “There Will Be No Trojan War”, “Electra”), G. Hauptmann (tetralogy “Atrides”), etc.
The relationship between the mythological and historical in works of “neo-mythological” art can be very different - and quantitatively (from individual images-symbols and parallels scattered throughout the text, hinting at the possibility of a mythological interpretation of what is depicted, to the introduction of two or more equal storylines: cf. “The Master and Margarita” by M. A. Bulgakov), and semantically. However, clearly “neo-mythological” works are those where myth acts as a language - an interpreter of history and modernity, and these latter play the role of that motley and chaotic material that is the object of ordering interpretation. So, in order for the meaning of the artistic concept of the novel “Peter and Alexei” by D. S. Merezhkovsky to become clear, it is necessary to discern in the collisions of the bloody struggle of Peter I with his son the New Testament collision of the Father-demiurge and the Son - the sacrificial lamb. The cognitive value of myth and historical events in such texts is completely different, although the interpretation of myth as the deep meaning of history can be motivated differently by different authors (myth is the bearer of the “natural” consciousness of primitive man, not distorted by civilization; myth is a reflection of the world of the first heroes and the first events , only varying in countless collisions of history; mythology is the embodiment of the “collective unconscious”, according to Jung, and a kind of encyclopedia of “archetypes”, etc.). However, these motivations in “neo-mythological” works are not carried out completely consistently:
the positions of myth and history may not correlate unambiguously, but “flicker” within each other, creating a complex play of points of view. Therefore, a very common feature of “neo-mythological” works is irony - a line that comes in Russia from A. Bely, in Western Europe - from Joyce. However, the plurality of points of view typical of “neo-mythological” texts only at the beginning of this art embodies the ideas of relativism and the unknowability of the world; becoming an artistic language, it gains the opportunity to reflect other ideas about reality, for example, the idea of a “polyphonic” world, the meanings of which arise from the complex summation of individual “voices” and their relationships.
“Neo-mythologism” in the art of the 20th century. He also developed his own, largely innovative poetics - the result of influences both from the very structure of ritual and myth, and from modern ethnological and folkloristic theories. It is based on a cyclical concept of the world, “eternal return” (Nietzsche). In the world of eternal returns, in any present phenomenon its past and future incarnations shine through. “The world is full of correspondences” (A. Blok), you just need to be able to see in the countless flickering “masks” (history, modernity) the face of the world’s unity (embodied in myth) shining through them. But for this reason, each single phenomenon signals countless others, the essence of which is their similarity, a symbol.
It is also specific to many works of “neo-mythological” art that the function of myths in them is performed by literary texts (mainly of the narrative type), and the role of mythologems is quotations and paraphrases from these texts. Often what is depicted is decoded by a complex system of references to both myths and works of art. For example, in “The Small Demon” by F. Sologub, the meaning of the line of Lyudmila Rutilova and Sasha Pylnikov is revealed through parallels with Greek mythology (Lyudmila is Aphrodite, but also a fury; Sasha is Apollo, but also Dionysus; the masquerade scene, when an envious crowd almost tears Sasha , dressed in a masquerade female costume, but Sasha “miraculously” escapes - an ironic, but also having a serious meaning, a hint at the myth of Dionysus, including such essential motifs as tearing into pieces, changing appearance, salvation - resurrection), with mythology the Old and New Testaments (Sasha is the serpent-tempter), with ancient literature (idyls, “Daphnis and Chloe”). For F. Sologub, myths and literary texts that decipher this line constitute a kind of contradictory unity: they all emphasize the kinship of the heroes with the pristinely beautiful archaic world. Thus, a “neo-mythological” work creates something typical for 20th century art. panmythologism, equating myth, literary text, and often historical situations identified with myth (cf., for example, the interpretation in “Petersburg” by A. Bely of the story of Azef as a “myth of world provocation”). But, on the other hand, such an equation of myth and works of art noticeably expands the overall picture of the world in “neo-mythological” texts. The value of archaic myth, myth and folklore is not opposed to the art of later eras, but is difficult to compare with the highest achievements of world culture.
In modern (after the 2nd World War) literature, mythologizing most often acts not so much as a means of creating a global “model”, but as a technique that allows you to emphasize certain situations and collisions with direct or contrasting parallels from mythology (most often - ancient or biblical). Among the mythological motifs and archetypes used by modern authors is the plot of the “Odyssey” (in the works of A. Moravia “Contempt”, G. K. Kirsche “Message for Telemacus”, H. E. Nossak “Nekia”, G. Hartlaub “ Not every Odysseus"), "Iliad" (in K. Beuchler - "Stay on Bornholm", G. Brown - "The Stars Follow Their Course"), "Aeneid" (in "The Death of Virgil" by G. Broch, "Change" by M Vyutor, "Vision of the Battle" by A. Borges), the history of the Argonauts (in "The Journey of the Argonauts from Brandenburg" by E. Langeser), the centaur motif - by J. Updike ("Centaur"), Orestes - by A. Döblin ("Berlin, Alexander Platz”, combined with the story of Abraham and Isaac), Gilgamesh (“Gilgamesh” by G. Bachmann and “River Without Banks” by X. X. Yann), etc. Since the 50-60s. the poetics of mythologizing develops in the literatures of the “third world” - Latin American and some Afro-Asian. Modern intellectualism of the European type is combined here with archaic folklore and mythological traditions. The peculiar cultural and historical situation makes possible coexistence and interpenetration, sometimes reaching the point of organic synthesis, elements of historicism and mythology, social realism and genuine folklore. For the work of the Brazilian writer J. Amado (“Gabriela, cloves and cinnamon,” “Shepherds of the Night,” etc.), the Cuban writer A. Carpentier (the story “The Kingdom of the Earth”), the Guatemalan writer M. A. Asturias (“The Green Pope” etc.), Peruvian - X. M. Arguedas (“Deep Rivers”) is characterized by the duality of socio-critical and folklore-mythological motifs, as if internally opposed to the exposed social reality. Colombian writer G. García Márquez (novels “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, “Autumn of the Patriarch”) draws widely on Latin American folklore, supplementing it with ancient and biblical motifs and episodes from historical legends. One of the original manifestations of Marquez’s myth-making is the complex dynamics of the relationship between life and death, memory and oblivion, space and time. Thus, literature throughout its history has been correlated with the mythological heritage of primitiveness and antiquity, and this relationship has fluctuated greatly, but in general, evolution has been moving in the direction of “demythologization.” “Remythologization” of the 20th century. although it is primarily associated with the art of modernism, due to the various ideological and aesthetic aspirations of artists who turned to myth, it is far from being reducible to it. Mythologizing in the 20th century. became a tool for the artistic organization of material not only for typically modernist writers, but also for some realist writers (Mann), as well as for “Third World” writers who turned to national folklore and myth, often in the name of preserving and reviving national forms of culture. The use of mythological images and symbols is also found in some works of Soviet literature (for example, Christian-Jewish motifs and images in Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita”).
The problem of “art and myth” became the subject of special scientific consideration mainly in literary criticism of the 20th century, especially in connection with the emerging “remythologization” in Western literature and culture. But this problem has been raised before. Romantic philosophy early. 19th century (Schelling et al.), who attached special importance to myth as a prototype of artistic creativity, saw in mythology a necessary condition and primary material for all poetry. In the 19th century A mythological school developed, which derived various genres of folklore from myth and laid the foundations for the comparative study of mythology, folklore and literature. A significant influence on the general process of “remythologization” in Western cultural studies was exerted by the work of Nietzsche, who anticipated some characteristic tendencies in the interpretation of the problem of “literature and myth” by tracing in “The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music” (1872) the importance of rituals for the origin of artistic types and genres. The Russian scientist A. N. Veselovsky developed in the beginning. 20th century the theory of primitive syncretism of types of art and types of poetry, considering primitive ritual to be the cradle of this syncretism. The starting point of what developed in the 30s. 20th century in Western science, the ritual-mythological approach to literature was the ritualism of J. Freyer and his followers - the so-called. Cambridge group of researchers of ancient cultures (D. Harrison, A. B. Cook, etc.). In their opinion, at the heart of the heroic epic, fairy tale, medieval chivalric romance, revival drama, works using the language of biblical-Christian mythology, and even realistic and naturalistic novels of the 19th century. there were initiation rites and calendar rites. This direction attracted particular attention from the mythologizing literature of the 20th century. Jung's establishment of well-known analogies between various types of human fantasy (including myth, poetry, unconscious fantasy in dreams), his theory of archetypes expanded the possibilities of searching for ritual-mythological models in modern literature. For N. Fry, who is largely guided by Jung, myth, merging with ritual and archetype, is the eternal subsoil and source of art; mythologizing novels of the 20th century. seem to him to be a natural and spontaneous revival of myth, completing the next cycle of the historical cycle in the development of poetry. Frye asserts the constancy of literary genres, symbols and metaphors based on their ritual and mythological nature. The ritual-mythological school has achieved positive results in the study of literary genres genetically associated with ritual, mythological and folklore traditions, in the analysis of the rethinking of ancient poetic forms and symbols, in the study of the role of plot and genre traditions, collective cultural heritage in individual creativity. But the interpretation of literature exclusively in terms of myth and ritual, characteristic of the ritual-mythological school, and the dissolution of art in myth are extremely one-sided.
In a different way and from other positions - in compliance with the principle of historicism, taking into account substantive, ideological problems - the role of myth in the development of literature was considered by a number of Soviet scientists. Soviet authors turn to ritual and myth not as eternal models of art, but as the first laboratory of poetic imagery. O. M. Freidenberg described the process of transformation of myth into various poetic plots and genres of ancient literature. M. M. Bakhtin’s work on Rabelais is of great theoretical significance, showing that the key to understanding many works of literature of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance is folk carnival culture, folk “laughing” creativity, genetically associated with ancient agrarian rituals and holidays. The role of myth in the development of art (mainly based on ancient material) was analyzed by A.F. Losev. A number of works that highlighted various aspects of the problem of “mythologism” in literature appeared in the 60-70s. (E. M. Meletinsky, V. V. Ivanov, V. N. Toporov, S. S. Averintsev, Yu. M. Lotman, I. P. Smirnov, A. M. Panchenko, N. S. Leites).
Lit.: Averintsev S.S., “Analytical psychology” by K. G. Jung and the patterns of creative fantasy, in the book: On modern bourgeois aesthetics, V.Z, M., 1972; Bakhtin M. M., The work of Francois Rabelais and the folk culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, M., 1965; Bogatyrev P. G., Questions of the theory of folk art, M., 1971; Weiman R., History of Literature and Mythology, trans. from German, M., 1975; Veselovsky A. N„ Historical poetics. L.. 1940; Gure
Vich A. Ya., Categories of medieval culture, [M„ 1972]; Vygotsky L.S., Psychology of Art, 2nd ed., M., 1968; Zhirmunsky V.M., Folk heroic epic, M.-L., 1962;
Ivanov Vyach. I., Dionysus and Proto-Dionysianism, Baku, 1923; Ivanov V.V., Toporov V.N.. Invariant and transformation in mythological and folklore texts, in: Typological studies in folklore, M., 1975; Ivanov V.V., About one parallel to Gogol’s “Viy”, in the same place, [vol.] 5, Tartu, 1971; Toporov V.N., On cosmogonic sources of early historical descriptions, in the same place, [vol.] 6, Tartu, 1973; by him, On the structure of Dostoevsky’s novel in connection with archaic schemes of mythological thinking, in the book: Structure of texts and semiotics of culture. The Hague-P., 1973; Likhachev D.S., Panchenko A.M., “The Laughing” World of Ancient Rus', L., 1976; Likhachev D.S., Poetics of Old Russian Literature, 2nd ed. L., 1971; Losev A.F., Aristophanes and his mythological vocabulary, in the book: Articles and studies on linguistics and classical philology, M., 1965; Lotman Yu. M., Uspensky B. A., The role of dual models in the dynamics of Russian culture (until the end of the 18th century), in the book: Works on Russian and Slavic philology, vol. 28. Tartu, 1977; Meletinsky E.M., The origin of the heroic epic. Early forms and archaic monuments, M„ 1963; his, Poetics of Myth, M., 1976 (lit.); Maksimov D. E., On the mythopoetic beginning in Blok’s lyrics, in the book: Blok collection, [vol.] 3, Tartu, 1979; Mints Z. G., On some “neo-mythological” texts in the works of Russian symbolists, ibid.; Myth - folklore - literature. L., 1978; Panchenko A. M., Smirnov I. P., Metaphorical archetypes in Russian medieval literature and poetry of the early 20th century, in the book: Proceedings of the Department of Old Russian Literature, [vol.] 26, L., 1971; Ryazanovsky F. A., Demonology in Old Russian Literature, M., 1915; Smirnov I.P., From a fairy tale to a novel, in the book: Proceedings of the Department of Old Russian Literature, vol. 27, L., 1972; "Tristan and Isolde". From the heroine of love of feudal Europe to the goddess of matriarchal Afreurasia, L., 1932;
Tolstoy I.I. - Articles on folklore, M.-L„ 1966; Uspensky B. A., Towards the study of the language of ancient painting, in the book: Zhegin L. F., The language of a pictorial work, [M., 1970];
Uspensky B. A., On the semiotics of the icon, in the book: Works on sign systems, [vol.] 5, Tartu, 1971;
Frank-Kamenetsky I., Primitive thinking in the light of Japhetic theory and philosophy, in: Language and Literature, vol. 3, M., 1929;
Florensky P. A., Reverse perspective, in the book: Works on sign systems, [t.] Z. Tartu, 1967; Freidenberg O. M., Poetics of plot and genre. L., 1936; hers. Myth and literature of antiquity, M., 1978; Foucault M., Words and Things, trans. from French, M., 1977; Jacobson R., Levi-Strauss K., “Cats” by Charles Baudelaire, [trans. from French], in the book: Structuralism: “for” and “against”, M., 1975; Barthes R., Mythologies, P., 1970; Bodkin M., Archetypal patterns in poetry, N. Y., 1963; Dorfles Gillo, Mythes et rites d'aujourd'hul, P., 1975; Caseirer E.. The myth of the state, New Haven, 1946; Dickinaon N., Myth on the modern stage, Urbana, 1969; Frye N.. The anatomy of critlcism, Princeton, 1957; him. The secular scripture, Camb. (Mass.), 1976; Hamburger K.. Von Sophokles zu Sartre, Stuttg., 1962; Jakobson R., Puskin and his sculptural myth, The Hague-P., 1975; Norton D. S„ Rushton P., Classical myths in English literature, N. Y., 1952;
Myth and literature. Contemporary theory and practice, ed. by J. Vickery, Lincoln, 1966; Myths and motifs in literature, ed. by D. J. Burrows, F. R. Lapides, J. T. Shawcross, N. Y., ;
Myth and symbol, Lincoln, 1963; Rank 0., Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden, Lpz.-W., 1909; Relchhart N., Der griechische Mythos im Modernen deutschen und österreichischen Drama, W., 1951 (Dias.); Weinberg K., Kafkas Dichtungen Die Travestien der Mythos, V. - Munch., 1963; Weston Y., From ritual to romance, Camb., 1920; White J. J., Mythology in the modern novel. A study of prefigurative techniques, Princeton, 1971.
YU. M. Lotman, Z. G. Mints, E. M. Medetinsky.
Yu. M. Lotman, Z. G. Mints, E. M. Meletinsky “Literature and Myths”- article in MNME ----The constant interaction of literature and myths occurs directly, in the form of “transfusion” of myth into literature, and indirectly: through the fine arts, rituals, folk festivals, religious mysteries, and in recent centuries - through scientific concepts of mythology, aesthetic and philosophical teachings and folklore. This interaction takes place especially actively in the intermediate sphere of folklore. Folk poetry, by type of consciousness, gravitates towards the world of mythology, however, as a phenomenon of art, it is adjacent to literature. The dual nature of folklore makes it a cultural mediator in this regard, and the scientific concepts of folklore, becoming a fact of culture, have a great influence on the processes of interaction between literature and myths.
The relationship between myth and written fiction can be considered in two aspects: evolutionary and typological. The evolutionary aspect provides for the idea of myth as a certain stage of consciousness, historically preceding the emergence of written literature. Literature, from this point of view, deals only with destroyed, relict forms of myth and itself actively contributes to this destruction. Myth and the art and literature that gradually replace it are subject only to opposition, since they never coexist in time. The typological aspect implies that mythology and written literature are compared as two fundamentally different ways of seeing and describing the world, existing simultaneously and in interaction and only manifested to varying degrees in certain eras. Mythological consciousness and the texts generated by it are characterized, first of all, by the non-discreteness, unity, iso- and homomorphism of the messages conveyed by these texts. That which, from the point of view of non-mythological consciousness, is different, dissected, subject to comparison, in myth appears as a variant (isomorph) of a single event, character or text. Very often in myth, events do not have a linear development, but only repeat themselves eternally in a certain given order; the concepts of “beginning” and “end” are fundamentally not applicable to them. So, for example, the idea that a narrative “naturally” begins with the birth of a character (god, hero) and ends with his death (and, in general, highlighting the interval between birth and death as some significant segment) apparently belongs to a non-mythological tradition. In a mythological type narrative, the chain of events: death - funeral feast - burial is revealed from any point and equally any episode implies the actualization of the entire chain. The principle of isomorphism, taken to the limit, reduced all possible plots to a single plot, which is invariant to all mythic-narrative possibilities and all episodes of each of them. All the variety of social roles in real life in myths was “collapsed” in the extreme case into one character. Properties that in a non-mythological text appear as contrasting and mutually exclusive, embodied in hostile characters, within a myth can be identified in a single ambivalent image.
In the archaic world, the texts created in the mythological sphere and in the sphere of everyday life were different in both structural and functional respects. Mythological texts were distinguished by a high degree of ritualization and narrated about the fundamental order of the world, the laws of its origin and existence. Events, the participants of which were gods or the first people, ancestors, etc., once accomplished, could be repeated in the constant cycle of world life. These stories were fixed in the memory of the collective with the help of a ritual, in which, probably, a significant part of the narrative was realized not through verbal storytelling, but through superlinguistic means: through gestural demonstration, ritual play performances and thematic dances, accompanied by ritual singing. In its original form, the myth was not so much told as it was acted out in the form of a complex ritual performance. Texts serving the everyday practical needs of the team, on the contrary, were purely verbal messages. Unlike texts of the mythological type, they talked about excesses (deeds or crimes), about the episodic, about the everyday and the individual. Designed for instant perception, if necessary, they became mythologized and ritualized to consolidate in the minds of generations the memory of some important excess. On the other hand, mythological material could be read from the position of everyday consciousness. Then the discreteness of verbal thinking, the concepts of “beginning” and “end,” and the linearity of temporal organization were introduced into it. This led to the fact that the hypostases of a single character began to be perceived as different images. As myth evolved and literature developed, tragic or divine heroes and their comic or demonic counterparts appeared. The single hero of the archaic myth, represented in it by his hypostases, turns into many heroes who are in complex (including incestuous) relationships, into a “crowd” of gods of different names and different essences, receiving professions, biographies and an ordered system of kinship. As a relic of this process of fragmentation of a single mythological image, a tendency has been preserved in literature, coming from Menander, Alexandrian drama, Plautus and through M. Cervantes, W. Shakespeare and the romantics, N.V. Gogol, F.M. Dostoevsky, which reached the novels of the 20th century ., - provide the hero with a double companion, and sometimes with a whole bunch of satellites.
The gradual emergence of the area of convergence of mythological and historical-everyday narrative texts led, on the one hand, to the loss in this area of intermediate texts of the sacred-magical function inherent in myth, and on the other, to a smoothing out of the directly practical tasks inherent in messages of the second type. Strengthening, through the development of discrete verbal means of expressing the modeling function and meaning of aesthetic attitudes, which previously played only a subordinate role in relation to sacred or practical tasks (in relation to myth, one cannot talk about the actual artistic techniques, means of expression, style, etc.), the emergence, due to the fragmentation of a single mythological image of a plot language, led to the birth of artistic storytelling, marking the beginning of the history of art and literature.
If in the preliterate era mythological (continuum-cyclical and isomorphic) consciousness dominated, then in the period of written cultures it turned out to be almost suppressed during the rapid development of discrete logical-verbal thinking. However, it is in the field of art and literature that the influence of mytho-poetic consciousness, the unconscious reproduction of mythological structures continues to retain its significance, despite the seemingly complete victory of the principle of historical and everyday narrative. Some types and genres of fiction - epic, knightly and picaresque novels, cycles of "police" and detective stories - especially gravitate towards the "mythological" nature of artistic construction. It is found, in particular, in the interweaving of repetitions, similarities and parallels. The whole in them is clearly isomorphic to the episode, and all episodes are to some common invariant. So, for example, in “Tristan and Isolde” all the battle episodes (Tristan’s fight with Morolt of Ireland, the fight with the Irish dragon, the fight with the giant) represent variants of a single battle, and the analysis of the fight between Tristan and Isolde reveals an even more complex similarity to the battle and love scenes. In picaresque and adventure novels, the plot takes on the character of an endless buildup of episodes of the same type, built according to an invariant model (cf. “Moll Flanders” by D. Defoe, where a long chain of marriages and love adventures of the heroine, strung one after another, is nothing more than cyclical repetition mythopoetic consciousness, involuntarily dictating its laws to the author in contradiction with the protocol, dry orientation towards everyday, factual verisimilitude, characteristic of the poetics of this novel as a whole). The mythological essence of literary texts, breaking up into isomorphic, freely growing episodes (series of short stories about detectives, elusive criminals, cycles of anecdotes dedicated to certain historical figures, etc.), is also reflected in the fact that their hero appears as the demiurge of a certain conventional world, which, however, is imposed on the audience as a model of the real world. Associated with this is the phenomenon of the high mythogenicity of cinema in all its manifestations - from mass commercial films to masterpieces of cinematography. The main reason here is the syncretism of the artistic language of cinema, the high importance of non-discrete elements in this language. An important role, however, is also played by the involuntary cyclization of various films with the participation of the same actor, forcing us to perceive them as variants of a certain single role, an invariant character model. When films are cyclized not only by an actor, but also by a common hero, genuine film myths and film epics arise, similar to those created by Chaplin - in antithesis to the Hollywood myth of success, in the center of which the “man of fortune” invariably stood, - the myth of the loser, the grandiose epic of the inept, but an “unlucky” person who gets his way.
Along with the spontaneous influences of mythological consciousness on the creative process that arise in addition to the subjective orientation of the authors, each era in the history of art is characterized by a certain awareness of the relationship between art and mythology. The functional opposition between literature and myths takes shape in the era of writing. The most ancient layer of culture after the emergence of writing and the creation of ancient states is characterized by a direct connection between art and mythology. However, the functional difference, which affects especially acutely at this stage, determines that the connection here invariably turns into rethinking and struggle. Mythological texts, on the one hand, are the main source of subjects in art during this period. However, on the other hand, archaic mythology is conceived as something pre-cultural and subject to ordering, bringing into a system, and a new reading. This reading is carried out from the position of consciousness, already alien to the continual-cyclical view of the world. Myths turn into many magical stories, stories about gods, stories about demiurges, cultural heroes and ancestors, transformed into linear epics, subordinate to the movement of historical time. It is at this stage that such narratives sometimes take on the character of stories about violations of the basic prohibitions imposed by culture on human behavior in society - prohibitions on incest and the murder of relatives: the dying - the born hero can appear as two persons - father and son, and self-denial of the first hypostasis for the sake of the second may become parricide. The “continuous” marriage of a dying and reborn hero turns in some stories into an incestuous union of son and mother. If previously the dismemberment of the body and ritual torture was an honorable act - a hypostasis of ritual fertilization and a guarantee of future rebirth, now it turns into a shameful torture (the transitional moment is captured in stories about how ritual torture - cutting, boiling - in some cases leads to rejuvenation, and in others - to a painful death; cf. the myth of Medea, “Folk Russian Legends” by A. N. Afanasyev, No. 4-5, the ending of “The Little Humpbacked Horse” by P. P. Ershov, etc.). When read linearly, the mythological narrative about the established and correct order of life turned into stories about crimes and excesses, creating a picture of the disorder of moral norms and social relations. This allowed mythological stories to be filled with a variety of socio-philosophical content.
The poets of the Greek archaic subjected myths to radical revision, bringing them into a system according to the laws of reason (Hesiod - “Theogony”), ennobling them according to the laws of morality (Pindar). The influence of the mythological worldview persists during the heyday of Greek tragedy (Aeschylus - “Chained Prometheus”, “Agamemnon”, “Choephori”, “Eumenides”, making up the “Oresteia” trilogy, etc.; Sophocles - “Antigone”, “Oedipus the King” , “Electra”, “Oedipus at Colonus”, etc.; Euripides - “Iphigenia at Aulis”, “Medea”, “Hippolytus”, etc.). It affects not only the appeal to mythological subjects: when Aeschylus creates a tragedy based on a historical plot (“Persians”), he mythologizes history itself. Tragedy, through the revelation of the semantic depths of mythology (Aeschylus) and its aesthetic harmonization (Sophocles), comes to a rationalistic criticism of its foundations (Euripides). A kind of coincidence of opposites in the approach to mythology, characteristic of all Greek classics, manifested itself in Aristophanes in the combination of a deep commitment to mythological motifs and archetypes with an extremely daring mockery of myths.
Roman poetry gives new types of attitudes towards myths. Virgil (“Aeneid”) connects myths with a philosophical understanding of history, with religious and philosophical issues, and the structure of the image he developed largely anticipates Christian mythologems (the predominance of the symbolic significance of the image over its figurative concreteness). Ovid (“Metamorphoses”), on the contrary, separates mythology from religious content. He completes a conscious game with “given” motives, transformed into a unified system; in relation to an individual myth, any degree of irony or frivolity is allowed, but the system of mythology as a whole retains its “sublime” character.
With Christianity, a specific type of mythology entered the horizons of the Mediterranean and then the pan-European world. The literature of the Middle Ages arises and develops on the basis of the pagan mythology of “barbarian” peoples (folk heroic epic), on the one hand, and on the basis of Christianity, on the other. The influence of Christianity becomes predominant. Although ancient myths were not forgotten in the Middle Ages, medieval art was characterized by an attitude towards myth as a product of paganism. It was at this time that pagan mythology began to be identified with an absurd fiction, and words derived from the concept of “myth” were painted in negative tones. At the same time, the exclusion of myth from the realm of “true” faith to a certain extent facilitated its penetration as a verbal and ornamental element into secular poetry. In church literature, mythology, on the one hand, penetrated into Christian demonology, merging with it, and on the other hand, it was used as material for searching for encrypted Christian prophecies in pagan texts. The purposeful demythologization of Christian texts (that is, the expulsion of the ancient element) in fact created an extremely complex mythological structure in which the new Christian mythology (in all the richness of its canonical and apocryphal texts), a complex mixture of mythological ideas of the Roman-Hellenistic Mediterranean, local pagan cults of newly baptized peoples Europe acted as constituent elements of a diffuse mythological continuum. The images of Christian mythology often underwent the most unexpected modifications (for example, Jesus Christ in the ancient Saxon epic poem “Heliand” appears as a powerful and warlike monarch).
The Renaissance created a culture under the sign of secularization and de-Christianization. This led to a sharp increase in the non-Christian components of the mythological continuum. The Renaissance gave rise to two opposing models of the world: an optimistic one, gravitating towards a rationalistic, intelligible explanation of the cosmos and society, and a tragic one, recreating the irrational and disorganized appearance of the world (the second model directly “flowed” into Baroque culture). The first model was built on the basis of rationally ordered ancient mythology, the second activated the “lower mysticism” of folk demonology mixed with the extra-canonical ritualism of Hellenism and the mysticism of side heretical movements of medieval Christianity. The first had a decisive influence on the official culture of the High Renaissance. The fusion of the myths of Christianity and antiquity with the mythologized material of personal fate into a single artistic whole was accomplished in Dante's The Divine Comedy. The literature of the Renaissance adopted Ovid's style of approaching myths, but at the same time he absorbed a tense anti-ascetic mood (“The Fiesolan Nymphs” by G. Boccaccio, “The Tale of Orpheus” by A. Poliziano, “The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne” by L. Medici, etc.). To an even greater extent than in “book” literature, myth is visible in folk carnival culture, which served as an intermediate link between primitive mythology and fiction. Living connections with folklore and mythological origins were preserved in the drama of the Renaissance (for example, the “carnivalesque” dramaturgy of W. Shakespeare - the clownish plan, crownings - debunkings, etc.). F. Rabelais (“Gargantua and Pantagruel”) found a vivid manifestation of the tradition of folk carnival culture and (more broadly) some general features of mythological consciousness (hence the hyperbolic, cosmic image of the human body with the oppositions of top and bottom, “travels” inside the body, etc.). d.). The second model was reflected in the works of J. van Ruysbrouck, Paracelsus, the visions of A. Durer, the images of H. Bosch, M. Niethardt, P. Bruegel the Elder, the culture of alchemy, etc.
Biblical motifs are characteristic of Baroque literature (the poetry of A. Gryphius, the prose of P. F. Quevedo y Villegas, the dramaturgy of P. Calderon), which at the same time continues to turn to ancient mythology (“Adonis” by G. Marino, “Polyphemus” by L. Gongora, etc.). English poet of the 12th century. J. Milton, using biblical material, creates heroic and dramatic works in which tyrant-fighting motifs are heard (“Paradise Lost”, “Paradise Regained”, etc.).
The rationalistic culture of classicism, creating the cult of Reason, completes, on the one hand, the process of canonization of ancient mythology as a universal system of artistic images, and on the other, “demythologizes” it from the inside, turning it into a system of discrete, logically arranged allegory images. Appeal to a mythological hero (along with a historical or, more accurately, pseudo-historical hero), his fate and deeds is typical of the “high” genres of classicist literature, primarily tragedy (P. Corneille - “Medea”, “Oedipus”, J. Racine - “Thebaid”, “Andromache”, “Iphigenia in Aulis”, “Phaedra”, “biblical” dramas - “Esther”, “Athaliah”). Burlesque poetry, which parodied classicist epics, often also used mythological subjects (“Virgil in Disguise” by the French poet P. Scarron, “The Aeneid, translated into the Little Russian language” by I. P. Kotlyarevsky, etc.). The consistent rationalism of the aesthetics of classicism leads to the formalization of the methods of using myth.
The literature of the Enlightenment less often uses mythological motifs and mainly in connection with current political or philosophical issues. Mythological subjects are used to construct a plot (“Merope”, “Mohammed”, “Oedipus” by Voltaire, “Messiad” by F. Klopstock) or to formulate universal generalizations (“Prometheus”, “Ganymede” and other works by J. V. Goethe, “ The Triumph of the Winners”, “The Complaint of Ceres” and other ballads by F. Schiller).
Romanticism (and before it, pre-romanticism) put forward slogans of turning from reason to myth and from the rationalized mythology of Greco-Roman antiquity to national-pagan and Christian mythology. "Opening" in mid. XVIII century for the European reader of Scandinavian mythology, Macpherson's "Ossian", folklorism of I. Herder, interest in Eastern mythology, in Slavic mythology in Russia in the 2nd half of the 18th - early. The 19th centuries, which led to the emergence of the first experiments in a scientific approach to this problem, prepared the invasion of images of national mythology into the art of romanticism. At the same time, the romantics also turned to traditional mythologies, but they manipulated their plots and images extremely freely, using them as material for independent artistic mythologizing. Thus, F. Hölderlin, the first in the poetry of modern times to organically master the ancient myth and become the founder of new myth-making, included, for example, among the Olympian gods the Earth, Helios, Apollo, Dionysus, and his supreme god is Ether; in the poem “The Only One,” Christ is the son of Zeus, brother of Hercules and Dionysus; in “The Death of Empedocles” Christ draws closer to Dionysus, the death of the philosopher Empedocles is interpreted both as a cyclical renewal (death - rejuvenation) of a dying and resurrected god and at the same time as the painful death on the cross of a stoned prophet.
The natural philosophical views of the romantics contributed to an appeal to lower mythology, to various categories of natural spirits of the earth, air, water, forest, mountains, etc. Emphatically free, sometimes ironic play with images of traditional mythology, the combination of elements of various mythologies and especially experiments with their own literary myth-like fiction (alraun from L. Arnim’s story “Isabella of Egypt”, “Little Tsakhes” by E. T. A. Hoffmann), repetition and duplication of heroes in space (doubles) and especially in time (heroes live forever, die and are resurrected or are incarnated in new creatures), a partial shift of emphasis from the image to the situation as a certain archetype, etc. is a characteristic feature of the myth-making of the romantics. This often manifests itself even where heroes of traditional myths act. For example, in G. Kleist’s tragedy “Pentesilea” (the plot is the unhappy love of the queen of the Amazons Penthesilea for the hero Achilles), it’s not so much about mythological characters, but about some archetypal situation of gender relations. The tragedy implicitly contains a “Dionysian”, simultaneously archaizing and modernizing interpretation of ancient mythology, which to a certain extent anticipates the Nietzschean one. From “Pentesileia” a thread stretches to numerous examples of romantic and post-romantic drama in Germany and Scandinavia, turning to the mythological tradition (for example, the young G. Ibsen, F. Grillparzer, the German writer K. F. Hebbel - a tragedy based on the biblical story “Judith” , the Nibelungen trilogy, etc.). Hoffmann's myth-making was especially unconventional. In his stories (the stories “The Golden Pot”, “Little Tsakhes”, “Princess Brambilla”, “The Lord of the Fleas”, etc.) fantasy appears as a fabulousness, through which a certain global mythical model of the world is visible. The mythical element is included to some extent in Hoffmann’s “scary” stories and novels - as a chaotic, demonic, nocturnal, destructive force, as an “evil fate” (“The Devil’s Elixir”, etc.)? The most original thing about Hoffmann is the fantasy of everyday life, which is very far from traditional myths, but is built to some extent on their models. The noble war of toys led by the Nutcracker against the mouse army (“The Nutcracker”), the talking doll Olympia created with the participation of the demonic alchemist Coppelius (“Sandman”), the little freak protected by the fairy who miraculously appropriates other people’s talents (“Little Tsakhes”), and etc. - various options for mythologizing the ills of modern civilization, in particular soulless technicalism, fetishism, and social alienation. In Hoffmann's work, the tendency of romantic literature in relation to myth was most clearly manifested - an attempt at a conscious, informal, unconventional use of myth, sometimes acquiring the character of independent poetic myth-making.
At the beginning of the 19th century. There is a strengthening of the role of Christian mythology in the general structure of romantic art. “The Martyrs” by A. Chateaubriand marks an attempt to replace ancient myth with Christian myth in literature (although the very consideration of Christian texts as mythological testifies to the deep process of secularization of consciousness). At the same time, atheistic sentiments became widespread in the system of romanticism, expressed in the creation of the demonic mythology of romanticism (J. Byron, P. B. Shelley, M. Yu. Lermontov). The demonism of romantic culture was not only an external transfer into the literature of the beginning. XIX century images from the myth of the hero-fighter of God or the legend of the fallen rejected angel (Prometheus, Demon), but also acquired the features of genuine mythology, which actively influenced the consciousness of an entire generation, created highly ritualized canons of romantic behavior and gave rise to a huge number of mutually isomorphic texts.
Realistic art of the 19th century. focused on the demythologization of culture and saw its task in liberation from the irrational heritage of history for the sake of natural sciences and the rational transformation of human society. Realistic literature sought to reflect reality in life forms adequate to it, to create an artistic history of its time. Nevertheless, she (using the possibility of a non-bookish, life-like relationship to mythological symbols, opened by romanticism) does not completely abandon mythologizing as a literary device, even on the most prosaic material [the line going from Hoffmann to the fiction of Gogol (“The Nose”), to naturalistic symbolism E. Zola (“Nana”)]. In this literature there are no traditional mythological names, but the moves of fantasy, likened to archaic ones, actively reveal in the newly created figurative structure the simplest elements of human existence, giving the whole depth and perspective. Titles such as “Resurrection” by L. N. Tolstoy or “Earth” and “Germinal” by E. Zola lead to mythological symbols; The mythology of the “scapegoat” can be seen even in the novels of Stendhal and O. Balzac. But in general, realism of the 19th century. marked by “demythologization.”
The revival of general cultural interest in myth occurred at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 19th century. XX centuries, but the revival of the romantic tradition, accompanied by a new wave of mythologizing, began already in the second half of the 19th century. The crisis of positivism, disappointment in metaphysics and analytical ways of knowledge, criticism of the bourgeois world coming from romanticism as heroless and anti-aesthetic gave rise to attempts to return a “holistic”, transformative volitional archaic perception of the world, embodied in myth. In the culture of the late 19th century. “neo-mythological” aspirations arise, especially under the influence of R. Wagner and F. Nietzsche. Very diverse in their manifestations, social and philosophical nature, they largely retain their significance for the entire culture of the 20th century.
The founder of “neo-mythologism” Wagner believed that it is through myth that people become the creators of art, that myth is the poetry of deep life views that have a universal character. Turning to the traditions of German mythology, Wagner created the opera tetralogy “The Ring of the Nibelung” (“Das Rheingold”, “Die Walküre”, “Siegfried”, “Twilight of the Gods”). If Hebbel, who was guided by the historical school in folklore, based his “Nibelungs” on the Austrian “Song of the Nibelungs,” already devoid of pagan attire, then Wagner, who was guided by the solar-mythological school, relies almost entirely on a more archaic, Scandinavian version. Wagner strives, through archetypal musical and mythological leitmotifs, to express the “eternal” problems so capaciously that they would include the cardinal social and moral conflicts of the 19th century. He makes the motif of “cursed gold” (a theme popular in romantic literature and marking a romantic criticism of bourgeois civilization) the core of the entire tetralogy. Wagner's masterly intuition was reflected, for example, in reconstructing the image of water as a symbol of the chaotic state of the universe (the beginning and end of the Ring of the Nibelung). Wagner's approach to mythology created an entire tradition (which was subject to gross vulgarization by the epigones of late romanticism, who strengthened the features of pessimism, mysticism and nationalism characteristic of Wagner's work).
Appeal to mythology in con. XIX - early XX centuries differs significantly from the romantic (although initially it could be interpreted as “neo-romanticism”). Emerging against the background of a realistic tradition and a positivist worldview, it is always in one way or another (often polemically) correlated with this tradition. Initially, the philosophical basis of “neo-mythological” searches in art were irrationalism, intuitionism, partly relativism and (especially in Russia) pantheism. Subsequently, “neo-mythological” structures and images could become the language for any literary texts, including those that were meaningfully opposed to intuitionism. At the same time, however, this language itself was restructured, creating different, ideologically and aesthetically very distant directions within myth-oriented art. At the same time, despite intuitionist and primitivist declarations, “neo-mythological” culture from the very beginning turns out to be highly intellectualized, aimed at self-reflection and self-description; Philosophy, science and art strive here for synthesis and influence each other much more strongly than at previous stages of cultural development. Thus, Wagner’s ideas about mythological art as the art of the future and Nietzsche’s ideas about the saving role of the mythologizing “philosophy of life” give rise to the desire to organize all forms of knowledge as mythopoetic (as opposed to analytical comprehension of the world). Elements of mythological structures of thinking penetrate into philosophy (Nietzsche, V. Solovyov, later the existentialists), psychology (S. Freud, K. Jung), into works about art (cf. especially impressionist and symbolist criticism - “art about art”) . On the other hand, art oriented toward myth (symbolists, at the beginning of the 20th century, expressionists) gravitates toward philosophical and scientific generalizations, often openly drawing them from the scientific concepts of the era (cf. the influence of Jung’s teaching on J. Joyce and other representatives “neo-mythological” art from the 20-30s of the XX century).
“Neo-mythologism” reveals an equally close connection with panaestheticism: the idea of the aesthetic nature of being and aestheticized myth as a means of the deepest penetration into its secrets - and with panaesthetic utopias. Myth for Wagner is the art of the revolutionary future, overcoming the herolessness of bourgeois life and spirit; myth for Vyach. Ivanov, F. Sologub and many other Russian symbolists of the beginning. The 20th century is the beauty that alone is capable of “saving the world” (F. M. Dostoevsky).
Modernist mythologism is largely generated by the awareness of the crisis of bourgeois culture as a crisis of civilization as a whole. He was fueled by both a romantic rebellion against bourgeois “prose” and fear of the historical future, and partly of the revolutionary disruption of the established, although experiencing a crisis, world. The desire to go beyond socio-historical and spatio-temporal boundaries in order to identify “universal” content (“eternal” destructive or creative forces arising from human nature, from universal human psychological and metaphysical principles) was one of the moments of the transition from realism of the 19th century. to the art of the 20th century, and mythology, due to its original symbolism, turned out to be a convenient language for describing eternal models of personal and public behavior, certain essential laws of the social and natural cosmos.
A common feature of many phenomena of “neo-mythological” art was the desire for an artistic synthesis of diverse and multidirectional traditions. Already Wagner combined in the structure of his innovative operas mythological, lyrical, dramatic and musical principles of constructing an integral text. At the same time, the mutual influence of myth and various arts turned out to be natural, for example, the identification of the repetition of ritual with repetitions in poetry and the creation of a leitmotif technique in music (Wagner’s opera), and then in the novel, drama, etc. at their intersection. “Syncretic” genres arose: “myth novel” of the 20th century, “Symphonies” by A. Bely on mythological or myth-imitating plots, where the principles of symphonic composition are used, etc. (cf. the later statement of K. Lévi-Strauss about the musical-symphonic nature of myth ). Finally, all these aspirations for a “synthesis of arts” were embodied in a unique way in the beginning. XX century in cinema.
Revived interest in myth throughout the literature of the 20th century. manifested itself in three main forms. The use of mythological images and plots, coming from romanticism, is sharply increasing. Numerous stylizations and variations are created on themes set by myth, ritual or archaic art. Wed. the role of the mythological theme in the works of D. G. Rossetti, E. Burne-Jones and other Pre-Raphaelite artists, such dramas of Russian symbolists as “Prometheus” by Vyach. Ivanova, “Melanippe the Philosopher” or “Famira-Kifared” Inn. Annensky, “Dead Protesilaus” by V. Ya. Bryusov, etc. At the same time, in connection with the entry of the art of non-European peoples into the arena of world culture, the circle of myths and mythologies that European artists are guided by is significantly expanding. The art of the peoples of Africa, Asia, and South America is beginning to be perceived not only as aesthetically valuable, but also, in a certain sense, as the highest norm. Hence the sharp increase in interest in the mythology of these peoples, which is seen as a means of decoding the corresponding national cultures (cf. Nazim Hikmet’s thought about the deep democracy of the “new art” of the 20th century, getting rid of Eurocentrism). At the same time, a revision of views on their national folklore and archaic art begins; Wed I. Grabar’s “discovery” of the aesthetic world of the Russian icon, the introduction of folk theater, fine and applied arts (signs, artistic utensils) into the range of artistic values, interest in preserved rituals, legends, beliefs, conspiracies and spells, etc. Undoubtedly decisive the influence of this folklorism on writers like A. M. Remizov or D. G. Lawrence. Secondly (also in the spirit of the romantic tradition), there appears an attitude toward the creation of “author’s myths.” If realist writers of the 19th century. strive to ensure that the picture of the world they create is similar to reality, then the early representatives of “neo-mythological” art - the symbolists, for example, find the specificity of artistic vision in its deliberate mythologization, in the departure from everyday empiricism, from a clear temporal or geographical location. At the same time, however, the deep object of mythologizing even among the symbolists turns out to be not only “eternal” themes (love, death, loneliness of the “I” in the world), as was the case, for example, in most of M. Maeterlinck’s dramas, but precisely the collisions of modern reality - the urbanized world of an alienated personality and its object and machine environment (“Octopus Cities” by E. Verhaeren, the poetic world of Sh. Baudelaire, Bryusov) or the kingdom of eternally motionless provincial stagnation (“Nedotykomka” by F. Sologub). Expressionism (cf. “R. U. R.” by K. Capek) and especially the “neo-mythological” art of the 2nd and 3rd quarter of the 20th century. only finally cemented this connection between mythologizing poetics and the themes of modernity, with the question of the paths of human history (cf., for example, the role of “author’s myths” in modern utopian or dystopian works of so-called science fiction).
Most clearly, however, the specificity of the modern appeal to mythology was manifested in the creation (in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, but especially from the 1920-1930s) of such works as “myth novels” and similar ones “ drama-myths”, “poems-myths”. In these strictly “neo-mythological” works, myth is fundamentally neither the only line of the narrative nor the only point of view of the text. It collides and is difficult to correlate either with other myths (which give a different assessment of the image than it does), or with themes of history and modernity. Such are the “myth novels” of Joyce, T. Mann, “Petersburg” by A. Bely, the works of J. Updike, etc.
The largest representatives of the mythological novel of the 20th century - the Irish writer Joyce and the German writer T. Mann - gave examples of literary “mythologization” characteristic of modern art, which in many respects oppose each other in their main ideological orientation. In Joyce's novel Ulysses, the epic-mythological plot of the Odyssey turns out to be a means of ordering the primary chaotic artistic material. The heroes of the novel are compared with the mythological characters of the Homeric epic; numerous symbolic motifs in the novel are modifications of traditional symbols of mythology - primitive (water as a symbol of fertility and femininity) and Christian (washing as baptism). Joyce also resorts to unconventional symbols and images that represent examples of the original mythologization of everyday prose (a bar of soap as a talisman, ironically representing a modern “hygienic” civilization, a tram “transformed” into a dragon, etc.). If in Ulysses mythologism provides only additional support for the symbolic interpretation of the “naturalistically” presented material of life observations (the immediate plot of the novel is one day of the city life of Dublin, as if passed through the consciousness of the main characters), then in the novel Finnegans Wake a complete (or almost complete) identification of characters with their mythological counterparts (motifs from Celtic mythology are used here). For the mythological modeling of history, Joyce most often uses the mythologem of the dying and resurrecting god-man - as a “metaphor” for the cyclical concept of history. In the novel “The Magic Mountain” by Mann, ritual-mythological models predominate. The process of educating the main character (the main theme of the novel) is associated with the initiation rite, some episodes are comparable to common mythologies of the sacred wedding, have ritual and mythological parallels (the ritual killing of the king-priest, etc., the “magic mountain” itself, in a certain sense, can be compared with kingdom of the dead, etc.). In Mann's Joseph and His Brothers, as in Joyce's Finnegans Wake, the plot itself is mythological. Mann's plot is taken from the Bible and presented as a “historicized” myth or a mythologized historical legend. Joyce's idea of the meaninglessness of history is opposed here by the concept of the deep meaning of history, which is revealed as culture develops, artistically realized with the help of images of biblical mythology. The mythologization of the historical past entails a poetics of repetition. It is presented by Mann, unlike Joyce, not as an evil infinity of historical processes, but as a reproduction of patterns presented by previous experience; cyclical ideas are combined with linear ones, which corresponds to the specifics of this mythological material. The fate of Joseph is metaphorized through ritual mythologies, and initiation motives recede here into the background before the cult of the dying and resurrecting god. The poetics of mythologizing in Mann (as in Joyce) is not a spontaneous, intuitive return to mythological thinking, but one of the aspects of an intellectual, even “philosophical” novel and is based on a deep knowledge of ancient culture, religion and modern scientific theories.
The myth-making of the Austrian writer F. Kafka (novels “The Trial”, “The Castle”, short stories) is specific. The plot and heroes have a universal meaning for him, the hero models humanity as a whole, and the world is described and explained in terms of plot events. In Kafka's work, the opposition between primitive myth and modernist myth-making is clearly visible: the meaning of the first is to introduce the hero to the social community and to the natural cycle, the content of the second is the “mythology” of social alienation. The mythological tradition, as it were, turns into its opposite in Kafka; it is, as it were, a myth inside out, an anti-myth. Thus, in his short story “Metamorphosis,” which is in principle comparable to totemic myths, the hero’s metamorphosis (his transformation into an ugly insect) is not a sign of belonging to his clan group (as in ancient totemic myths), but, on the contrary, a sign of isolation, alienation, conflict with family and society; the heroes of his novels, in which a large role is played by the opposition of “initiated” and “uninitiated” (as in ancient initiation rites), cannot pass the “initiatory” tests; “celestial beings” are given to them in a deliberately reduced, prosaic, ugly form.
The English writer D. G. Lawrence (“Mexican” novel “The Plumed Serpent” and others) draws ideas about myth and ritual from J. Fraser. For him, turning to ancient mythology is an escape to the realm of intuition, a means of salvation from modern “decrepit” civilization (chanting of pre-Columbian bloody ecstatic cults of Aztec gods, etc.).
Mythology of the 20th century. has many representatives in poetry (the Anglo-American poet T. S. Eliot - the poem “The Waste Land”, where reminiscences from evangelical and Buddhist legends, “Parzival”, etc. organize the plot fabric; at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries - the Irish poet and playwright W.B. Yeats and other representatives of the “Irish Renaissance” with their dominant interest in national mythology, etc.).
In Russian symbolism, with its cult of Wagner and Nietzsche, the search for a synthesis between Christianity and paganism, myth-making was declared the very goal of poetic creativity (Vyach. Ivanov, F. Sologub, etc.). Poets of other movements of Russian poetry at the beginning of the century also turned to mythological models and images very widely. For V. Khlebnikov, mythology became a unique form of poetic thinking. He not only recreates mythological stories of many peoples of the world (“The Maiden God”, “The Death of Atlantis”, “Ka”, “Children of the Otter”, “Vila and the Goblin”), but also creates new myths, using the model of the myth, reproducing its structure ( “Crane”, “Granddaughter of Malushi”, “Marquise Dezes”). O. Mandelstam, with rare sensitivity to historical and cultural phenomenology, operates with the primary elements of ancient mythological consciousness (“Take for joy from my palms...”, “Sisters - heaviness and tenderness...”, “On the stone spurs of Pieria...”). The work of M. I. Tsvetaeva often intuitively penetrates into the very essence of archaic mythological thinking (for example, the recreation of the cult-magical image of the strangled goddess of femininity - the tree - the moon in the 2nd part of the Theseus dilogy, brilliantly confirmed by scientific research of Greek religion). Mythological motifs and images occupy a large place in the poetry of M. A. Voloshin (poetry cycles “Cimmerian Spring”, “The Ways of Cain”).
Mythologism is also widely represented in the drama of the 20th century: the French playwright J. Anouilh [tragedies based on biblical (“Jezebel”) and ancient (“Medea”, “Antigone”) plots], P. L. Sh. Claudel, J. Cocteau ( tragedy “Antigone”, etc.), J. Giraudoux (plays “Siegfried”, “Amphitryon 38”, “There Will Be No Trojan War”, “Electra”), G. Hauptmann (tetralogy “Atrides”), etc.
The relationship between the mythological and historical in works of “neo-mythological” art can be very different - and quantitatively (from individual images-symbols and parallels scattered throughout the text, hinting at the possibility of a mythological interpretation of what is depicted, to the introduction of two or more equal storylines: cf. “The Master and Margarita” by M. A. Bulgakov), and semantically. However, clearly “neo-mythological” works are those where myth acts as a language - an interpreter of history and modernity, and these latter play the role of that motley and chaotic material that is the object of ordering interpretation. So, in order for the meaning of the artistic concept of the novel “Peter and Alexei” by D. S. Merezhkovsky to become clear, it is necessary to discern in the collisions of the bloody struggle of Peter I with his son the New Testament collision of the Father-demiurge and the Son - the sacrificial lamb. The cognitive value of myth and historical events in such texts is completely different, although the interpretation of myth as the deep meaning of history can be motivated differently by different authors (myth is the bearer of the “natural” consciousness of primitive man, not distorted by civilization; myth is a reflection of the world of the first heroes and the first events , only varying in countless collisions of history; mythology is the embodiment of the “collective unconscious”, according to Jung, and a kind of encyclopedia of “archetypes”, etc.). However, these motivations in “neo-mythological” works are not carried out completely consistently: the positions of myth and history may not correlate unambiguously, but “flicker” within each other, creating a complex play of points of view. Therefore, a very common feature of “neo-mythological” works is irony - a line that comes in Russia from A. Bely, in Western Europe - from Joyce. However, the plurality of points of view typical of “neo-mythological” texts only at the beginning of this art embodies the ideas of relativism and the unknowability of the world; becoming an artistic language, it gains the opportunity to reflect other ideas about reality, for example, the idea of a “polyphonic” world, the meanings of which arise from the complex summation of individual “voices” and their relationships.
“Neo-mythologism” in the art of the 20th century. He also developed his own, largely innovative poetics - the result of influences both from the very structure of ritual and myth, and from modern ethnological and folkloristic theories. It is based on a cyclical concept of the world, “eternal return” (Nietzsche). In the world of eternal returns, in any present phenomenon its past and future incarnations shine through. “The world is full of correspondences” (A. Blok), you just need to be able to see in the countless flickering “masks” (history, modernity) the face of the world’s unity (embodied in myth) shining through them. But for this reason, each single phenomenon signals countless others, the essence of which is their similarity, a symbol.
It is also specific to many works of “neo-mythological” art that the function of myths in them is performed by literary texts (mainly of the narrative type), and the role of mythologems is quotations and paraphrases from these texts. Often what is depicted is decoded by a complex system of references to both myths and works of art. For example, in “The Small Demon” by F. Sologub, the meaning of the line of Lyudmila Rutilova and Sasha Pylnikov is revealed through parallels with Greek mythology (Lyudmila is Aphrodite, but also a fury; Sasha is Apollo, but also Dionysus; the masquerade scene, when an envious crowd almost tears Sasha , dressed in a masquerade female costume, but Sasha “miraculously” escapes - an ironic, but also having a serious meaning, a hint at the myth of Dionysus, including such essential motifs as tearing into pieces, changing appearance, salvation - resurrection), with mythology the Old and New Testaments (Sasha is the serpent-tempter), with ancient literature (idyls, “Daphnis and Chloe”). For F. Sologub, myths and literary texts that decipher this line constitute a kind of contradictory unity: they all emphasize the kinship of the heroes with the pristinely beautiful archaic world. Thus, a “neo-mythological” work creates something typical for the art of the 20th century. panmythologism, equating myth, literary text, and often historical situations identified with myth (cf., for example, the interpretation in “Petersburg” by A. Bely of the story of Azef as a “myth of world provocation”). But, on the other hand, such an equation of myth and works of art noticeably expands the overall picture of the world in “neo-mythological” texts. The value of archaic myth, myth and folklore is not opposed to the art of later eras, but is difficult to compare with the highest achievements of world culture.
In modern (after World War 2) literature, mythologizing most often acts not so much as a means of creating a global “model”, but as a technique that allows you to emphasize certain situations and collisions with direct or contrasting parallels from mythology (most often ancient or biblical) . Among the mythological motifs and archetypes used by modern authors is the plot of the “Odyssey” (in the works of A. Moravia “Contempt”, G. K. Kirsche “Message for Telemacus”, H. E. Nossak “Nekia”, G. Hartlaub “ Not every Odysseus"), "Iliad" (in K. Beuchler - "Stay on Bornholm", G. Brown - "The Stars Follow Their Course"), "Aeneid" (in "The Death of Virgil" by G. Broch, "Change" by M Butor, “Vision of the Battle” by A. Borges), the history of the Argonauts (in “The Journey of the Argonauts from Brandenburg” by E. Langeser), the centaur motif in J. Updike (“Centaur”), Orestes in A. Döblin (“Berlin, Alexander Platz”, combined with the story of Abraham and Isaac), Gilgamesh (“Gilgamesh” by G. Bachmann and “River Without Banks” by X. X. Yann), etc.
Since the 50-60s. the poetics of mythologizing develops in the literatures of the “third world” - Latin American and some Afro-Asian. Modern intellectualism of the European type is combined here with archaic folklore and mythological traditions. The peculiar cultural and historical situation makes possible coexistence and interpenetration, sometimes reaching the point of organic synthesis, elements of historicism and mythology, social realism and genuine folklore. For the work of the Brazilian writer J. Amado (“Gabriela, cloves and cinnamon,” “Shepherds of the Night,” etc.), the Cuban writer A. Carpentier (the story “The Kingdom of the Earth”), the Guatemalan writer M. A. Asturias (“The Green Pope” etc.), Peruvian - X. M. Arguedas (“Deep Rivers”) is characterized by the duality of socio-critical and folklore-mythological motifs, as if internally opposed to the exposed social reality. Colombian writer G. García Márquez (novels “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, “Autumn of the Patriarch”) draws widely on Latin American folklore, supplementing it with ancient and biblical motifs and episodes from historical legends. One of the original manifestations of Marquez’s myth-making is the complex dynamics of the relationship between life and death, memory and oblivion, space and time.
Thus, literature throughout its history has been correlated with the mythological heritage of primitiveness and antiquity, and this relationship has fluctuated greatly, but in general, evolution has been moving in the direction of “demythologization.” “Remythologization” of the 20th century. although it is primarily associated with the art of modernism, due to the various ideological and aesthetic aspirations of artists who turned to myth, it is far from being reducible to it. Mythologizing in the 20th century. became a tool for the artistic organization of material not only for typically modernist writers, but also for some realist writers (Mann), as well as for “Third World” writers who turned to national folklore and myth, often in the name of preserving and reviving national forms of culture. The use of mythological images and symbols is also found in some works of Soviet literature (for example, Christian-Jewish motifs and images in Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita”).
The problem of “art and myth” became the subject of special scientific consideration, mainly in literary criticism of the 20th century, especially in connection with the emerging “remythologization” in Western literature and culture. But this problem has been raised before. Romantic philosophy early. XIX century (Schelling et al.), who attached special importance to myth as a prototype of artistic creativity, saw in mythology a necessary condition and primary material for all poetry. In the 19th century A mythological school developed, which derived various genres of folklore from myth and laid the foundations for the comparative study of mythology, folklore and literature. A significant influence on the general process of “remythologization” in Western cultural studies was exerted by the work of Nietzsche, who anticipated some characteristic tendencies in the interpretation of the problem of “literature and myth” by tracing in “The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music” (1872) the importance of rituals for the origin of artistic types and genres. The Russian scientist A.N. Veselovsky developed in the beginning. XX century the theory of primitive syncretism of types of art and types of poetry, considering primitive ritual to be the cradle of this syncretism. The starting point of what developed in the 30s. XX century in Western science, the ritual-mythological approach to literature was the ritualism of J. Fraser and his followers - the so-called. Cambridge group of researchers of ancient cultures (D. Harrison, A. B. Cook, etc.). In their opinion, at the heart of the heroic epic, fairy tale, medieval chivalric romance, revival drama, works using the language of biblical-Christian mythology, and even realistic and naturalistic novels of the 19th century. there were initiation rites and calendar rites. This direction attracted particular attention from the mythologizing literature of the 19th century. Jung's establishment of well-known analogies between various types of human fantasy (including myth, poetry, unconscious fantasy in dreams), his theory of archetypes expanded the possibilities of searching for ritual-mythological models in modern literature. For N. Fry, who is largely guided by Jung, myth, merging with ritual and archetype, is the eternal subsoil and source of art; mythologizing novels of the 20th century. seem to him to be a natural and spontaneous revival of myth, completing the next cycle of the historical cycle in the development of poetry. Frye asserts the constancy of literary genres, symbols and metaphors based on their ritual and mythological nature.
The ritual-mythological school has achieved positive results in the study of literary genres genetically associated with ritual, mythological and folklore traditions, in the analysis of the rethinking of ancient poetic forms and symbols, in the study of the role of plot and genre traditions, collective cultural heritage in individual creativity. But the interpretation of literature exclusively in terms of myth and ritual, characteristic of the ritual-mythological school, and the dissolution of art in myth are extremely one-sided.
In a different way and from other positions - in compliance with the principle of historicism, taking into account substantive, ideological problems - the role of myth in the development of literature was considered by a number of Soviet scientists. Soviet authors turn to ritual and myth not as eternal models of art, but as the first laboratory of poetic imagery. O. M. Freidenberg described the process of transformation of myth into various poetic plots and genres of ancient literature.
M. M. Bakhtin’s work on Rabelais is of great theoretical significance, showing that the key to understanding many works of literature of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance is folk carnival culture, folk “laughing” creativity, genetically associated with ancient agrarian rituals and holidays.
The role of myth in the development of art (mainly based on ancient material) was analyzed by A.F. Losev. A number of works that highlighted various aspects of the problem of “mythologism” in literature appeared in the 60-70s. (E. M. Meletinsky, V. V. Ivanov, V. N. Toporov, S. S. Averintsev, Yu. M. Lotman, I. P. Smirnov, A. M. Panchenko, N. S. Leites).
Mythology (Greek mythología, from mýthos - tradition, legend and lógos - word, story, teaching)
a fantastic idea of the world, characteristic of a person of a primitive communal formation, as a rule, transmitted in the form of oral narratives - myths, and the science that studies myths. To a person who lived in the conditions of a primitive communal system, based on the spontaneous collectivism of his closest relatives, only his communal-clan relations were understandable and closest. He transferred these relationships to everything around him. The earth, sky, flora and fauna were presented in the form of a universal tribal community, in which all objects were thought of not only as animate, and often even intelligent, but necessarily related beings. In M. these ideas received the form of generalizations. For example, a craft, taken as a whole, with all its characteristic features, in all its development and with all its historical destinies, was thought of as a kind of living and intelligent being that controlled all possible types and areas of craft. This is where the mythological images of gods-artisans, gods-farmers, gods-herders, gods-warriors, etc. arose: the Slavic Veles (Volos) or the Celtic Damona, which represented one or another generalization of cattle breeding, the Greek Athena Pallas or the Abkhazian Erysh ( goddesses of spinning and weaving), as well as gods of fertility, vegetation, guardian gods and patron demons among the Aztecs, New Zealand, Nigeria and many other peoples of the world. Generalizing concepts in M. arose gradually. The initial forms of M. were Fetishism (when individual things were animated, or, more accurately, the complete non-separation of a thing from the “idea” of the thing itself) was thought of, and Totemism (the fetishization of a given community or tribe, expressed in the image of one or another founder of this community or tribe). Animism was a higher stage of development of M. ,
when a person began to separate the “idea” of a thing from the thing itself. In connection with the further growth of generalizing and abstracting thinking, a different level of mythological abstraction was created. She reached the idea of a single “father of men and gods,” although at this stage the images of such mythological rulers contained a lot of remnants of fetishistic and animistic antiquity and were deprived of extreme absolutization. This is how Olympian Zeus appeared ,
overthrowing his predecessors into the underworld, and subjugating other gods as his children. Homer cites a number of ancient and pre-Olympic features of this Zeus, making his figure historically complex and diverse. These are the supreme deities, the creators of the world, who arose during the era of patriarchy in Polynesia, Tahiti, the Yakuts, and African tribes under different names, with different functions and with varying degrees of mythological abstraction. M.'s development went from chaotic, disharmonious to orderly, proportionate, and harmonious, as can be seen when comparing mythological images of different historical periods. Mythological images of the era of matriarchy were characterized by clumsy and often even ugly forms and were very far from the later plastic harmony. Three-headed, four-headed and fifty-headed, hundred-armed, as well as all kinds of evil and vengeful monsters or half-monsters were encountered very often in world magic during the era of matriarchy (for example, in Ancient Babylon - the beast-like ruler of the world Tiamat, in Australia - a one-legged killer spirit, in Tahiti - the god Oro, demanding bloody sacrifices, in North America - 7 giant cannibal brothers, etc.). In the era of patriarchy, ideas arose and took shape about a heroic personality who defeats the forces of nature, which until then seemed invincible, consciously organizes social life, as well as the protection of a given community from the hostile forces of nature and neighboring tribes. For example, the Babylonian Marduk kills the monstrous Tiamat, creating heaven and earth from her body. The famous epic about the hero Gilgamesh e. Iran arose in Babylon. the god Mithras fights evil spirits and defeats the terrible bull. The Egyptian god Ra fights the underground serpent Apep. Ancient Greek Zeus defeats the titans, giants and Typhon; Hercules performs his 12 labors. The German Sigurd kills the dragon Fafnir, Ilya Muromets kills the Serpent Gorynych, etc. However, the myths that have come down to us are a complex complex of strata (rudiments) of different eras, for example, the myth of the Cretan Minotaur. The bull head of the Minotaur indicates that the origin of this image refers to the period of early matriarchy, when man did not yet distinguish himself from animals. The Minotaur is depicted with stars and bears the name Zvezdny - this is already a cosmic generalization. The Minotaur is killed by the hero Theseus - this part of the myth could only arise during the period of patriarchy. Mythological thinking very early came to various kinds of historical and cosmogonic generalizations. With the transition of people to a sedentary lifestyle, when they found themselves economically connected with a particular locality, their idea of the unity of a tribe or clan intensified, and the cult of ancestors and corresponding myths about ancestors (historical M.) appeared. M. was created about the changes of previous divine and demonic generations (M. cosmogonic and theogonic). Attempts to understand the future and the afterlife led to the emergence of eschatological mathematics. Being a worldview of a primitive communal system, every myth also contained a cognitive function, an attempt to understand complex issues: how man came into existence, the world, what is the secret of life and death, etc. In the primitive communal formation, M. was a kind of naive faith, the only form of ideology. In early class society, M. became an allegorical form of expression of various kinds of religious, socio-political, moral and philosophical ideas of this society; it was widely used in art and literature. According to the political views and style of a particular author, it received one or another design and use. For example, Aeschylus' Pallas Athena turned out to be the goddess of the rising democratic Athens, and the image of Prometheus was endowed by Aeschylus with advanced and even revolutionary ideas. In this sense, M. has never died; mythological images are still used today by modern politicians, writers, philosophers and artists. Having been a form of awareness of nature and human existence for thousands of years, materialism is considered by modern science as a chronicle of the eternal struggle between old and new, as a story about human life, its sufferings and joys. The scientific approach to the study of medicine arose during the Renaissance. However, until the 18th century. in Europe, mainly ancient M. was studied; acquaintance with the history, culture and medicine of Egypt, the peoples of America, and the East made it possible to move on to the comparative study of medicine of different peoples. In the 18th century A historical understanding of M. was given by the Italian philosopher G. Vico. In comparison with Vico’s theory, the French Enlightenment with its rejection of the historical approach, which viewed mathematics as a product of ignorance and deception, as superstition, was a step back (B. Fontenelle, Voltaire, D. Diderot, C. Montesquieu, etc.). On the contrary, the English poet J. Macpherson, the German writer and philosopher I. G. Herder and others interpreted M. as an expression of popular wisdom. Romanticism increased interest in M. The collection and presentation of folk tales, legends, fairy tales and myths began, and the so-called. The mythological school, which interpreted myths as a source of national culture and attracted M. to explain the origin and meaning of folklore phenomena (its first representatives were the German scientists C. Brentano, J. and W. Grimm, L. Arnim, and others). Within the framework of the mythological school in the mid-19th century. a number of positivist mythological theories arose: the solar-meteorological theory (German scientists A. Kuhn, M. Muller, Russians - F. I. Buslaev, L. F. Voevodsky, O. F. Miller, etc.), which interpreted myths as an allegory of those or other astronomical and atmospheric phenomena; theory of "lower M." or “demonological” (German scientists W. Schwarz, W. Manhardt, etc.), which presented myths as a reflection of the most ordinary phenomena of life; animistic theory, whose supporters transferred ideas about the human soul to all of nature (English scientists E. Tylor, G. Spencer, E. Lang, German - L. Frobenius, Russian - W. Klinger, etc.). Gained widespread popularity in the 19th century. historical and philological theory (German scientists G. Usener, U. Vilamowitz-Möllendorff and others, Russians - V. Vlastov, F. F. Zelinsky, E. G. Kagarov, S. A. Zhebelev, N. I. Novosadsky, I. I. Tolstoy and others), who used methods of literary and linguistic analysis in the study of myths. Modern bourgeois theories are based exclusively on logical and psychological data from the history of human consciousness, as a result of which M. is interpreted as a subtle and highly intellectual phenomenon, which it could not have been at the dawn of human history. These theories are, as a rule, abstract and ahistorical in nature. Among the psychological theories of the 20th century. The concept of the Austrian scientist S. Freud was very popular, which reduced all processes of social life and culture to the mental life of the individual, highlighting subconscious, mainly sexual needs, which are supposedly the only factor in all conscious human behavior. One of the greatest Freudians, the Swiss scientist K. Jung, saw in M. an expression of the unconscious fantasy of the primitive human collective. In contrast to Freudianism, the “prelogical theory” (late 20-30s of the 20th century) of the French scientist L. Levy-Bruhl claims that primitive thought is supposedly based only on phenomenal memory and on associations by contiguity. The cultural-historical theory of myth formation is widespread (English scientists J. Fraser, G. R. Levy, B. K. Malinovsky, French scientists J. Dumézil, P. Centiv, American scientists R. Carpenter, etc.). This theory views every myth as a reflection of ritual and a reinterpretation of an ancient magical rite. The structural typology of myth (the French scientist C. Levi-Strauss in the works of the 50s - early 70s of the 20th century) sees in myth a field of unconscious logical operations designed to resolve the contradictions of human consciousness. Mythological theories of bourgeois science, using one or another ability or activity of an individual person (sexual, affective-volitional, mental, religious, scientific, etc.) to explain mythology, provide an explanation of one or another side of myth-making. None of these concepts can explain the social essence of materialism, for explanations should be sought not in the individual abilities of the human spirit, but in the social conditions that gave rise to the ideology of a particular society and, consequently, its integral part - materialism. This materialistic concept lies in based on the works of Soviet scientists A. M. Zolotarev, A. F. Losev, S. A. Tokarev, Yu. P. Frantsev, B. I. Sharevskaya and others; The cultural and historical interpretation of M. on a Marxist basis and the associated comparative historical analysis of the world epic are given by V. Ya. Propp, P. G. Bogatyrev, V. M. Zhirmunsky, V. I. Abaev, E. M. Meletinsky , I. N. Golenishcheva-Kutuzova and others. Lit.: Marx K., Forms preceding capitalist production, Marx K. and Engels F., Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 46, part 1; Engels F., Origin of the family, private property and the state, ibid., vol. 21; Losev A.F., Dialectics of myth, M., 1930; his, Ancient mythology in its historical development, M., 1957; Frantsev Yu. P., At the origins of religion and free thought, M. - L., 1959; Tokarev S. A., What is mythology?, in the book: Questions of the history of religion and atheism, 1962, in, 10; his, Religion in the history of the peoples of the world, M., 1964; by him, Early forms of religion and their development, M., 1964; Meletinsky E. M., The origin of the heroic epic, M., 1963; by him, Myths of the ancient world in comparative light, in the book: Typology and interrelationships of the literature of the ancient world, M., 1971, p. 68-133; Zolotarev A. M., Tribal system and primitive mythology, M., 1964; Shakhnovich M.I., Primitive mythology and philosophy, Leningrad, 1971; Trencheni-Waldapfel I., Mythology, trans. from Hungary, M., 1959; Donini A., People, idols and gods, trans. from Italian, M., 1962; Levi-Strauss K., The structure of myth, “Questions of Philosophy”, 1970, No. 7; The mythology of all races, ed. J. A. MacCulloch, v. 1-12, Boston, 1916-1928; Levi-Strauss S., Mythologiques, t. 1-4, P., 1964-71; Kirk G. S., Myth, its meaning and functions in ancient and other cultures, Berk - Los Ang., 1970. For a list of works on mythology as a science, see Art. Mythology, Philosophical Encyclopedia, vol. 3. A. F. Losev.
Great Soviet Encyclopedia. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia. 1969-1978 .
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Mythology... Spelling dictionary-reference book
Myth (from the Greek mythos - word, legend) is now of interest to both writers and literary researchers. The controversy surrounding it is due not least to the fact that the term “myth” is often used imprecisely. It denotes lies, illusion, faith, convention, fantasy, and a product of the imagination in general. Sometimes any tradition is equated to a mythological tradition.
The term “myth novel” was coined to denote a genre type of novel that uses myth. Disputes arise as to whether this or that work should be classified as such or not. For example, O. Chiladze's novel "The Iron Theater". Some critics (for example, L. Anninsky) considered this work a myth novel, others (for example, K. Imedashvili) - a historical novel. In order to understand the uniqueness of the existence of myth in modern literature, it is necessary to form an idea of what myth was originally. Let's figure it out.
Mythology is the core of the spiritual culture of ancient society. In ancient times, it represented the unity of the embryos of art, religion, and pre-scientific ideas about nature and society. The peculiarities of myth are the lack of distinction between the natural and the supernatural, the weak development of abstract concepts, a sensory-concrete character, and “metaphorical nature.”
An ancient myth has several functions, one of which is explanatory. However, its main function is practical: the reproduction in rituals of the mythical “initial times” and organizing cosmic forces that defeat the forces of chaos contributed to the maintenance of social order (since social forces were identified with cosmic forces). The identification of social and cosmic forces occurred due to the fact that the bearers of mythological consciousness did not separate themselves from nature. Their perception was characterized by animism, that is, the animation of nature. People accepted the creations of their imagination as the primary causes of existence.
In accordance with totemistic ideas (that human races originate from animals, birds, plants or any other natural objects), animals, plants, etc. are depicted as the ancestors of people in ancient myths. The first ancestors simultaneously create certain groups of animals (less often plants) and human clan groups, transfer to people the necessary objects and skills, and organize them socially.
In more developed mythologies, a transition is planned from the first ancestors to the gods who act as the creators of the world. The act of creation itself appears in different ways: as the spontaneous transformation of some objects into others, as a by-product of the activities of mythological heroes, it can have a conscious creative character. Often the origin of natural objects is depicted in terms of their theft by the hero from the original custodians. In one Indian myth, the sun and moon are imagined to be extracted from the belly of a fish. In rare cases, the world is created by the word of the creator.
The emergence of the world in myth looks like the transformation of chaos into space, like a transition from the formless water element to land with the subsequent separation of heaven from earth. The fight against the forces of chaos can take the form of a struggle between generations of gods (in Hesiod). The origin of the cosmos is often depicted as the development from an egg or the transformation of a humanoid creature killed by the gods. From the egg emerge the Egyptian gods Ra and Ptah, the Indian Brahma, and the Chinese Pan-gu. In Vedic mythology, the Universe was created from the members of the body of Purusha - the thousand-headed, thousand-eyed, thousand-legged first man. From the mouth of Purusha the gods create priests, from the hands - warriors, etc. Sometimes in myths the earth appears in the form of animals (for example, in the form of a giant moose cow - among the Siberian peoples). The most common mythological model of the cosmos is the “plant” model in the form of a giant cosmic tree.
The mythological image is characterized by generality. A mythological character, his wife, children, and an entire class of mythological creatures can be united under one name. The ambiguity and associative nature of myth make it convenient for use in written literature, in particular in modern literature. The well-known vitality of mythology is also explained by the fact that its thought is concentrated on such “eternal” problems as the mystery of birth and death, fate, etc.
Mythology influences literature through fairy tales, heroic epics (the background of which is connected with myth), as well as through fine arts, rituals, and folk festivals. The influence of the mythological worldview is felt during the heyday of Greek tragedy (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides). The literature of the Middle Ages is influenced by pagan mythology and (mainly) Christian. Dante's "Divine Comedy" is a fusion of Christian and non-Christian myths. During the Renaissance, the influence of non-Christian mythology increases ("The Fiesolan Nymphs" by G. Boccaccio, "The Tale of Orpheus" by A. Poliziano, "The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne" by L. Medici). The connection with folklore and mythological origins is felt in the works of Shakespeare and Rabelais. Representatives of Baroque literature also addressed them (the poetry of A. Gryphius and others). English poet of the 17th century. J. Milton, using biblical material, created heroic-dramatic works in which tyrant-fighting motifs sound ("Paradise Lost", "Paradise Regained"). Mythological material was used by the literature of classicism (Cornel, Racine), the Enlightenment ("Mohammed" and "Oedipus" by Voltaire, "Prometheus" and "Ganymede" by Goethe, "The Complaint of Ceres" by Schiller). An active appeal to mythology is characteristic of romanticism (Hölderlin, Hoffmann, Byron, Shelley, Lermontov). German romantics saw in it ideal art, set the task of creating a new, artistic mythology, and advocated a synthesis of the “sensibility” of ancient paganism and the “spirituality” of Christianity.
Realism of the 19th century did not completely abandon the use of myths ("Resurrection" by Tolstoy, "The Idiot" by Dostoevsky). At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, there was an increase in interest in mythology. Symbolists (Vyach. Ivanov, F. Sologub, V. Bryusov), representatives of various modernist movements turn to it. Myth is widely used in modern foreign literature (J. Updike, G. Garcia Marquez, etc.).
Increased interest in myth in the 20th century. is associated with the art of modernism, but this does not indicate the latter’s monopoly on myth (mythology found application in the work of the realist T. Mann). For the 20th century characterized by the desire to identify eternal principles (which entails going beyond the socio-historical and spatio-temporal framework), the idea of cyclical repetition of prototypes under different “masks”. In contrast to the antipsychological nature of ancient myth, the mythology of the 20th century. associated with the psychology of the subconscious. Its language does not coincide with the language of ancient myths - images are now used metaphorically, the meaning of traditional myths when used often changes to the opposite.
In modern literature, the myth has found application in the works of Ch. Aitmatov, the Dirgel brothers, O. Chiladze and other writers. In Chiladze’s already mentioned novel “The Iron Theater” one can find a cyclical model of time, a plant model of the world (the image of the tree of life), and a mythological understanding of death (as renewal). Having found himself in a mountain hut, Gela, like Hans Castorp from T. Mann’s “The Magic Mountain,” finds himself “as if in a non-existent world and time exiled by the imagination.” This is like a “test” of the hero (comparable to a mythological visit to the land of death). Like a mythological hero, through this “temporary death” Gela comprehends the wisdom of life. Nato in the novel appears as the “eternal mother”, Gela as the “son of the past” and “father of the future”. The work contains many mythological reminiscences and quotes from the Bible.
However, Chiladze’s novel also has a rich social and political context. The genre form of this work is synthetic. Very noticeable is the psychological component, which lies, as it were, “on the surface.” The deep essence of the novel is a philosophical component (a comparison with the philosophical novel of J. Joyce, T. Mann is possible), this is what apparently prompted the author to turn to the material of mythology. From a poetic point of view, myth here is obviously used metaphorically (just like in J. Joyce. T. Mann).
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