Poetics of the “gothic” short story by V. Brusov

The article is devoted to the analysis of V. Brusov’s short prose in a comparative aspect with the short stories of Western writers of the 19th and early 20th century in order to demonstrate the specificity of Brusov’s neo-gothic short story, as well as to point out its fundamental differences from foreign short stories of the same period, developing the theme of the “terrible” and “horrible”. The authors of the article, relying on the literary tradition, summarize the key properties of the “gothic” novel. Scientific novelty consists in the fact that for the first time, firstly, the specificity of the existence of “gothic” motifs and images in the texts of V. Brusov is revealed; secondly, their embodiment is compared with the plots of Western contemporaries – the creators of the “gothic” canon. The study was undertaken to identify the peculiarities of the refraction of the “gothic” tradition in the short story by V. Brusov. As a result, it has been established that the Russian “gothic” novel is renewed thanks: firstly, to the key motifs of dream/hallucination, madness, duality/mirroring; secondly, the emphasis on the physiological nature of phenomena that cause not fear, but disgust; thirdly, the construction of the manor chronotope, known from classical literature, but which is now not a place for the development of love intrigue, but a space in which the violence, secrets and sins of the characters inhabiting it are hidden.