NEO-MYTHOLOGICAL NOVEL OF THE 1920s–40s AS A GENRE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE

This article is devoted to the genesis of the genre of neo-mythological novel in Russian Soviet literature of the 1920–40s. Neo-myth (as well as myth) is a broad concept associated with the sphere of thinking, human consciousness, and with the sphere of art, literary creativity, poetics, too. Researchers define neo-myth, myth and neo-mythologism differently. Khalizev calls any individual author’s myth, including the myth of romantics, a neo-myth, Meletinsky and Mintz emphasize that the idea of neo-mythologism is applicable primarily to the culture of the Art Nouveau era. In their opinion, neo-myth differs from archaic myths and from the myth of romantics primarily in its pragmatics: neo-myth does not strive to harmonize the world — rather, it is used for satirical illumination of reality and, ultimately, to expose what seems to be an ideal or at least a norm (Meletinsky calls neo-myth an antimyth). Mintz emphasizes the role of Russian symbolism in the creation of a specific artistic language, which a little later turned out to be in demand in the prose of mature modernism. Both Mintz and Meletinsky agree that of all literary genres, the novel is the most suitable for the embodiment of neo-myth. Among Russian post-symbolist novels, the works of Bulgakov, Zamyatin, Klychkov and Platonov stand out: these are texts that can be called precedent. Their precedent nature (and at the same time their internal kinship, what unites these novels) is determined by the authors’ orientation toward myth as a special way of understanding the world and organizing artistic material. Platonov, Bulgakov, Zamyatin, and Klychkov are interested in myth as a “text-generating” model of the world order and the human psyche. At the same time, if a new novel is likened to a myth, then the opposite is also true: a new myth begins to be built according to the laws of the novel, since the worldview of a person in the 20th century was formed by the novel (see Mandelstam). The national specificity of the Russian neo-mythological novel is manifested in the area of chronotope (village, generalized provincial Russia in case of Klychkov and Platonov; local myth — St. Petersburg and Moscow — for Zamyatin and Bulgakov), as well as in the sphere of genre (the use of genre elements of fairy tales, 169 mystery, dystopia, etc. by the authors). In relation to the neo-mythological novel, we can also talk about the memory of the genre: parable, fairy tale, mystery and especially dystopia are among the most popular ones in modern culture.