The novel by Anna Starobinets «The First squad. The Truth». Occult theories and a multi-level system of motional oppositions

The article is devoted to the analysis of the novel by A. A. Starobinets "The First squad. Truth" as a work that explores occult theories, images and motifs. The doctrines of the Hollow Earth by Miguel Serrano and Eternal Ice by Hans Gerbigir influenced the plot, the chronotope, the multi-level system of motional oppositions, the system of characters, portraits, landscapes, the objective world, exteriors, interiors, etc. of the novel by A. A. Starobinets. These occult theories also determine the writer's wide appeal to the motives of dissolution, liquification, and animalization. The collapsing, carnal, bestial reality of the Earth becomes such because of the cosmic struggle of ice and fire and because of the influence of the Moon as a physical and metaphysical icy satellite of our planet. The hollow Earth acts as a place of battle between representatives of ice and fire and as a space of posthumous existence. The artistic reality of the novel "The First Squad. The Truth", his various motives are in opposition to each other, correlating with ice or fire, and at the same time they contain the beginnings of their opposites. This duality, connected with the external and internal duality of the characters and the world, allows us to overcome the eternal destructive contradiction in the novel. The fighting heroes of the book, and in general the West and Russia, are reconciled by love, it also removes the opposition of the Eternal return of the same and icy unearthly eternity, the space of the Earth and the Hollow Earth. The relevance of the article is determined by the interest of modern literary criticism in borderline phenomena in the field of literary genres ("The First squad. The Truth" is a novel belonging to the "big" literature and at to fiction, to the horror genre).