Aspects of the embodiment of the literary archetype "old man and old woman" in Vasily Yakovlev's story "The Larch That Aged with Me"

The question of the representation of archetypes in literature has been repeatedly addressed by researchers. However, in Yakut literature, the problem of reproducing archetypal images and their creative interpretation by writers has not been sufficiently explored. This article examines the archetypal pair of old man and old woman, which has taken on a distinctive embodiment in the story "So the Larch Has Aged with Me" by Yakut prose writer Vasily Yakovlev. The author addresses universal human questions and presents a national perspective on the world, rooted in a traditional way of life. The aim of the work is to describe the correlation between the images of the main characters, the old man and the old woman, in Vasily Yakovlev's story "So the Larch Has Aged with Me" with the archetypal pair "old man-old woman," and to identify aspects of their embodiment. The object of the study is the story "So the Larch Has Aged with Me," and the subject is the aspects of embodying the archetypal image of "old man and old woman" in the reception and creative interpretation by the author. In this study, we rely on the method of N.V. Chernyavskaya, and in terms of chronotopic aspects, we utilize the method of M.M. Bakhtin. Comparative analysis allows us to examine the aspects of embodiment of the archetypical characteristics inherent in the paired image created by the author. The research conducted has established that in the story, the author presents the couple of the old man and old woman as guardians of enduring values and traditions of the northern people. The scientific novelty of this study lies in the fact that the archetypal paired image of "old man and old woman" is explored for the first time in the story of Yakut prose writer Vasily Yakovlev from the second half of the 20th century. The depiction of the archetypal pair "old man-old woman" in Vasily Yakovlev's novel indicates the interconnection between Yakut literature and world literature. The use of universal archetypes points to the author's appeal to the primordial foundations of human experience, endowing it with universal significance and emphasizing life values. Such an approach to the study of literary works contributes to the investigation of the national and cultural features of the embodiment of universal themes.