MAN'S SPIRITUAL QUEST IN THE PROSE OF ERKIN A'ZAM: ARTISTIC AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

This article investigates the artistic mechanisms representing man’s spiritual quest and psychological state in the prose of Erkin A’zam. The study aims to identify the poetic devices that generate the protagonist’s internal conflict in the writer's novellas and to substantiate their functional interrelation. The novellas Otoyining tug‘ilgan yili (“The Year of Otoyi’s Birth”), Kechikayotgan odam (“The Late Man”), and Shovqin (“Noise”) were selected as research material. The texts were examined using comparative-typological, structural-semantic, psychological, and contextual analysis methods. The results demonstrate that in Erkin A’zam’s poetics, the spiritual quest is modeled not through direct authorial judgment, but via character reaction, internal contradiction, irony, symbolic detail, and semantic oppositions such as “noise–silence.” The findings indicate that psychologism in the author’s prose is not merely a distinct technique, but a systemic poetic principle that shapes characterization and conflict.