System of Cycle-Forming Motifs in A. A. Starobinets’s Collection “The Icarus Gland”

This article is devoted to the analysis of the system of cycle-forming motifs in Anna Starobinets's collection “The Icarus Gland” ( The Book of Metamorphoses ). The scholarly novelty of the study consists in the fact that a systemic analysis of the cycle as a whole is undertaken for the first time, rather than an analysis of its individual stories. The study substantiates that the volume represents a secondary authorial cycle possessing structural integrity, a continuous plotline, and a shared system of elements. The analysis identifies and systematizes the primary cycle-forming motifs: zooand phytomorphic optics marking the archaization of consciousness; the motif of artificiality (puppetry) as reverse metamorphosis (the transformation of a human into a doll); the “Other” (from the existential to the extraterrestrial); predation as a universal principle of reality; various modes of corporeal and spiritual metamorphoses (from indifference to the death of the soul); oneiropoetics (dream as a mode of spiritual captivity); the motif of dark magic (demonic sorcery instead of miracle); and the dystopian plot in its various modalities (eugenics, predatory city, religious dystopia, transhumanism, game-based dystopia). The analysis establishes internal echoes between the seven works of the collection at the level of recurrent imagery (solar plexus, doll, insect) and leitmotivic series (birds, predation, olfactory code, delirium, song). The principles of the cycle's organization are defined as paradoxical inversion, materialization of metaphor, the erasure of boundaries, negative oneiropoetics, and pervasive corporeality.