Article

Name: The Plot and the Characters of A. K. Tolstoy’s “Don Juan”: Between the Classical Tradition and Modernist Ideas

Authors: Liubov G. Kikhney

Griboyedov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russian Federation

In the section Literary Life of the Plot

Abstract:

The article examines A. K. Tolstoy’s intertextual strategies in his “Don Juan”. It is proved that A.K. Tolstoy, on the one hand, crystallized the main patterns of the Russian and Western European literary myth of Don Juan in the plot and images of his drama. On the other hand, he implicitly outlined the vector of development of the Donzhuan plot in the intertextual poetics of Russian modernism.

The analysis shows that A. K. Tolstoy’s romantic and Neoplatonic concept of donjuanism was sufficiently taken into account by the writers of the Silver Age. It influenced the plot and images of works with Don Juan’s theme by V. Bryusov, K. Balmont, A. Blok, N. Gumilyov, M. Tsvetaeva, B. Zaitsev, P. Potemkin, D. Kharms and A. Akhmatova, etc.

However, the motifs and images of Tolstoy’s drama underwent complex intertextual transformation: its final scene becomes a source of reminiscence, the plot functions of the characters are rethought, and new ideas are emphasized: immoralism, spiritual vampirism, Gnosticism, love magic, existential play with fate and death, and the inevitability of retribution for sins and atrocities.

Keywords: intertext, romanticism, modernism, plot, heroes, Don Juan, Donna Anna, A. K. Tolstoy, literary tradition

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