Article

Name: Artistic philosophy of death in short stories by G. Gazdanov

Authors: E. N. Proskurina

In the section Study of literature

Abstract: The paper reveals the place of death in the artistic picture of the world presented in the short stories by G. Gazdanov. With varying degrees of importance for the development of the plot, the deaths and talks about death take place in every work of the writer, and it is often the death that proves to be the highest measure of the behaviour and emotional actions of the characters. The analysis performed has led to the conclusion that the existence of characters in the artistic world of Gazdanov’s short stories, and of the world itself, is determined not so much by life as by death. The space of death appears more real than the sphere of life. The power of death over the fate of characters plays the dominant role because of its inevitability, forming a picture of life as a movement toward the death, passing with different speed and length. This is largely due to the difference of narrative strategies of the two genres in Gazdanov’s prose: novels and short stories. Within the whole metanovel, the initial plot of character’s «complete incarnation» is distinctly formed; however, within the framework of the short stories it is not drawn. They rather realize the experience of «negative initiation».

Keywords: works of g. gazdanov, artistic picture of the world, philosophy of death, plot, motif, short stories

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