Features of the narrative structure of G. d'Annunzio's novel "The Innocent" in the light of the theory of psychoanalysis Z. Freud's

Pokhalenkov Oleg Evgen'evich Doctor of Philology Professor, Department of Literature, Kaluga State University named after K. E. Tsiolkovsky 248002, Russia, Kaluzhskaya oblast', g. Kaluga, ul. Nikolo-Kozinskaya, 56, kv. 8 olegpokhalenkov@rambler.ru Other publications by this author

Simak Nazarii Igorevich Graduate student; Institute of Philology and Mass Media; Kaluga State University named after K.E. Tsiolkovsky 26 Stepan Razin str., Kaluga, Kaluga region, 248023, Russia p0plaw0k@yandex.ru

The creative legacy of Gabriel d'Annuzio, despite his popularity at the beginning of the 20th century, was not often the focus of serious literary research (among the significant ones, we note: ^{[4],[5],[6],[9],[10],[11],[12]}). The novel "The Innocent" (Gabriele D'Annunzio "L'innocente", 1892) was an important stage in the creative path of Gabriel D'Annunzio, since it was after his release that "the writer will declare the obsolescence of naturalism, which, in his opinion, no longer meets the needs and tastes of the new generation" ^{[2, p. 241]}. In the work, there is a transition from the author's previous ideological orientation to a new one, inevitably affecting the pathos and subject matter of the works. The Innocent contains elements and motifs of Verismo, along with elements and motifs inherent in his subsequent works. The hero of The Innocent is both a "little man" in the spirit of F.M. Dostoevsky, who, like Raskolnikov, comes to self-condemnation in the finale of the novel, and a superman in the spirit of F. Nietzsche, who overcomes man in himself. In this contrasting image, where the author "preaches the cult of pity, which is strangely combined, however, in this singer of passion with an ineradicable attraction to cruelty, almost reaching sadism" ^{[2, p. 123]}, the transition in the author's ideological orientation is manifested. Thus, the purpose of the article is to analyze the novel "Innocent" through the prism of the theory of psychoanalysis by Z. Of Freud. The object is the text of the novel, and the subject is the poetics of the novel. The theoretical significance lies in the identification of the underlying subtexts of the novel, and the scientific novelty lies in the fact that in the presented work, for the first time in Russian literary criticism, the analysis of d'Annuzio's novel "The Innocent" from the point of view of Freud's theory of psychoanalysis is carried out.

It should be noted that "Innocent" gives an impulse to "glorify a strong personality" in the future of his work.'Annunzio. The roots of the motive of superhumanity can be found in the author's biography, both in the biography before writing "Innocent" and after: arriving in Rome, where the situation of the novel develops fragmentally, d'Annunzio, "thanks to his talent, extraordinary beauty and charm, became a common idol and spent several years of an unusually turbulent life among literary and secular successes" ^{[2, p. 123]}; later, d'Annunzio "began to preach the superhuman rights of a beautiful person" [ibid.], and took the position of Italian fascism. The autobiographism and special psychologism of the "Innocent" are traced here, which imply the interest of the psychoanalytic (Sigmund Freud's theory of psychoanalysis) point of view to this work, which is the purpose of the presented work.

One of the significant features of the novel's poetics is the presence of artistic details that provide a kind of "key" to interpreting the hero's behavior. Such an example is the displacement of the candle, which is directly related to the motive of sleep. Dreams are displayed in a fairly straightforward manner. They lack such a process of dream work as displacement, when there is a "reassessment of psychological values" ^{[7, p. 290]}: the secondary in the hidden content is brought to the fore of the explicit content, and the primary in the hidden content is relegated to the second. The repressed desire is not masked in any way. But there is a bias in describing reality. So, the object of displacement is a candle.

As soon as the hero of the novel, Count Tullio, enters his wife Juliana's room to discuss her infidelity with her, a description of such a detail arises – a candle: "a candle was burning on the table, giving reality to this imaginary scene, and the moving flame waved around itself the vague horror that dramatic actors create in the air with gestures of despair or threat" ^{[3, p. 161]}. It should be noted at once that the author, when mentioning the candle, immediately declares the "imaginativeness" of this scene, that is, its somnambulistic nature. The candle here is an object of displacement. Before that, it occurs during the description of the room's furnishings, when Tullio suspected Giuliana of using poison and attempting suicide: "it was evening twilight, the window was open, the curtains were swaying noisily, a candle was burning on the table in front of the mirror" ^{[3, p. 11]}. The significance of the candle image in this scene was emphasized in the subsequent memory of this incident, as it also mentions a candle: "another memory, even more distant, returned, bringing with it vivid images: a room shrouded in darkness, a window wide open, swaying curtains, a restless candle flame in front of a pale mirror, ominous ghosts, and she, Juliana, is on her feet, leaning against the closet and writhing convulsively, as if she had swallowed poison" ^{[3, p. 115]}.

The chapter ends with Tullio "rejecting every sense of resentment, every pride" ^{[3, p. 172]}, that is, renouncing his egoism, censoring it; "feeling in this woman prostrated at my feet and in himself not only human suffering, but also eternal human insignificance, the reckoning for the inevitable violations of the law, the heaviness of our animal flesh, the horror of the fatal, inexorable inevitability inscribed in the very roots of our essence, the whole carnal sorrow of our love" ^{[3, p. 172]}, that is, realizing in himself an immoral unconscious desire that contradicts the adult second instance, bows to rationality in the person of his wife, becomes on the path of growing up.

The content of the hidden thought of this scene lies in the description of Tullio's feelings before this conversation, when he first found out about Juliana's pregnancy, and immediately after the conversation. The feeling before the conversation was a feeling of jealousy: "sensual jealousy seized me with such fury that I could hardly restrain myself from rushing to Juliana, waking her up, and shouting the insane and cruel words that my sudden rage prompted me to say" ^{[3, p. 130]}. The feeling after is dislike. And it was at the moment when "some kind of dull dislike towards Juliana began to stir vaguely" ^{[3, p. 173]} in Tullio, when describing the room, the very first element of it appears: "the candle was burning on the table, and the flame from time to time swayed, as if swayed by breathing" ^{[3, pp. 172-173]}.

Unconsciously, Tullio perceives his wife as his property and is outraged that another man has encroached on her: "she belonged to another, accepted his caresses and now carries his seed in her womb" ^{[3, p. 128]} – he says. Because of this, dislike and disgust for Juliana arises, and as the highest form of this anger, which refers to a selfish and radically possessive unconscious instance, the desire for her death. The displacement of this hidden thought is the candle: she is brought to the fore, while Juliana's death wish, Tullio's central and innermost desire, is relegated to the background, censored.

The reader can judge Tullio's childish egoism both throughout the novel and in his initial confession: "I was convinced not only of the special vocation of my mind, but also of its exclusivity; and I thought that this exclusivity of my feelings and my experiences ennobled and distinguished every act of mine. Being proud and proud of this exclusivity, I was not able to understand the idea of sacrifice or self-denial, just as I was not able to deny myself the expression or manifestation of my desires" ^{[3, p. 7]}. The hero tries to fulfill all his desires, sexual needs are brought to the fore.

After sobering up and freeing oneself from the impulse of humanity, direct and frank discussions about the selfish nature of man and human love arise.: "there is no doubt that in the depths of every feeling connecting two human beings, that is, bringing two egoisms closer together, there is a certain amount of hatred. Undoubtedly, this share of unavoidable hatred always belittles our tenderest motives, our best impulses. All these noble spiritual experiences carry within them the germ of hidden decay and must be perverted" ^{[3, p. 173]}. Tullio's unconscious is openly brought to the fore by the author right in front of the reader.

The image of a candle appears in the work and in the future: during the baptism of the "Innocent" (Juliana's son by her lover) and after his death.

In the first case, the author himself gives an interpretation of the candle image: the candle is a symbol of divine fire. The importance of the candle is emphasized by the fact that "the innocent calmed down" ^{[3, p. 250]}, and "his eyes stared at the flame fluttering at the tip of a long painted candle" ^{[3, p. 250]}. In this case, baptism is the realization of a compromise between the first and second instances, the disgusting unconscious nature of man and the desire for the divine, for discipline. Giovanni di Scordio, who performs baptism, is thus a conscience, a censorship that prevents repressed thoughts from being realized. According to the plot, all his numerous children turned away from him, which is the author's statement about the decline of morals in his time – people turned away from God and succumbed to their base desires. Christianity is presented by the author as a bulwark of humanity and the antithesis of the animal principle.

Four memorial candles also surround the coffin with the dead baby. In the future, these candles, appearing in Tullio's dream, will give him a reason to shout to Federico upon awakening: "a candle! Take that candle away!" ^{[3, p. 290]}. Here, the original meaning of the candle image as Juliana's repressed death wish echoes its meaning as a trigger reminding the hero of what he has done. He asks to remove her, as he has finally embarked on the path of growing up, killed the child in himself and does not want Juliana's death, that is, his rational beginning.

The fact that the displacement is not present in the dream, but in reality, is not a reason to reject this interpretation. In this case, we can talk about an artistic, imaginative reality, which is similar to the explicit content of a dream, since hidden thoughts "do not appear to us in rational verbal forms, which our thinking usually uses, but rather are expressed symbolically, through comparisons and metaphors, as in figurative poetic language" ^{[7, p. 292]}. This "imaginative poetic language", which brings dreams and artistic reality closer together, allows for the assumption of displacement within an artistic work.

It is impossible not to mention the image of Katarina (the hero's sister, who died in childhood), speaking of the Freudian concept. Tullio's deceased sister is mentioned at the very beginning of the novel during his confession: "My only sister, Costanza, died at the age of nine, leaving endless regret in my heart. I often thought with deep longing of this little creature, who could not yet offer me the treasures of her tenderness, treasures that seemed inexhaustible to my imagination. Among all human feelings, among all earthly attachments, my sister's love has always seemed to me the most sublime and comforting. I often thought of the great lost consolation with a sadness that the immutability of death made almost mystical. Where can I find another sister on earth?.." ^{[3, p. 8]}.

Costanza is rarely mentioned throughout the novel, but her name also ends the narrative: when an innocent man is buried in the family crypt, Tullio sees Costanza's burial: "Costanza's name was carved on this stone; the letters shone faintly" ^{[3, p. 291]}.

The image of Costanza is a symbol of childhood, which Tullio, at the moment of the primacy of the unconscious over the conscious in him, wants to return. Therefore, he tries to replace Juliana with Costanza, that is, he displaces the conscious, replacing it with the unconscious and providing an outlet for the energy of repressed thoughts. Marriage forces a man to a certain responsibility and discipline, to form the principle of reality. Tullio, who is dominated by the pleasure principle at the beginning of the story, neglects these attributes of marriage and implements his infantile thoughts. This displacement by the principle of pleasure by the principle of reality, respectively, is accompanied by the substitution of the image of the wife in Tullio's eyes by the image of the sister, replacing the duties of the husband to his wife with the duties of the brother to the sister. This relationship is illustrated by the following events: Tullio should not have sexual relations with Juliana because of her illness, that is, he must suppress his basest desires in order to remain her husband, that is, an adult. It is temporary, since the principle of reality "does not abandon the ultimate goal of achieving pleasure, postpones the possibility of satisfaction and temporarily suffers displeasure on a long roundabout path to pleasure" ^{[5, p. 342]}, and Juliana would recover after a while, and pleasure would be achieved.

The result of pressure on the second instance is the manifestation of the egoism of the husband and the egoism of the wife, the birth of a bastard, whom Tullio, realizing that it is necessary to become an adult, kills, that is, kills the child literally within the artistic world and metaphorically within himself. Marriage, therefore, as an acquired social institution inherent in more developed, civilized and disciplined societies, appears to be an attribute of adulthood, and family ties, innate and requiring no discipline and a high level of civilization, appear to be attributes of childhood.

Tullio's attachment to Costanza, and Tullio has been extremely positive about her for the entire time she was mentioned in the novel, is determined by obsessive repetition, a tendency towards conservatism, since "organic drives are conservative, acquired historically and directed towards regression, towards the restoration of former states" ^{[5, p. 360]}. The object of repetition is infantile sexuality, which cannot bring pleasure, since "the early heyday of infantile sexuality was doomed to perish due to the incompatibility of desires prevailing during this period with reality and the insufficient degree of development of the child" ^{[5, p. 348]}, that is, it did not bring pleasure in childhood and does not bring it when transferred. That is why when Tullio moves away from his wife and gives himself entirely to pleasure and debauchery, that is, he realizes infantile sexuality in repetition, he does not get satisfaction: "I stayed there for about a month in a state of some kind of incomprehensible illness; in some kind of tetanus, intensified by the mists and silence of the lagoons. I only retained the feeling of my loneliness among the motionless ghosts of the world around me. For long hours, I felt nothing but the heavy, oppressive immobility of life and the slight pulse beating in my temples" ^{[3, p. 54]}. Since Costanza symbolizes childhood, she also symbolizes infantile sexuality through metonymic transference.

Costanza's appearance in the family crypt at the funeral of an innocent man is a metaphor for a lost childhood, whereas Raimondo's corpse is a metaphor for childhood, which Tullio seeks to bring back through repetition. Costanza in the crypt, therefore, acts as a reminder to Tullio of the futility of his efforts to regain his childhood; childhood, as a necessary stage in the formation of a personality, has already passed and it cannot be returned.

In the novel, the following topoi can be identified that are significant for this study: Rome, Venice, Florence, Badiola. The first three toposes can be grouped based on their common quality – they are all large cities, and Badiola is just an estate.

Since all cities are united in the novel into a single space, they can be conditionally defined as a single topos, divided into loci of Rome, Venice, Florence. This generalization is also appropriate because toposes are "spaces, the boundaries between which are difficult for characters to penetrate" ^{[1, p. 98]}, whereas in the novel the characters move from city to city without any difficulties. For example, Teresa Raffo moves freely between Rome and Florence, and since "for minor characters, toposes are usually impenetrable, for the main characters they are permeable with considerable difficulty, with moral and spiritual losses" ^{[1, p. 98]}, it can be concluded that Rome and Florence are loci of a single topos, within which The minor character Teresa Raffo can move freely.

The same generalization could take place in the case of rural, non–urban space, but it is represented by only one topos - Badiola, and such a generalization is therefore unnecessary. The main loci of Badiola are: arable land, where peasants work; forest with coal miners; Villalilla.

"The characters and even the ideology of the characters manifest themselves in their relations to various loci" ^{[1, p. 99]}. The first two loci of Badiola are a metaphor for the principle of reality reflected in the harmony of nature and man. The farm is described throughout the cycle, it is a "roundabout way" to pleasure, that is, to harvest. The central image that Tullio creates when he comes into contact with the locus of the field is the "Jesus of the Earth" ^{[3, p. 62]}, that is, the synthesis of the extremely high (divine) and extremely low (earthly), discipline, censorship of the self and repressed desires. This parallel will continue to arise in the novel, mainly at the time of Raimondo's baptism.

The entire rural space is presented by the author idyllically and pastorally, while the city is either described neutrally or negatively: associations of urban space with negative human qualities are asserted – "the pernicious breath of urban life enveloped me, reawakened my curiosity, greed, envy" ^{[3, p. 24]}; the negative qualities of the city are emphasized, its negative subjective assessments – "the city was unbearably stuffy, it was empty, and I felt scared. The house was as silent as a grave; all the things that were familiar to me had a completely different, somehow strange appearance. I felt lonely in this terrible desert" ^{[3, p. 196]}. The antinomy of the city and the countryside is reinforced when secondary characters in rural space speak ill of the city: "Oh, this Rome, this Rome! To recover, you need to stay with me in the village for a very long time... a very long time..." ^{[3, p. 56]}.

Villalilla seems to be a symbol of adult family life. The whole villa is covered with swallow nests, a symbol of family happiness. It is Villalilla that Tullio mentions when he comforts Juliana: "and Juliana and I will go to Villalilla sometime" ^{[3, p. 20]}. Here Villalilla perceives Giuliana as a symbol of reunion with her husband, this is her central aspiration before Tullio's departure to Florence, and everything that pleases and pleases Giuliana within this time period contributes to the realization of this aspiration, and Villalilla pleases her. Giuliano Tullio also brings him to Villalilla when his desire to reunite with his wife and repent for the past is at its peak. There is also a sexual act between Juliana and Tullio, that is, the act of fulfilling marital duty; there their behavior is most characteristic of the behavior of a full-fledged and traditional married couple over the period of time described in the novel.

The loci of urban space are characterized by: Tullio's infidelity, the fulfillment of all his base desires. The connotative meaning of the city is particularly pronounced when secondary characters associated with the village space leave there, when they can no longer influence the hero, and a disjunction arises between the opposing toposes. Then the hero is "at the mercy of that feeling, which, more than any other, raises the inherent filth in a person" ^{[3, p. 42]}. "Teresa Raffo has never seemed so desirable to me as now, when I could not separate her from her lustful, vulgar image" ^{[3, p. 42]}.

From this it can be concluded that the topos of Badiola is the space of the conscious, which is characterized by family values, religiosity (the locus of the church), patriarchy, and urban space, the space of the unconscious, is characterized by the antipodes of these attributes of the conscious. If Tullio moves away from Juliana in the city, then in Badiola he gets closer; and Teresa Raffo plays the leading role in the relationship between the characters in the city, which violates patriarchy, Federico is in charge of everything in the village, and so on.

Toposes are indicators of Tullio's inner moral choice; depending on whether he aspires to the unconscious or the conscious, he lives in an urban space or a Badiola. But the environment also influences his character and choices: Tullio's mother comes to Rome to take care of Giuliana, and this regulates Tullio's behavior towards discipline (for example, he cannot talk openly with Juliana about his infidelities, as he did before, because he is worried about his mother's reaction). Tullio's mother is a minor character who does not tend to overcome the boundaries of topos, but she overcomes it anyway. In this way, the attributes of rural space are integrated into urban space, as the bearer of these attributes transcends the boundary of toposes, which causes characteristic contradictions reflected primarily in Tullio's moral choice: should he stay with his sick wife or go to his mistress, maintaining the old way of life? Such an influence of the topos, first only of the mother, and then of everything in general, on the mental apparatus of Tullio reflects Freud's position that "we must attribute all the consequences of organic development to external, interfering and rejecting influences" ^{[1, p. 360]}, that is, environmental influences, topos. But it is not the topos as the geography of space that has an impact, that is, the denotation of the topos, but its attributes, since within the framework of an artistic work "the connotative meanings of temporal and spatial signs are at least equal to their denotative meanings" ^{[3, p. 98]}.

The landscape also has a symbolic meaning, which is expressed through the psychological parallelism extended by the author to the entire work. The psychological parallelism emphasizes the consistency of the hero's actions with an animal, a natural impulse: in the summer, when sowing, Tullio feels most mature, this is the peak of his desire to reunite with Juliana as his wife, as he sees "adult" peasants led by his brother Federico, living in harmony with nature, guided by the principle of reality (so that to get the fruits, you need to wait for autumn, as Tullio's brother says: "you'll see, you'll see the fruits" ^{[3, p. 60]}); in November, Juliana cheats on her husband, their relationship metaphorically dies, like everything around them; in the spring, the couple make love in Villalilla, forgive each other, their relationship is resurrected; at Christmas the innocent dies, the material nature of man, the identification in him, is "sacrificed" to humanity (parallel to the sacrifice of Christ), that is, it dies like nature in winter.

Thus, the process of overcoming the unconscious, the process of growing up, culminating in the murder of a child, can be interpreted as the process of hero initiation. It should be noted that Tullio undergoes an "age initiation" ^{[8, p. 25]}, which presupposes a "transition from childhood or adolescence to adulthood" [ibid.]. The hero becomes an adult, suppressing the child in himself, that is, censoring the unconscious. Initially, the hero is irresponsible, spiritless, not fulfilling his duties as an adult, an initiated person, but then, as a result of initiation, "childhood and the irresponsibility of a child's existence die — uninitiated, ignorant, in order to come to a higher existence that makes it possible to touch the sacred" ^{[8, p. 40]}. The result of the Tullio initiation, like most initiation rites, is characterized by "the transfer of religious, moral and social knowledge" ^{[8, p. 42]}.

When neophytes undergo initiation, mentors often "explain to them their duty and responsibilities towards the tribe" ^{[8, p. 36]}, which expresses the act of socialization that Tullio undergoes when he integrates into society through the creation of a full–fledged unit of society - the family. The level of Tullio's socialization before and after initiation can be judged by the number of people surrounding him before and after. If he arrives in Venice in absolute solitude, then at the very end of the novel, during the funeral, he is in the company of peasants and family; and not only its living representatives, but also the dead, as the novel ends in the family crypt.

"It was during initiation in primitive and ancient societies that a person became what he should be, a being open to the life of the spirit, and therefore included in culture" ^{[8, p. 27]}. Tullio opens up to the life of the spirit and is included in culture at the end of initiation, as he eventually becomes a Christian, as can be seen from the epigraph quoting the first verse of Psalm 118. The first and most extensive structural element of the novel is a confession. The hero says at the beginning: "Human judgment is not for me. No earthly court could judge me" ^{[3, p. 5]}, which is an aversion from the profane, worldly and an appeal to the sacred, supernatural, spiritual. This happens because "during initiation, the natural mode of the child is replaced by a cultural mode that gives access to spiritual values" ^{[8, p. 28]}.

Tullio acquires spirituality by suppressing the child in himself, that is, desires. Initiation presupposes a break "with the world of childhood" ^{[8, p. 37]}, "with a state of irresponsibility and naivety, ignorance and childhood asexuality" ^{[8, p. 38]}. Tullio's asexuality is expressed in dissatisfaction as a result of his sexual experiences with mistresses before the restoration of relations with his wife. It contains only a desire that is not satisfied, which is typical of infantile sexuality. Therefore, the term asexuality is appropriate in relation to the period that we conventionally designate as the hero's ritual childhood, despite the fullness of his sexual life during this period.

It is Tullio's mother who feels the most sadness and discomfort over Raimondo's death, and not the mother of Raimondo himself, Julian. The death of their child during the initiation process is perceived by mothers as a real death, and "mothers mourn initiates as they mourn the dead" ^{[8, p. 38]}. In the novel, the child literally dies, and Tullio's mother's stronger empathy than Giuliana's indicates the symbolic nature of Raimondo.

During sleep, censorship weakens and the desire for life increases. Tullio's dream after Raimondo's death fully reproduces reality, so that desires in it are not realized in any way, the pleasure principle is neutralized, and the censorship of the ego completely wins. Desires do not arise at all in a dream, since they were destroyed along with Raymondo. A complete reproduction of reality, without an attempt to realize desires, can also be identified as a lack of sleep. If sleep is a moment in time when censorship weakens, then the hero in this case is not in a state of sleep, since censorship works and performs its functions fully, as in the waking state. Such a modification of the very essence of sleep after Raimondo's death correlates with the prohibition of sleep that occurs after ritual death ^{[7, pp. 49-50]}.

If we take into account the fact that "the instincts of the ego go back directly to the origin of life in inanimate matter and tend to return to the inorganic state again" ^{[7, p. 364]}, then it can be assumed that Tullio, immediately after Raimondo's death, still identifies him with himself, with a part of himself. This is also indicated by the sympathy of the murderer for the victim, that is, Tullio for Raimondo, after the death of the child, which can be interpreted as a desire for self-preservation, since the principle of reality after initiation has already begun to dominate the principle of pleasure, and the principle of pleasure "under the influence of the body's desire for self-preservation is replaced by the "principle of reality"" ^{[7, p. 342]}, which characterizes the maturation of the hero. Empathy can also be interpreted as the acquisition of morality, which is also characteristic of initiation.

Raimondo is Tullio in his childish hypostasis; this is his unconscious, the personification of the pleasure principle, childish indiscipline and childish egoism, infantile sexuality, that is, all those signs that are inherent in the child's mode. "In some rites of growing up, the neophyte is perceived as a baby" ^{[8, p. 51]}, and Raimondo is the "baby of Tullio", Tullio before growing up. The metaphorical transfer of the Tullio child's mode to Raimondo is possible on the basis of the relationship: the mode of Raimondo as a child in reality is the mode of Tullio before initiation as a child metaphorically; and also on the basis of the context of Raimondo's appearance.

Before Raimondo was born, Tullio was a child himself and had a childish modus operandi. Raimondo's birth is an act of awareness of the need to become an adult due to the unsuitability of the child's mode in human society. The impetus for this realization is Juliana's betrayal, that is, the transfer of Tullio's child's mode to Juliana; after the betrayal, the hero looks at his behavior model from the outside and realizes its incorrectness. In the period from Juliana's betrayal to Raimondo's murder, Tullio is still influenced by the child's mode, which competes with the second instance of the "I". The murder of Raimondo is the act of killing a child in the process of initiation and rebirth as an adult, a change of modes. Both the child who will be killed during the initiation process and the adult are the same person. In the context of the novel, this is Tullio. After the murder, Tullio acquires the adult mode, with its inherent characteristics, which are the antipodes of the characteristics of the child mode.

The murder of a child during initiation is often committed by a Higher Being. In the novel, Tullio himself commits the murder. Due to the universality of the path traversed by the hero of the novel, which is characteristic of every person, Tullio can be identified, if not with humanity as a whole, then with a man of his time. Ritual murder, in this case, is carried out by man as such because of the anthropocentricity of Christianity, to which the hero is eventually initiated. The Christian God in The Innocent is represented in the image of Giovanni di Scordio. "He has fourteen sons, and all of them, one by one, separated from him, like ripe fruits separating from a tree. His wife, a kind of executioner, died. He was left alone. The children pinched him and renounced him" ^{[3, p. 159]}, just as people renounced God. The number fourteen, presumably, is not accidental: the twelve tribes of Israel, with the tribe of Joseph divided into two independent tribes (Manasseh and Ephraim), gives the number thirteen, and the fourteenth tribe are the non-Jews, with whom God signed the New Covenant. Giovanni also baptizes Raimondo, where there is a juxtaposition of two natures (divine and earthly), above which Giovanni rises. The same fragment makes it possible to interpret Raimondo as a God-Son who combines two natures and is sacrificed, which will happen later. Giovanni, in this case, represents God the Father. He also acts as a conscience at the time of the murder of a child: before the crime, "I had a suspicion whether Giovanni di Scordio was standing there on the playground" ^{[3, p. 268]} and after it, "looking out the window, I thought about Giovanni di Scordio again and began to worry again" ^{[3, p . 269]}.

The Christian God cannot commit murder himself because of his love for man. Murder is committed by the person himself, and this, within the framework of Christian doctrine, is a test for him, and the test is an obligatory component of initiation ^{[8, pp. 49-56]}. In fact, if we discard the mystical interpretation of the initiation rite, ritual murder is also carried out by people, and not by Higher Beings. Murder is legalized and committed by a person because the cultural context of the time when this work was created and published implies the absolute supremacy of man, puts man in the highest moral status when there are no authorities above him. At this time, God cannot take an active part in the life of an individual, as he has already "died" by this point.

Thus, the whole work is an allegory of the hero's way of growing up. Tullio Ermil was guided by the principle of pleasure, allowing himself to satisfy all his desires, the unconscious dominated the conscious in him, the censorship process was minimal, which led to the realization of repressed desires ^{[5, pp. 302-303]}. Such behavior and blatant selfishness are characteristic of children's behavior. The main impetus for growing up is the illness of his wife and the invasion of adulthood into the infantile life of the hero, and then Tullio's independent rational choice. The murder of Raimondo is a ritual murder inherent in the initiation rite, which results in the detachment from the mode of the child and the acquisition of the adult mode. What is specific in the context of the novel is that the victim is metaphorically also the murderer.

The hero's path of growing up is carried out in psychoanalytic terms; the tendency of striving from childhood to adulthood is identified with the desire from the unconscious to the conscious, from pleasure to discipline. The process of growing up presented in the novel corresponds to Freud's ideas about growing up, the mental nature of a child and the mental nature of an adult.