Snow White on the Border of Worlds: a Liminal Character in Venya Drkin's Fairy Tale

Paterikina Valentina Vasil'evna ORCID: 0009-0008-9367-4130 Doctor of Philosophy Professor; Department of Theory and History of Arts; Lugansk State Academy of Culture and Arts named after Mikhail Matusovsky 294214, Russia, Luhansk region, Alchevsk, Gmyri str., 41, sq. 28 zelenlist@mail.ru

Ischenko Nina Sergeevna ORCID: 0000-0001-8616-7087 PhD in Philosophy Associate Professor; Department of Philosophy, History and Pedagogy; Lugansk State Agrarian University named after K. E. Voroshilov 291019, Russia, Lugansk region, Lugansk, Industrialny lane, 8 niofterna@gmail.com

Studies of postmodern and metamodern culture show that mythological consciousness is not ellimable and continues to live in postmodern conditions. In modern culture, plots based on established myths are generated, using the realities of urban life in the era of globalization. The relevance of the research of the mythopoetics of the authors of the twentieth century is due to the transformations of postmodern culture towards its archaization, the revival of pre-modern forms of existence and mechanisms of translation of meanings, as well as the growth of mythologization of public consciousness. These trends influence decision-making methods, the choice of life strategies, and changes in norms of socially acceptable behavior, which is especially important in the context of socio-cultural changes due to the inclusion of new regions, including Donbass, into Russia. The cultural memory of these regions and the meanings preserved in the Donbass culture are being updated in new conditions. Let's analyze the realization of the myth in the post-Soviet rock-bard culture of the late twentieth century using the example of the fairy tale "About Snow White" by the Donbass poet Alexander Litvinov (Veni Drkin). Let us apply a comparative analysis of the preserved folklore archetypes and the new mythology of postmodernity.

Alexander Litvinov (pseudonyms Drantya, Venya D'rkin, Venya Drkin) (1970-1999) – poet, musician, bard, rocker, leader of rock bands. He was born in the village of Dolzhansky, buried in Sverdlovsk, both settlements are located on the territory of the LPR. Litvinov lived in different cities of the USSR and Donbass, the last years of his life were spent in Lugansk ^{[1, pp. 235-240]}. Drkin's creative style is defined as bard-rock or post-bard. His works combine various musical trends typical of the late 1980s and 1990s. The vast majority of recordings, except for "Kryshkin's House", "Everything will be Fine" and several albums, were released after D'rkin's death under the brand name "DrDom".

In 2023, the Moscow publishing house "Vyrgorod" published the book "Venya D'rkin: Drantology", which a team of enthusiasts has been working on since 2000 ^{[2, pp. 16-18]}. The rich edition includes Drkin's poems, prose, and drawings, as well as song commentary, archival photographs, concertography, and biographical articles. For the first time, the book summarizes and brings together the materials of Litvinov's creative biography, as well as shows his role in post-rock and bard rock of the post-Soviet period. These materials show that Litvinov occupies a place in the first row of Russian rock poets and rock musicians of the late twentieth century. His creative and life career ended in 1999, he did not have time to work with professional musicians and producers, the sound recording quality in his performances is very low, and nevertheless Litvinov's popularity has not decreased over the years, but is growing. His songs are known to all bard rockers who sing in Russian, and Litvinov's work is studied in various scientific centers in Russia. It is very important that such a topos of the all-Russian cultural memory is located in Donbass, which has been at the center of socio-cultural transformations since 2014. The researchers focus on Veni's songs, and the scientific analysis of his fairy tales and their folklore foundations has not been systematically conducted. This work is intended to fill this gap.

The study of fairy tales as an element of Russian folklore begins in the 19th century. At that time, there was an increased sustained interest of linguists, historians, and philologists in the study of fairy tales, when a number of researchers such as A. N. Afanasyev, F. I. Buslaev (founder of Russian fairy-tale studies), A. N. Veselovsky, V. I. Dahl, L. M. Loboda, A. N. Pypin based on a new comparative historical The methodologies have begun to analyze this layer of folklore. A new round of interest in the folk tale took place in the twentieth century, when Russian researchers M. K. Azadovsky, V. P. Anikin, D. K. Zelenin, N. I. Kravtsov, D. S. Likhachev, A. I. Nikiforov, N. E. Onuchkov, E. V. Pomerantsev, V. Ya. Propp, A. B. Tulebaeva, L. V. Filippova created works on the history, classification, and stylistics of fairy tales. The generalizing works also include the study of J. J. Campbell, reflecting the final state of the study of fairy tales at the end of the twentieth century.

The semiotics of modern folklore and the linguistic features of modern fairy tales are reflected in the works of such authors as N. I. Abu, N. V. Dzhapakova, O. Y. Kirillova, S. Y. Neklyudov, N. S. Osipova, B. R. Putilov, L. V. Safronova, and a number of other researchers. The bard-rock tale, which has a new mythopoetics, is a special kind of fairy tale that combines individual singing of author's songs and universal folklore images, analyzed by A.V. Gorbachev, N. Yu. Danchenkova, Yu. V. Domansky, I. V. Zinin, T. N. Kizhevatova, N. N. Simanovskaya and other scientists.

Folklore researchers show that the central fairy–tale plot is the hero's path, a pagan heroic myth that includes a specific sequence of actions ^{[3, p. 188]}. The main character leaves his native home, sets out on a journey, leaves the space of the known and safe and finds himself in the space of the unknown and dangerous. In this territory, the hero must pass tests and perform feats, engage in combat with a deadly enemy and undergo initiation ^{[3, p. 202]}. It is the passage of initiation that becomes a psychological and social transformation, and opens the way for the hero to ascend to the throne or to a wedding. The psychological specifics of initiation are characterized by the destruction and loss of the hero's innermost, axiologically significant, when the hero meets his main fear face to face ^{[3, pp. 202-204]}.

In the tale "About Snow White" by Alexander Litvinov, the main character is a woman, so let's pay attention to the topic of female initiation. Female initiation, while preserving the basic elements of the hero's path, differs from male initiation. Female initiation in folk tales follows the following pattern:

The heroine is in a transitional period, not a child, but not yet a woman.;

She has a stepmother instead of a mother.;

The father is passive;

The heroine has stepsisters;

The heroine goes through a deadly ordeal;

She is assisted by a magical assistant;

She gets a fiance with whom she is happy.;

At the end of the tale, the stepmother is humiliated or dies ^{[4, p. 315]}.

Let's see how the classic scheme of the hero's path is realized according to the female myth of transition in Litvinov's fairy tale "About Snow White".

Alexander Litvinov, who reflected the state of perestroika, post-perestroika, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in his work, was a poet, musician, performer, artist, and director, but preferred fairy tales in his self-identification. In an interview in Voronezh in April 1997, Litvinov said: "I'm not a musician, I'm a storyteller. Everything I do in music is fairy tales" ^[5]. So, Alexander Litvinov called himself a storyteller, highlighting this type of work on the text as the main one in his work.

The poet turns to fairy tales throughout his work. "The Tunguska meteorite", "Tears of Joanna", "Elixir of Youth", "Tales of Grandfather Rydu", "The Tale of cockroaches", "Vova-Gagarin", "About Krivobokov", "Happy New Year!", "At midnight they knocked on my door...", "Fragment tales of Drantland", "Colonel Emelin", "It was the beginning ...", the rock fairy tale "Tae Dawn", "Fragments of the tale of Drant and Beatrice" are written in a unique Drc manner, distinguishing his style. They contain irony, ambiguity of images, a mixture of the infernal world and reality, which is sometimes no less frightening than the frightening legend ^{[2, pp. 367-462]}.

The fairy tale "About Snow White", written in 1992-1993 in Lugansk. The main character is Snow White. The character is not new in European folklore, but in literary treatments he is represented by the brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm as the "Snow Maiden" ("Snow White" (1812)) ^[6], and in Russian literature by A. S. Pushkin ("The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Heroes" (1833)) ^[7]. In the fairy tale of the brothers Grimm, Snow White and A. S. Pushkin, the heroine embodies the unity of virtue and beauty, a certain ideal of defenseless kindness, patience, and humility. Dwarfs and heroes are sympathetic, caring, courageous, and hardworking. The happy outcome of the two narratives is the same, indicated by the logic of established plots – awakening and marriage.

Thus, in classical fairy tales, both German and Russian, almost all stages of female initiation are realized: the transitional state of the heroine is a marriageable girl moving from one age group to another, the stepmother's envy of the beauty of her stepdaughter, a passive father, mortal danger, meeting with seven dwarfs (heroes), acting in the roles of a magical assistant, a miraculous rescue, a successful marriage, and the death of a stepmother. One element falls out – the heroine has no stepsisters, but the rest of the scheme is fully implemented, showing the archaic roots of this famous plot.

The Drc interpretation is independent, it does not repeat classical plots, but follows in the main points the general folklore scheme of female initiation.

The fairy tale begins with a classic, but modified beginning: "in the trident kingdom, in the triodin state" ^{[8, p. 393]}. In the established beginnings of folk tales "in the far–off kingdom, in the far-off state", the opposition of "friend and foe" is manifested in relation to the remoteness in the horizontal plane of events. The folklore formations "far away" and "far away" are not related to numeral systems, but to the intuitive knowledge of the ancient Slavs, who endowed numbers and numerals with magical properties ^{[9, p. 124]}. The triad, embodying complete completeness, is paired with the number nine, completing a series of elementary numbers, which makes up a complex quantitative numeral. The decial frame of reference is fixed in the designation of the distant location as the "thirtieth". The Drc origin is almost sustained in the traditions of folk tales, but then the "tridentine kingdom" is followed by "in the triodin state", when the author adds another unit to the traditional "tridentine". This is how the author points to the tradition within which the plot unfolds, but the boundaries of this tradition are destroyed from the very beginning, shifting and taking the reader into another space.

Venya Drkin designates a specific location for the action of the fairy tale – this is the village of Maksyutovka. "There is such a village," recalls Yuri Rydansky, a friend of the storyteller, –however, Masyutovka, and Max was with us, was immediately renamed after Max – Maksutovka. The village is unique, with thatched roofs, crane wells, and seven houses. It's beautiful" ^{[2, p. 565]}. At the Oskol Lyra Festival in 1995, where the author won the Grand Prix, Alexander Litvinov introduced himself as Veniamin Dyrkin from Maksyutovka. The same location is played in the song "The Old Woman", written in 1990. The image is based on a stanza from the song of the Belarusian composer Eduard Khanka "Malinovka" (1980), which is successfully performed by the Verasy ensemble, which contains the line "Robins hear a voice". In the Drc version, it is sung: "A voice was heard in Maksyutovka" ^{[2, p. 226]}. The location of the action changed depending on the performer's stay.

The real Masyutovka is located in Kupyansky district of Kharkiv region in Ukraine. The fictional Maksutovka is located in the same landscape, but culturally located in a different reality, in a fabulous space that is not on the map. This is a fabulous double of Masyutovka, lying beyond the boundaries of the human world. That's where the action takes place. This is how the plot of the fairy tale is transferred to the steppe South Russian space, but at the same time beyond the borders of the present, into a fictional world. The heroine of the Drka fairy tale lives in two worlds at the same time, in a fabulous village, but inscribed in a real landscape.

The next description of Snow White's beauty follows the rules of a fairy tale again –"you can't describe her with a pen, you can't cut her down with an axe." The stable phrase "Neither to say in a fairy tale nor to describe with a pen" denotes the highest degree of property, but the Drc style is based on unpredictability and a mixture of meanings. "Don't cut it down with an axe" – you can't change what happened, and not just "written with a pen, you can't cut it down with an axe" in the direct meaning. In Veni, the gap between two proverbs leads to an illogical combination, and again emphasizes the borderline character, the liminal state of the heroine, who lives on the border of meanings.

Further, describing the heroine, the narrator introduces a neologism referring to her, that is, an autoreferential characteristic that leads to paradoxes in thinking due to the inclusion of the object as a sign in the class that it designates ^{[10, pp. 44-45]}. Describing Snow White, Venya Drkin writes that Snow White "Loved to eat white." Belosn is the abbreviated name of Snow White, followed by the root "hedgehog", indicating action. That is, the beautiful girl collected herself in a basket and ate herself. White flax can be "peeled" (author's edition), like nuts or seeds. "That's such a modest one," the author summed up.

So, the heroine is an object isolated from the environment, she exists at the expense of herself and creates herself from herself, which allows her to be attributed to mythological characters who create a world out of themselves. This was the god Ptah in the Memphis version of the ancient Egyptian cosmogony, who created his body from the earth by willpower ^{[11, p. 94]}; Purusha in Indian mythology, from whose body the gods create the world during sacrifice, but Purusha himself is a priest ^{[12, p. 13-14]}. So Snow White again manifests two hypostases at the same time: she lives in the world, and creates a world out of herself, is both a creation, and a creator, and a victim, and a priest offering sacrifice. At the same time, the cosmogonic role of Snow White is not emphasized by either the author or herself, and is unknown to other characters, she is just a modest creator of this world, living in it.

Snow White's status in the socio-age group is emphatically liminal. The author writes: "It's time to be a bride, but there are no grooms – they put their stomachs on their dear Maksyutovka in Busurmania. And so she lived in retirement" ^{[8, p. 393]}. The heroine must move to another age group, change her status, but she cannot do this because all the suitors died. Snow White turns out to be the bride of a dead man, and not of one person, but of a whole generation of men suitable for marriage. All those who can change her fate are in the realm of the dead, while she herself is in the realm of the living, but in a transitional state that cannot end with any transformation and a change of social role. This state in archaic cultures is also characteristic of the world of the dead. The dead do not grow up, do not change their status, and retain their social position forever during their lifetime ^[13]. Snow White found herself in such a situation, placed in the liminal space between the age groups of the bride and the married woman, as well as between the world of the living and the world of the dead, which once again emphasizes the unusual, borderline nature of this character, the combination of two natures in her: a rural girl and the queen of the dead.

The already discovered plot and imaginative connections emphasize the otherworldly characteristics of the forest where Snow White finds herself next. In traditional culture, a person's path through the forest is associated with initiation – the most important rite on the hero's path, marking adulthood, symbolic passage through death ^{[14, p. 64]}. The path through the forest is the path to the realm of the dead. In the very depths of the forest, space loses its usual characteristics: in the middle of a "clear field, a hut is not a hut, a raspberry is not a raspberry" ^{[8, p. 393]}. The forest includes a pure field, where heroes usually meet their fate in fairy tales. Snow White follows the male hero's path – through the forest into a clear field, where the hero performs his feat. This is the first indication of the dual role of Snow White, undergoing male and female initiation at the same time.

The forest is not only dense, but also cut down: "Snow White is afraid to spend the night in a cut–down forest - crocodiles run around her hands, snakes climb into her mouth" ^{[8, p. 393]}. The crocodiles jumping on Snow White's hands change the scale of the characters: either by reducing the size of the crocodiles, or by increasing the size of Snow White, which is not surprising if this is a character who creates the world. This is how a forest combines several spaces: a dense forest as a kingdom of death, a clear field as a place of heroic deeds, and a cut-down forest as an otherworldly negation of all the understandable characteristics of space.

The building, which stands at the intersection of borders, also integrates several spaces: it is a hut, a raspberry (khaza) and a flat at the same time. A rural hut is a human dwelling. Raspberry in thieves' jargon means a country house, a secret place, a thieves' den. Venya Drkin calls the same location "izba" "khaza", using transformed argotic vocabulary. In the jargon, haza means a brothel, a seedy place ("haza" – from the Spanish "casa" – house, homeland, square; Italian "casa" – house, casino, gambling house; German "haus" – house, English "house" – house; Turkic "khazina" – dwelling).

But then the author calls Snow White's place of residence flat, linking the Russian Cyrillic spelling flat and the English–language "flat" - house, apartment. Both in songs and in fairy tales, the use of English-language terms is not new.The tendencies of rock culture emerging in the Soviet space began to manifest themselves in the 1970s and 80s in non-assimilated English-language vocabulary ^{[15, p. 174]}. But in the 1990s, the English-language vocabulary intensely intruded in the form of mixing Russian and English words into the rock space ^{[15, p. 175]}. The process of borrowing was especially active in rock culture, since it comes from song poetry created in English, and such inclusions emphasize the proximity of the song rock culture of the two spaces ^{[16, p. 260]}. So Snow White finds herself again at the intersection of different spaces: residential, thieves, English-speaking-rocker.

In the hut (no longer in the flat), the heroine behaves according to the scenarios of folk tales: in the bathhouse she steamed, washed, got drunk, and fed. And then Venya Drkin makes a sharp departure from the traditions of folklore. Describing the actions of Snow White, incompatible with her fairy-tale image: she "threw up, got drunk again, and passed out to sleep" ^{[8, p. 393]}.

This hut is inhabited not by seven dwarfs, as in the fairy tale of the brothers Grimm "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", and not by seven heroes, as in Pushkin, but by seven Petrovich locksmiths. The patronymic is fraternal, and it applies to people who are at a close distance of communication. Locksmiths are often informally referred to by their patronymic.

In the fairy tale, the seven Petrovichs were surprised by the lack of food and drink that Snow White consumed for the seven men. Venya Drkin constantly removes the veil of sacredness from this fabulous heroine, emphasizing her profanity. And they reasonably ask the question: "What the hell was going on here?". A stable folk expression, represents a trait as the personification of demonic power, as a being who brings chaos to the habitually flowing rhythm of phenomena. But Venya Drkin inserts his friend's last name instead of the devil, having received a funny question from locksmiths who knew Kudakov and compared him to the devil: "What Kudakov was wearing here?" ^{[8, p. 393]}. In literature and cinema, for the persuasiveness of the plot, the cameo technique is used, when a real actor appears for the plausibility of what is happening. Alexey Kudakov is a friend of Veni Drkin, a real person, poet, photographer, laureate of the Oskol Lyre Festival ^{[2, p. 555]}. The author places his last name instead of an infernal character, which is quite in the spirit of postmodernity's shifting meanings.

From the indignation of the Petrovichs, Snow White hides behind the TV, which is located in the hut, flat, hut of the seven Petrovichs, making confusion for the reader in determining the time of the event. The presence of a TV shifts the action from an archaic fairy-tale and rural space to modernity. But the break from postmodernity is short-lived, which is typical of Veni Drkin's fairy tales, in which he makes such shifts imperceptible but lightning-fast, which forces the reader to constantly be prepared for the unexpected. And further along the text, Snow White's fear was expressed in the saying "neither alive nor dead," but Venya, without giving the opportunity to get used to the style of folk expression, continues: "she is neither fish nor meat, she is Isolde Menshova, she is Valentina Poniyad" ^{[8, p. 393]}. This is how the storyteller makes a reference to the film "The Meeting Place cannot be changed" directed by Stanislav Govorukhin.

The film was released in 1979, and the characters and expressions from the film became recognizable. Gleb Zheglov, describing one of the representatives of the criminal world, repeats "she is", since the criminal appears in various guises: "She is Isolda Menshova, she is Valentina Poniyad, she is a pimp, convicted four times." This is how the hut emphasizes the connection of not only different time layers, but also different worlds – fabulous, everyday and thieves, and in its cinematic version.

In the fairy tale, seven dwarfs or seven heroes offer an unknown guest to identify himself, whoever he may be. In this case, the condition is set "if ... then ...". For Veni, these conditions are in violation of the logical laws of distribution. Petrovich locksmiths are friendly towards a stranger: "If you're a red girl, you'll be a red girl for us, if you're middle–aged, you'll be a red girl for us, and as an old lady, we'll milk the cream and marry the red girl" ^{[2, p. 393]}. In any case, the condition ends with a variant of the red maiden, without assuming the variability of the opposition.

Developing the fairy-tale aspect of the narrative, the plot abruptly turns into a battle with the Snake of the elder brother of the seven locksmiths "not to the stomach, but to the death," in which the Snake wins as the embodiment of evil forces. Contrary to the established plots of folk tales, where victory belongs to a positive hero, Veni Drkin once again inverts the fairy tale, and the positive character dies. In folklore stories, salvation from death comes as a result of the hero helping the little crow, after which the father of the little crow, the Black Raven, helps him as a reward. Snow White twists the little crow's paws and dictates to the Black Raven the condition under which the little crow will be released: you need to bring living and dead water, which the Black Raven rushed to fulfill ^{[2, p. 394]}. This is where the tale ends, leaving the reader at the intersection of several spaces: the fabulous, the thieves, the everyday and the realm of the dead.

The analysis shows that, while preserving the form of a folklore tale, Alexander Litvinov uses postmodern mythopoetics to integrate several semantic spaces within the boundaries of a single text. The following spaces are integrated into the story of "About Snow White": archaic fairy-tale, rocker, modern to the author profane household, thieves and otherworldly.

The fairy–tale space includes the village of Maksyutovka, the forest space, the initiation ritual, the hut in the middle of the forest - the place of initiation, the fairy-tale beginning, the battle with the Serpent, interaction with the Black Raven, the use of fairy-tale cliches, sayings, magical numerals. The rocker space is represented by English-language vocabulary. The modern, profane household space includes a TV set, locksmiths, and the actions of the characters in the hut. The thieves' space is evident in the slang name of the house in the forest, as well as a quote from the movie "The meeting place cannot be changed." The other world is represented in the image of Snow White, who creates and eats herself, as well as the eternal bride, the queen of the dead.

The fairy-tale space and the kingdom of death are most fully revealed. The plot of female initiation unfolds in a fairy-tale space, preserving several main stages: the heroine is in a liminal state, she does not have a father, she goes through a test and finds magical helpers. The differences are also noticeable: the ordeal is not caused by the machinations of the stepmother, whom the heroine does not have, but by her attempt to act according to the scheme of male initiation, that is, to set off on her own, into a magical forest, where the status of the hero changes as a result of the ordeal. After gaining magical helpers, the focus of the narrative shifts, and a new main character appears – the elder brother, locksmith Petrovich, who fights the Snake, as befits the main character in male initiation, which allows him to be compared with Snow White as her functional double, performing an action that she cannot perform herself, playing a different role in the fairy tale. Snow White's duality becomes another manifestation of her liminal nature. She unites the hero, the creator of the world, the queen of the dead, a man and a woman, because she is located in an otherworldly space, on the border of different worlds, where the hierarchies and oppositions of the world of the living are erased.

Litvinov includes different spaces in a single text using quotations from folklore and cinema, references to the realities of urban life in a globalized world, creating complex images and connecting different plots into a single narrative. Thus, Litvinov's neo-mythopoetics is based on postmodern techniques that transform the folklore plot, blurring the space of the fairy tale and connecting other worlds to it. Snow White acts as a liminal character who unites the plots of male and female initiation, as well as acting simultaneously as the creator of the world and the queen of the dead. This is how Litvinov integrates the realities of modern life into an archaic fairy tale story that unites different spaces, preserving the ancient myth in the 21st century.