The tailed hero is a trickster in Sasha Cherny's story "The Cat Sanatorium"

Zhirkova Marina Anatol'evna ORCID: 0000-0003-4107-6944 PhD in Philology Docent, the department of Journalism and Literary Education Pushkin Leningrad State University 195196, Russia, St. Petreburg, St. Petersburg highway, 10 manp@mail.ru Other publications by this author

IntroductionSasha Cherny (Alexander Mikhailovich Glikberg, 1880-1932) visited Italy three times, the first visit was a honeymoon in 1905, then he and his wife will repeat it in 1910.

The last stay of the writer took place in the status of an emigrant, wandering in search of shelter. Impressions from the first trips were almost not reflected in his work, only a few poems written in a comic way, for example, "Corner", "Heat", etc. The third visit lasts almost a year: from May 1923 to March 1924, it will result in numerous poems and the novel "Cat Sanatorium", but almost all Italian works will be published much later – during the life of Sasha Cherny in France.

"The Cat Sanatorium" was written in Rome in 1924, its first publication took place in the magazine "Chimes" in Riga in 1925, and a separate edition of the story was published in 1928 in Paris. Despite the growing interest in the writer's work, at the moment there are no separate works devoted to the analysis of the story. Most often it is mentioned in a number of other works written in exile ^{[8, p. 25; 9, p. 539; 11, p. 32-33; 16, p. 264-265]}, or among the works of other authors ^[12]. By genre, this is a fairy tale story: the action takes place in the real world, but the main characters are animals who talk, know numbers and can draw. It is also an adventurous story with a trickster hero, it is characterized by a comic mode.

Many scientific papers have been devoted to the trickster archetype, in which scientists determine its origin ^{[15; 17]}, characterize and indicate functions ^{[5; 13; 19]}, and also consider the images of the trickster hero in specific works of art. In the framework of our research, we note the articles by Yu.N. Chukhvicheva about animal heroes acting in the image of a trickster ^[22] and M.N. Lipovetsky, which talks about trickster heroes of children's literature ^[14], but the work of Sasha Cherny was not considered by scientists in this regard. 

You can also recall famous literary cats: the cheerful and savvy Puss in Charles Perrault's boots, helping his master to achieve a high noble title; the learned cat of A.S. Pushkin, endowed with age-old wisdom and talent of a storyteller; as well as the Hoffmann cat-philosopher Murr, who wrote his views on sheets with the biography of the owner. The main character of Sasha Cherny's story is a cat endowed with many features of his predecessors: he is smart, savvy, resourceful, talented, has his own views on life.

The system of images and the structure of the storyThe story tells the story of Beppo the cat, brought by the owner to Trajan's forum, where homeless cats and cats live, and escaping from there.

Researchers point out that the cat's name is borrowed from Byron's comic poem "Beppo" (1817) ^{[10, p. 577; 16, p. 264]}, the creation of which reflected the impressions of the English poet from his stay in Italy. The hero of the poem, the merchant Beppo, conducts sea trade and disappears for several years, when he returns, he tells how he was a slave, fled to pirates, got rich and managed to return home. Beppo is also a diminutive version of the Italian name Giuseppe, whereas the owner of the cat is called Spaghetti, that is, the cat is endowed with a human name, and the owner is called pasta. So the author immediately indicates his attitude to the heroes. This is also manifested in their characteristics – an angry owner [Italics belong to the author of the work – M.Zh.], in the indication that the cat is waiting for the usual morning click from him, and the cat is called poor, poor ^{[21, pp. 61, 62]}. It was not easy for the cat to live with his master, if unexpectedly offered that morning, when his fate changed, a bowl of milk and a fat herring head for Beppo are miracles that he has not seen since birth.The work consists of several parts separated by three asterisks.

We can recall the hero of the following work of Sasha Black Fox Mickey: "I saw in children's books, when a person makes a leap to a new thought, he puts three stars" ^{[21, p. 31]}. The first part is a description of the forum and the appearance of Beppo on it. The beginning of the story is a prosaic ekphrasis, i.e. a literary description of "visual objects (real or fictional), especially visual works of art. <...> in a broad sense, this is a verbal description of any man-made object: a temple, a palace, a shield, a bowl, a statue or a painting" ^{[23, p. 301]}. The forum seen through the eyes of the narrator is "not even like a forum", not a historical landmark, but a "secluded corner". Before us are the remnants of former greatness, which nature gradually captures: "tousled bushes of oleanders and blackberries here and there have spread across the forum quite at home" ^{[21, p. 161]}. Only Trajan's column impresses with its size ("Well, it's huge"), but the Apostle Peter on its top seems lonely and causes sympathy. In the narrator's view, he is not a great apostle, but a dark bronze old man who roasts in the July sun and gets wet under the December rain. In the future, we see the forum through the eyes of a cat, and its perception somewhat coincides with the opinion of the narrator. For Beppo, this is a space with boundaries: "a mousetrap", "On all four sides the grass was enclosed by a smooth stone wall", he is a prisoner of "strangely enclosed housing" ^{[21, p. 162]}.

The narrator's speech at the end of the first part includes the cat's own reflections, for example, indignation that he was put in a bag: "the owner put the cat in a striped bag with which the maids go to the bazaar. In the bag, please tell me! Exactly Beppo mutton or veal liver ..." ^{[21, p. 161]}, thereby the author prepares the reader for the fabulous world of the story. This combination of the narrator's speech and the thoughts of the hero-cat will go through the whole story.

The second part is an introduction to the forum and the story of the main character. In a new place, questioning the inhabitants of the forum, Beppo shows himself to be a polite and well–mannered cat: "Tell me, please..." Beppo politely bowed his neck and, like a well-mannered cat, made a long pause after the introduction" ^{[21, p.163]}. However, he is offended by the assumption that he comes from the provinces, on the contrary, he is proud that he was born in the center of Rome and calls his street: Colonnette, a small street and now located in the center of the modern city.

From the explanation of the "fat gray cat" Beppo learns about Trajan's forum and the custom of bringing cats here if, firstly, they behave criminally; secondly, the owner is poor and cannot keep pets; thirdly, he leaves and does not know where to put them, then here are "such the unfortunate are dumped on Trajan's forum" ^{[21, p.163]}. According to Beppo, he fits all three categories, but here you can disagree with him, there are no indications in the story of the alleged departure of his former master. In response to the kind explanation of the fat cat, Beppo tells about himself.

Features of the trickster archetype in the image of the main character – Beppo the catThe story of Beppo the cat is a chain of episodes, adventures related to the change of owners and the conditions of his residence:

at first, as a kitten, he hid behind a tub of bamboo at the restaurant, where a young Miss Nelly saw and picked him up. He lived best with the first hostess, although the cat grumbles that she almost made a lapdog out of him: "She sprayed some smelly thing, put a green bow on me" ^{[21, p.163]}. The departure of the hostess, who did not take care of her pet ("She must not have known about Trajan's forum either", ^{[21, p. 163]}), brings Beppo back to the street. Then the life of each next owner will get worse. According to Beppo, his story is his will, his choice, it is important for him to preserve his inner freedom. It was he who settled with the laundress, not she who sheltered him or picked him up. But he could not survive the captivity in the closet: "when my laundress began to go to work and lock me in the closet so that I could catch her damned mice on an empty stomach (Beppo even coughed with indignation), – no, let her catch them herself and fry them for dinner in olive oil! I couldn't stand it, knocked out the glass with my head and ..." ^{[21, p.164]}. Then he ended up with the third owner, a shoemaker, who turned him into a "criminal cat". Beppo, with some arrogance and contempt, says of him: "he was not a real shoemaker," "a wandering shoemaker," "I do not know if my shoemaker dined himself. Macaroni will be swallowed somewhere, a crust of cheese will chew, an onion ... A wandering life is a wandering food" ^{[21, p.164]}.

After the drunken owner decided to get the cat drunk with wine and pin his tail to the chest for resistance and disobedience, the behavior of the cat in the shoemaker's house becomes provocative. In the image of a cat, you can see some features of the trickster hero - a cheat, a mischievous and a bully. Beppo decides to take revenge and begins to conduct "subversive activities" (Lipovetsky) on his own territory. So, he "squeezed" a chicken under the stairs, but there were clues, which immediately gave himself away; he drank milk from the neighbors; knocked over an inkwell from a student; broke the glass in the door when fleeing from the shopkeeper; snatched a bun with butter from a girl. All his actions are aimed at the destruction of order, this is a kind of game of destruction, a mockery of others. D.A. Gavrilov, considering the archetype of the trickster, highlights its main functions, among which are the violation of rules and traditions, the introduction of an element of chaos into the existing order, which "contributes to the deidealization, the transformation of the ideal world into the real" ^{[5, p. 67]}. All this the cat does not do out of malice, resentment and a desire to build his relationship with the world of people speaks in him, in which there was no saucer of milk and a piece of food for him. He deliberately creates chaos around himself, unwilling to accept such a world, and sets his own norms and rules of behavior. Does Beppo understand that he is being a hooligan? – Yes, hence his attempts to justify himself. But P. Radin also notes that the behavior of the trickster is always dictated by impulses over which he has no control ^{[17, p. 7]}. The behavior of the cat in this case can hardly be called immoral, since the trickster hero is outside the categories of good and evil, outside of morality as such ^[13]. The fat cat understands him perfectly and even envies him. You can pay attention to the author's definition of his reaction to Beppo's words about turning him into a "criminal cat": "It is also necessary to be able to ... – the fat man sighed dreamily" ^{[21, p.165]}.

Beppo also performs in a comic role, traditional for the trickster archetype. His story combines childish naivety and ingenuousness in an attempt to justify himself: he ate a chicken, so why is he hanging around, he drank milk from the neighbors, so it's not all the same, he spilled an inkwell, and why keep an inkwell on the table, he broke the glass – it's nothing, he stole a bun from a girl when she offered to play in the store, but from where M.N. Lipovetsky, speaking about trickster's cheating, notes that it is not pragmatic, but rather self-sufficient, comedic and ritual in nature ^{[14, p. 9]}. If at first this behavior of the cat amused the shoemaker: "Well done, he says, Beppo, try. I, he says, when I was young, and did something else" ^{[21, p.165]}, then after complaints from neighbors, the owner is forced to get rid of the bully cat. So, Beppo's adventures turn against him. Researchers note that the hero-trickster often becomes a victim of such behavior himself ^{[17, p. 7]}, for example, D.A. Gavrilov writes: "the trickster does not always come out victorious from the game he has started, and can get into trouble, become a victim of his own cunning" ^{[5, p. 68]}. The cat loses its owner, at home, which it seems that it was not worth regretting, but "there was a very cozy yard. And the company is good: two cats, chickens (Beppo licked his lips languidly), a garbage dump, children like flies, a walnut tree in the corner… And stairs, you know, like holes in Swiss cheese: narrow, dark, cool..." ^{[21, p.164]}. For him, the familiar and familiar world is collapsing, the value of which is realized by him only after his loss.

In the third part, life in a cat sanatorium is revealed; Beppo gets acquainted with its inhabitants, in particular, an old cat tells his story. The inhabitants of the forum are still seen by Beppo as a total mass: "well-fed backs of animals lying on the grass" ^{[21, p.162]}, "a motley pile of cats and cats" ^{[21, p.166]}, of which only a few are singled out. Beppo's appearance on the forum is witnessed by the owner of a lazy cat's bass, he is also a well-fed gray cat, a fat man and the chairman of the local Bimbo colony. It is he who talks about the forum and the rules of life here. It is noteworthy that the name Bimbo in Italian means a child, a boy who, apparently, is still sitting in it, it is not by chance that he understands Beppo and in his own way envies his past free and desperate life. Some other tailed inhabitants of the forum are also indicated: a gray kitty; a striped, black and white kitty; a white fluffy cat, like a powder puff; a yellow-brown young kitty; a one-eyed Signor Brutto, who manages the cat choir; and an old flabby cat Nero.

Bimbo also refers to the world of the forum as Signor Scaramuccio, a gray-haired man with a big bag, a cook and a chief quartermaster responsible for feeding cats, cleanliness and the condition of the space allocated to them. The name of the hero – Scaramuccio is indicative: in the Italian del Arte theater, he refers to a variant of the Captain's mask ^{[4, p. 246; 7, p. 167]} – a boastful warrior, a coward, a liar and a starving man who played a pathetic role on stage and endured all sorts of humiliations; a character who is constantly laughed at ^{[4, p. 235]}. In this regard, you can pay attention to the condescending attitude of the cat Bimbo to him: "Of course, he does not always buy fresh meat, but what to demand from people ..." ^{[21, p.166]}. And the performance of his duties will then be criticized by Beppo.

In the third part, the narrator's voice sounds again, describing with bitter irony a bored Beppo who is unable to find entertainment on the forum. The cat does not know how to read, otherwise "herring and bones were often thrown from above in newspapers, so it would be possible to read" ^{[21, p.167]}; or Scaramuccio threw large cigarette butts on the grass, but, alas, the cat does not smoke; or he could chat with idlers that leaning on the railing, "they spat on the forum from above, trying to get into the sheep's head washed by the rains" ^{[21, p.167]}, and people and animals do not understand each other's language; or I would consider the reliefs of the Trayana column, but "people took all the places on it: there was not a single cat among the countless little men, nor one cat, – what is there to consider?" ^{[21, p.167]}. Day after day passes, and Beppo still can't get used to the forum; neither peace nor hearty food bring him joy. Out of boredom and boredom, Beppo, remembering his master, the shoemaker, even dreamed and fantasized about his salvation. Either a dream, or daydreams of a cat in reality: the shoemaker suddenly wakes up his conscience, he feels sorry for the discarded animal and helps him out, rescues him from captivity. At the moment of realizing freedom, Beppo experienced such delight that he even meowed with joy: "A free cat! A free soul! Free legs! Marmalade!.." ^{[21, p.168]}. But from the understanding that this is only his fantasy or vision, an even greater longing appears, which affects his behavior: he does not have the same deference towards the inhabitants of the forum. So, he calls Bimbo a dog, however, so quietly that he does not hear him; he defies cats in response to their questions and attempts to make small talk.

Beppo is saved from boredom on the forum only by conversations with the old cat Nero, the only one "who was worth talking to here." From him Beppo learns about the ideal place, almost a paradise for cats – the Campagna: "Reeds, lizards, the river sings, cicadas crackle, larks over the fields are filled ... <...> Yes, there in the Campagna a decent cat will get everything himself. Here you will have birds and a grasshopper sometimes, but the cow will be milked, they will always pour milk into a bowl for the cat. Field mice are also very delicate food. <...> And the air. And the blackberry bushes over the river. And moonlit evenings on the bridge" ^{[21, pp.170-171]}, it's good and fun there.

Researchers interpret the cat's nickname differently. A.S. Ivanov reveals the meaning of the word: Nero – black ^{[10, p. 576]}, V.D. Milenko points to the famous Roman emperor Nero ^{[16, p. 264]}, who, as is known, was a poet. Nero the cat also turns out to be an artist and a poet, his description of the Campagna sounds like a prose poem that has everything: mountains, a river, fields, an old house, a large population from insects to people. The landscape sketch in his story, though mobile, is easily recreated in the imagination of the listener and reader: in the background there are mountains ("in the distance, things are so high – blue in the morning, blue in the afternoon, and orange in the evening"), in the middle there is a passing road: "then an old man on a donkey will drive with grapes <...>, then a woman with sheep's cottage cheese on her head <...>, then a car with gray soldiers will dust"), and in the foreground – an old house with a gradual enlargement of images: "All in cracks. The porch is on one side, the plates have spread out… In front of the house is a walnut, thick as a bull, paws in all directions – good. And on the roof there is a window with a shelf in the tiles… Pigeons lived there" ^{[21, p.170]}.

The poem turned out to be a bit sentimental, in the spirit of an idyll, the purpose of which, according to F. Schiller, "to depict a person in a state of innocence, that is, in a state of harmony and peace with himself and with the external environment" [Cit. according to: 18, p. 77]. In this case, it is to show the cat's life in a state of innocence (he did not touch pigeons after the owner gave the whip a sniff) and in harmony with the world, people and himself. Of course, the poet here is Sasha Cherny, it is he who, with a smile and irony in the words of Nero, tells about his beloved Campagna, putting his admiration and pleasure from being there into the mouth of the cat. The Andreev family rented a villa in Campagna, where the poet and his wife lived ^{[16, pp. 261-262]}. The choice of Italy at one time was connected with an offer made to the poet's wife by Leonid Andreev's widow to work with children and help with publishing. Maria Ivanovna Glikberg recalled later: "When in 1923 life in Berlin became impossible due to inflation, which forced all Russian publishing houses to close and the families of my students to leave there, and we could not immediately get a visa to Paris, Andreeva offered us to go with her to Rome at her expense, promising us full board for my classes with her children (their there were three of them: Savva, Vera and Valentin) and her correspondence in foreign languages with publishers and theatrical entrepreneurs about the publication and staging of her deceased husband's works" ^{[6, p. 243]}.

The cat Nero has been on the forum for more than a year: "I'm used to it. Got old" – still sees his Campaign sometimes in a dream. The story of the old cat after Beppo's fantasy-vision of freedom causes the latter to have a desire to escape and get to the cat's paradise, which has not yet formed into a final plan. Especially since Nero gave clear instructions on how to find the Campagna: "Venice Square, where there is a large monument with a golden horse, is two steps away – right around the corner right now. And there is tram No. 17. <...> So the tram runs to the city gates. Porta Pia is called. And wherever you return, this Campaign will surround you from all sides..." ^{[21, p.171]}. The route is well known to Sasha Cherny himself, according to the commentator of his work A.S. Ivanov, "the poet lived near this very "last stop" on Nomentana Street, which rested on the Campagna" ^{[10, p. 577]}.

The fourth part of the story is devoted to thinking over an adventure, in which Beppo assigns one of the roles to a cat watchman who often drank after his few affairs on the forum. In the Italian mask theater, Scaramuccio also refers to the type of comic old men ^{[4, p.216]}, the funny behavior of a drunk man talking to himself, forgetting to clean up the garbage and dragging a bag of provisions and a bottle of wine with him, suggests a freedom-loving cat a possible escape option.

In the fifth part, Beppo plays out a whole performance for the sake of implementing his plan, where the entire population of the forum becomes spectators and participants at the same time, which for some time turns into a theater stage or arena. Researchers note the theatricality characteristic of the trickster, which is associated with its ability to transform and the liminality of the hero: "Latin limen – threshold – the intermediate position of an individual in the socio-cultural structure, when the former social role is abandoned, and the new one has not yet been accepted" ^[1]. D.A. Gavrilov believes that the trickster is a "werewolf, a shifter, a player, a master of illusion, and for him there is no habitual concept of life and death, because the game can be started from the beginning every time and stopped at any moment" ^{[5, p. 67]}. Beppo plays a scary and funny performance at the same time: he pretends to be dead, actually plays with death: "Beppo was lying by a large column. Flies landed on his whiskers, ants crawled over his ears, and he stretched out with a stick and spread his thin legs, at least that. It's like not a cat, but a stale loaf thrown out of the window" ^{[21, p.173]}.

One of the characteristic features of the trickster is called gluttony ^{[5, p. 18, 67; 15, p. 26]}, however, Beppo is not so much voracious as a constantly hungry cat. But for the sake of freedom, now he is ready to sacrifice his needs and step over the feeling of hunger. With the appearance on the forum, new boundaries are discovered for him and a new goal arises – to overcome them. The forum, on the one hand, is arranged by people who need to put the non-attached animals somewhere, on the other hand, there are internal rules defined by its tailed inhabitants. Moreover, all these rules, both human and feline, are aimed at the benefit of the animal world, but freedom and independence become those sacred values for which Beppo plays with death itself. The cat does not find a place in any world. The cat forum does not become a native family for Beppo. For its inhabitants, he remains an eccentric, strange, who did not accept their world, the feline chairman Bimbo, pronouncing the last word, draws attention to this: "The first case is in our forum. Not old, strong, but come on ... there was a worthy cat, he could not submit" ^{[21, p.173]}.

The second part of the performance, taken outside the walls of the forum, looks comical. Before the eyes of a drunken watchman, a dead cat comes to life and gets out of the bag: "The old man rubbed his eyes… What's the story? It must have been a strong wine slipped to him. Where has it been seen that a sick cat, whom he, like an old useless brush, just dragged in a bag, did such tricks!" ^{[21, p.174]}. Later, Beppo himself becomes the object of the author's irony: fearing to be caught, he pretends to be a cat living in the houses he ran past. Then he worries that he is traveling on a tram without a ticket and therefore hides from the conductor under the seat, where he could not resist the temptation and stole a couple of sausages from a basket standing on the floor right in front of his nose, because he was hungry, and did not eat everything.

Sasha Cherny's story reveals the psychological complexity of the main character. All researchers point to the ambivalence of the trickster, for example, N.D. Tamarchenko writes: "They are all ambivalent: each combines mutually contradictory, at first glance, properties; but these properties themselves overlap" ^{[19, p. 272]}. A cat, on the one hand, is a freedom–loving creature, on the other - the personification of home comfort. Beppo is driven by the natural needs of food, affection, attention, but his master not only could not give it to him, but also tortured, mocked and hurt. Beppo is the image of a tramp, marginal, homeless, but free and independent cat. People let him down, hence the unwillingness to subordinate anyone, to recognize someone as their master. According to Yu.N. Chukhvicheva: "The Trickster travels around the world and between worlds, this is his distinctive feature – he does not have a permanent home, he is always on a journey that has no specific purpose" ^{[22, p. 137]}. Then the conclusion of the story is logical: "He dangled his paws from the stump, yawned lazily, looked at the house by the bridge and, falling asleep, grumbled: "I'll decide tomorrow ..." ^{[21, p.176]}. Although everything is in order for Beppo to join a new family: there is a child ("A girl jumps at the gate" ^{[21, p.176]}), there is a cow, there is no dog, but this cat will decide whether to make him domestic or go wild.

Let's return to the concept of liminality. V. Turner draws attention to the fact that the rites of passage have three phases: separation – "the detachment of an individual or group from a previously occupied place in the social structure or from certain cultural circumstances" ^{[20, p. 168]}, this can include the shoemaker's decision to bring Beppo to the forum, the edge is a hero "it passes through an area of culture that has very few or no properties of the past or future state" ^{[20, pp. 168-169]} – this is the time of Beppo's stay at the forum (note that at present the cat forum is located on the Torra Argentino Square). The third phase is restoration or reunification, when the subject regains a stable state, and it is assumed that the usual norms and rules characteristic of the social order will now be observed ^{[20, p. 169]}. If we consider Beppo as a subject for whom "criminal behavior" is only a temporary phenomenon, and trickster behavior as rebellious behavior of a teenager (Beppo is a young cat), then his transition to a new state is possible, but the author leaves his hero at a crossroads, thereby preserving the image of a trickster hero for him.

Autobiographical elementsLet's touch on another aspect of the story – its autobiography.

The researcher of the writer's creativity A.S. Ivanov rhetorically exclaims: "Did Sasha Cherny write about himself? He was also an eternal wanderer. He could not get along in one place for a long time, leaving any bread feeders at the slightest encroachment on his freedom to be himself" ^{[9, p. 559]}. A.V. Korotkov writes about the zoomorphic author's mask in the story "Cat Sanatorium" ^{[12, p. 190]}. Let's note some points close to the author of the story himself, firstly, this is the special attitude of the cat to children. He loves them, as the writer himself loves children, for example, Beppo says: "Neighbors came, children with them – they have children like kittens… And children, you know, always have something: a piece of herring, a pie, this and that" ^{[21, p.163]}; children in the yard of the house where he lived with a shoemaker, according to him, like flies, which made this place attractive to the cat, and later he notices a girl in the the house by the bridge. Secondly, the theme of pasta runs through the whole story. So, the name of the owner of the shoemaker's cat is Spaghetti; talking about his second mistress, Beppo notices that she has "very tasteless food. Every day, you know, pasta. Some kind of gum, not food" ^{[21, p.163]}; a shoemaker and an artist drawing cats on the forum also ate pasta. According to the memoirs of V.L. Andreeva, pasta was a frequent dish on their table, from which "Sasha Cherny's mood instantly dropped, he burst into bilious tirades about the characteristic properties of Italians in general and about their cuisine in particular" ^{[1, p. 204]}. So, in the story, the writer expressed his attitude to a common Italian dish.

It is interesting to look at the correlation of the time of the creation of the story with the historical – the birth of fascism in Italy – and the arguments of M.N. Lipovetsky about the existence of the trickster hero as a response to various closed state systems ("closed societies"), including fascism ^[13]. In October 1922, the king appoints Mussolini as Prime minister of Italy and the rule of fascism is officially established in the country. V.L. Andreeva recalled the accident that happened to Sasha Cherny in Rome: "Deep in thought and not noticing anything around, he walked down the street with his head down, as usual, with his hands behind his back. He was so lost in thought that he did not hear the trumpet sounds of the Fascist anthem, did not see either the banner or the marching detachment of blackshirts. He came to his senses from a blow to the head with a stick, which threw off the hat of the impious man and left a big bump on his crown – the poor man then barely dragged himself home and foamed at the mouth with curses at the barbarism of the fascists, who hit him for not taking off his hat in front of their "lousy banner" ^{[2, p. 205]}. Then it is no accident that the main character of his story is a trickster, i.e. a rebel who loves freedom, values independence, and does not accept the rigid framework of society. Sasha Cherny has already escaped from one new emerging state system: in 1918 he left Soviet Russia. In the spring of 1924, the Glikberg couple moved from Italy to France now forever.

ConclusionIn the story "The Cat Sanatorium", Sasha Cherny's personal impressions of his stay in Rome, his experience of the historical realities of the turning point of the twentieth century and the writer's creative attitudes to creating works for children are intertwined.

The main character of the fairy tale story is a cat who is endowed not only with speech, freedom-loving and independent character, but also with the features of the trickster archetype. These include provocative behavior aimed at destroying order, creating chaos around oneself as a mockery of others, while cheating and hooliganism turn against him, he becomes a victim of his own behavior, theatricality and liminality, the presence of sacred values (freedom, independence), for which it is possible to play with death, ambivalence. The cat often becomes a comic object of the author's irony, but, as Yu.B. Borev writes, humor, unlike satire, "always sees in its object some sides corresponding to the ideal" ^{[3, p. 83]}, therefore it is not by chance that the writer asserts his main character as a person with a strong, decisive character and keeps the trickster image behind him. Beppo the cat can also be considered as an author's mask, which allows you to look at the world in a different way, to present your worldview and attitude to animals, people, and the structure of society as a whole.