Love as a macroconcept of V. Tokareva's artistic conceptosphere (on the example of collections of works "Short Beeps", "About what did not happen", "To say – not to say...")

Kondrasheva Ekaterina Vladimirovna ORCID: 0000-0002-9990-3351 Senior Lecturer, Department of Journalism, Pacific State University, Khabarovsk 680035, Russia, Khabarovskii krai, g. Khabarovsk, ul. Tikhookeanskaya, 136 000555@pnu.edu.ru Other publications by this author

Time destroys everything: palaces, people, entire states.

Even the great Ancient Greece has become a backwater.

And only real feelings are not subject to entropy.

                                                           V. Tokareva.

Introduction. Victoria Tokareva entered the Russian literature in the sixties of the XX century, and since then her publication activity has not decreased. The writer's work is the subject of research by linguists and literary critics. Researchers interpret the writer's work from different angles: they analyze idiostyle and gender dominants, their representation in prose, find a continuation of Chekhov's traditions, measure the ideological and artistic range of the "female theme" and female images. However, the conceptual sphere of the writer's creativity has been little studied, although it is the conceptual approach, paying attention to the most significant concepts that allows us to consider the writer's creativity in relation to the general cultural, artistic conceptual sphere.

The theoretical basis of the research was the works on the theory and analysis of the artistic concept undertaken in the works of V. G. Zusman ^[2], Ya. A. Samorukova ^[6], E. V. Sergeeva ^[7], Yu. V. Titova ^[8], I. I. Chumak-jun ^[13], J. Lakoff, M. Johnson ^[5].

One of Tokareva's most important concepts is "love". It is this feeling, the ability to it, that reveals the personality and character of a Person. In creating a convincing image, the writer turns to biographies of people, weaving signs of the time into the fabric of the narrative.

Using the classification of Sergeeva E.V., the concept of "love" can be called an artistic macroconcept of the writer ^[7]. It is universal, at the same time it gets different content, which is explained by the processes taking place in our society, including the civilizational scrapping ^[3], which has affected humanity, communication, in recent years replacing real communication with remote: "No one in my village is sick, but just in case I don't go out the gate. I'm sitting behind the fence" [10:7]. Although this process of human disunity began much earlier: "Two people who need each other can't just come to each other and tell about it. It takes some kind of miracle, an invisible hat, to meet two people living at the same time, in the same city, on neighboring streets, twenty minutes away" [11: 163].

The concept of "love" and its content. In the writer's work, "each concept, as a rule, includes microfragments from other concepts representing other ideas and suggesting other plans. This is the essence of the concept, which by its nature is intended to carry out a new division of the value-semantic space, and in this regard to take on new outlines" ^[13].

The concept of "love" is complex, rich, has a branched structure, manifests itself in interrelation with other concepts such as "life", "death", "family", "freedom", "home". The concept of "love" is layered with fragments of the concepts of "happiness", "childhood", "loneliness". It is the components, as well as the concept of "love" itself, that "characterize being in its entirety, from the everyday state to reaching the meaning of life landmarks" ^[13].

V. Tokareva returns to the concept of "love" in her works, exploring this feeling at different levels of relationships, and when love is "someone else's happiness" and when it is "common music", which helps the author to verbalize the conceptual picture of the world.

One can argue with the researcher E. G. Koshkareva, who classifies V. Tokareva's work as household and family, "folk prose" [4: 10], as well as with the critic S. Giedroyc, who reproaches V. Tokarev that she writes exclusively about housekeepers ^[1]. Researcher V. G. Zusman wrote that the literary concept "has an outlet for geopolitical, historical, ethnopsychological moments that lie outside the work of art" [2: 14]. V. Tokareva fits the concept of "love" into the psychological, social context of the epoch, helps to understand the laws of her artistic universe and realize the picture of our modern reality.  Continuing the traditions of Russian literature, the traditions of I. Turgenev, A. Chekhov, the writer creates a picturesque canvas of reality, with the attention to the "little man" characteristic of domestic writers ^[14].

The concept of "love" refers to the inner world of a person, serves as a connection (from infancy to death) with the world around him, with family, relatives, loved ones, loved ones: "A quiet bengalka followed her son. She never made any remarks to the child. I just went, that's all. And the son grew up calm, not twitchy. Because he was not pulled by upbringing, but simply loved. Bocharov was convinced: at the beginning of life, a person should know a non-reasoning all-encompassing love. And then he will grow up happy" [12:73].

V. Tokareva's heroes are either endowed with the talent to love, or completely deprived of it. In the story "Brother and Sister", the devoted love of an older sister for a younger brother helps them survive during and after the war: "But Zuma and Semik are one, and separating them is like tearing them alive, that is, killing them. The children clung to each other and sobbed so much that the teachers' hearts could not stand it. They could no longer watch the children's tragedy and gave up. They waved their hand. And left in the same group. Let them be together – sister and brother. It makes it easier for them to survive. The girl will take care of the younger one, and this care will give her strength" [9:20]. Other children in the orphanage died of diseases, but "Zuma took care of Semika. And saved it." She survived herself, and her love for her brother helped her in this, which sounded like music in her soul: "An orchestra played in her soul: a silver harp, trumpets, violins" [ibid.: 20]. Love for her brother went through Zuma's whole life, became her meaning, but as a result, the woman's personal happiness did not develop. Sacrifice, obsession with her brother's life, on the arrangement of his personal life became the cause of discord between her relatives: "She had everything: money, husband and even America. But there was no main thing – a brother. And there was no turning back. Their ice floes have spread too far in the ocean. You will not jump over" [ibid.: 46]. As a result, Zuma dies without reconciling with the person most dear to her. Everything loses its value, everything is perishable: things, houses, old grievances and misunderstandings. But only love is eternal: "There was and remains her all-consuming love for her brother. This love has been preserved in the atmosphere. I can feel it. I breathe it" [ibid.: 48]. Love exists somewhere beyond our being, giving a ghostly hope of meeting with loved ones. Love in the works of V. Tokareva is often bright, but very sad. Even a happy ending is always a little bit with a touch of sadness. In the story "The Crystal Slipper", the main character Lilya, a simple, ordinary woman, "but if you look closely – sweet, sweet, my bright earthly angel ...", says: "Happiness has happened. I received a marriage proposal" [9:13]. And then the comparison with a fairy tale, and the very name of the story refers us to a long-known plot: "Her fairy tale became a reality" [ibid: 14]. Everything that was before is gone, forgotten. A new love came into her life "like a clear sun, and this sun is forever." And then the remark: "The main thing is not to make a mistake." A fairy tale, a crystal slipper, happiness. Lilya is now "Los Angeles in the middle of summer." But whether happiness and love have come into a woman's life for a long time is a question. The final is open.

Often in V. Tokareva's prose, the ability to love is accompanied by the musical talent of the hero. In the short story "Short Beeps", which gave the name to the collection, Pavel Kochubey is a famous singer with a voice that "makes you want to cry with delight" [9: 50]. He is the object of worship of his accompanist Irina, a young gifted girl who has been waiting for them to be together for a long time. However, he married someone else, "and Irina and all their arrangements are a thing of the past, have sunk into the cultural layer, like an ancient city" [ibid: 69]. And again, like in a fairy tale, but not quite: "Once upon a time there was an old man with an old woman. But they lived apart. Everyone in their life." However, if Irina lived a full life: she gave birth to a daughter, taught at the conservatory and gave private music lessons, then Pavel's ligaments "rusted." Many years later, he will call Irina from the hospital, sick, almost dying: "I don't look ahead, because there is an outcome and hopelessness ahead. I only look back, where our love is beating in a golden ray." The heroes realize that life has passed without love: "You don't need anything, no money, no fame, just to look into his face and float over the roofs, like in a Chagall painting" [ibid: 74]. And, oddly enough, Irina realizes that Pavel was her guardian angel: "He gave me strong feelings and saved me from a fatal mistake" [ibid.: 73]. The story is full of music, sometimes sad, sometimes life-affirming, and ends with music: "The beeps sounded in the handset. They were like the beating of a heart–his and hers. One rhythm. The same content. General music" [ibid.: 75].

Harmony is possible only in music. In life, even the most faithful, strong, tested love collapses under the onslaught of the material world. This is what happens in the story "The Guardian Angel", which is connected with the story "Short Beeps" by some internal motive. Here, at the beginning of the story, love formed, two halves met – Valentine and Valentina, harmoniously complementing each other. Valentina acts as the guardian of the family. Years pass again. Valentin betrays his love for his wife after many years. The wife offers her husband to buy freedom in millions, perhaps hoping that the unreality of the amount will stop him. But he agrees, and Valentina lets him go with bitter words: "Live, who bothers you… But know this: I am your guardian angel. You were under my wing. And now you're on your own. Live without me as you can" [9: 221]. As a result, the husband dies, and the heroine wonders: "Did the guardian angel really try? Or just walked away and removed the wing… It means that what happened is also her fault" [9:227]. And this guilt for apostasy, the inability or unwillingness to fight for his love to the end, pursues his wife, fate condemns her to loneliness: "It's even strange: beautiful, smart, rich, but there is no love. Not put. Someone upstairs got greedy. Apparently, he decided: there was love and enough is enough for you" [ibid: 235]. But the feeling continues to live, she has dreams, and after them "Valentina woke up in a cloud of tenderness and clearly felt: he did not leave them. He left, but did not leave" [ibid.: 235].

Love can be different. When love is a deception, a deal, or a physiology, the writer writes about it sometimes cynically, sometimes rudely, as if to show that for such an imitation of love there is no need to pick up special words. In the story "Artificial Pond", the heroine Hannah, the "lilac fairy", just loves love, and considers her husband a job: "The husband is a relative. This is a wallet. It's the father. And love is something else entirely. When I love, I live. And without love I am not" [9:83]. Such a consumer understanding of feelings brings its dramatic consequences: illness, the loss of a child, the destruction of a family and a familiar life: "Where are you, Hannah? Are you running for happiness in a clockwise circle again? And happiness is from you, also clockwise and at the same speed. You will run until old age swamps you" [9:107]. The metaphorical image of the pond where the narrator met Hannah perfectly illustrates such "love", but at the beginning of the story the pond was frozen, snow sparkled, external beauty covered the inner human inconsistency. And the same image of the pond closes the story. So the writer draws a parallel with the fate of the heroine: "The pond was artificial, so the water in it stagnated like in a swamp." But the author is far from moralizing, emphasizing that in life everything is mixed up, real and fake, clean and dirty: "This spring water was mixed with stagnant water, and it made no sense to separate one from the other" [ibid: 107].

"The concepts that govern our thinking are not just creations of the mind. They affect our daily activities, down to the most trivial details. Our concepts structure our feelings, behavior, our attitude towards other people. Thus, our conceptual system plays a central role in determining the realities of everyday life" [5:25]. And the realities of life are such that love can be not only for a person, but also for material goods, which destroys the personality, makes a person a moral cripple. Such is the hero of the story "All or Nothing" Irakli, or, as his friends called him, Ira. He easily crosses over moral principles, easily renounces his words, promises, easily borrows money without intending to give it away. And all for the sake of the cherished apartment, the address of which makes other people feel envious: "Ira adored when they asked him the address. He was getting closer, all the insides were rejoicing. Ira tried to pacify his exultation, replied with restraint: Gorky Street, house 12, apartment 8. <...> The location seemed to elevate him above others" [9: 115-116]. The material embodiment of the meaning of life is an apartment in the center of Moscow. She is for him "like death for Koshchei the Immortal", "the meaning and content of all life". This dwelling, whose purpose is to be a place of comfort and mutual understanding, burns out everything human in the hero, deprives him of the love of the only woman who was with him in the most difficult moments of life: "If it wasn't for her, I would have died. She came to my hospital every day" [9:142]. But he is not going to get married, and then, in case of divorce, share an apartment with her. He did everything "to lose her" [ibid: 144]. There is a rebirth of the hero, something vaguely reminiscent of Gobseck, the hero of Honore de Balzac. His life attitude – "all or nothing" – burns out everything human in him, which, in fact, makes us human. "From a loanee, the Ira turned into a conman. Smoothly flowed from one to the other" [ibid: 137]. In the end, Ira sold the apartment profitably, invested money in the business and became rich. I forgot about my creativity, the desire for self-improvement, which I used to live with. To the question, what about the ideals that he had before, he gave a short answer in the spirit of a reborn intellectual: "Shit." And the author sadly concludes: "I knew we wouldn't see each other again. Winners do not like witnesses of the past" [ibid.: 153].

And yet there is a law of the preservation of love, the preservation of humanity in man. It is described very well in the story "The House of General Kuropatkin" in the collection "To say – not to say": "When one of the two betrays love, it is necessary that the other continues to keep faith and faith. No matter what. If one person is waiting, then the second one has somewhere to go back. And if the other, out of self-love, begins to burn bridges behind him, then there is no way back. What is self-love? It means: to love yourself. And you have to love Him. <...> It is necessary to have more souls. Be generous" [12:118-119]. Love cannot exist without faith and hope. There will be no music. There's not enough air. The "substance of love" will go away. "Where does the substance of love, trust, constancy go? Where does the substance of betrayal come from?" – such questions worry the heroes of V. Tokareva [11: 333]. But as long as there is love, it doesn't matter to whom, to a blood relative, or to a person who has become a native, as long as there is a place to return to, to someone who is waiting for you, "it's very easy to breathe" [ibid: 317].

Conclusions. Love brightens the writer's artistic world either with tragic colors, or with joyful experiences and worries, brings us closer to understanding the world and a person's place in it. The writer constructs the concept of "love" as the heart of his conceptosphere, the life of the characters develops around him and inside him, in sorrow or happiness, in sorrow or joy, in meetings or separations. The heroes of her stories change, they are washed away by time. New ones are coming. Sometimes the characters are similar to the old ones, but more mature. But the world of these new heroes is still held together by the concept of "love". Such a technique gives the author the opportunity to convey his feeling of life, the world, his emotions, impressions, ideas, which allows him to get closer to understanding the writer's works, deepen the idea of the author's ideological quest, his artistic quest. The analysis of this concept makes it possible to realize the features of the inner world of the characters and the aesthetic concept of the author.