Modernization of the image of the Huli Jing and the transformational nature of Reality in V. O. Pelevin's novel «The Sacred Book of the Werewolf»

Dubakov Leonid ORCID: 0000-0003-1172-7435 PhD in Philology Associate Professor, Faculty of Philology, Shenzhen MSU-BIT University 518172, China, Shenzhen, Guojidasueyuan str., 1 dubakov_leonid@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Go Wenjing Master’s Degree student, Faculty of Philology, Shenzhen MSU-BIT University 518172, China, Shenzhen, Guojidasueyuan str., 1 Lesliegreycn@outlook.com

The werewolf fox from Victor Pelevin's novel "The Sacred Book of the Werewolf" (or "A Fuck") (2004) has repeatedly found itself in the center of attention of literary critics. They wrote about this image from the point of view of the presence of a mystical component in the book, revealed the presence of heterogeneous cultural references in the image of Pelevinskaya huli-ching, considered her image in connection with other elements of the text. At the same time, the key motive of "A Fuck" is the motive of werewolf, it defines the main meanings contained in the image of the main character and determines the specifics of the artistic world created in the book.

In the "Sacred Book of the Werewolf" there are many references to classical Chinese texts. Guo Wei in the article "Werewolf foxes in Chinese literature and art and in the works of V. Pelevin" identifies some of them. These are, for example, "New Records of Qi Xie, or What Confucius did not Say" by Yuan Mei, "Notes on the Search for Spirits" by Gan Bao, "Description of the Miraculous from Liao's Study" by Pu Songlin, "Elevation to the Rank of Spirits" by Xu Zhonglin, "Journey to the West" by Wu Chengen ^[5]. Pelevin borrows from these texts the actual central image of the werewolf fox and individual plot elements and motifs.  

But the Pelevin heroine is an image in which the tradition is reinterpreted from the point of view of the modern cultural context, as well as Buddhist and Western philosophy. And the Fuck is both rooted in the past and reflects the present. The writer offers new justifications for its properties and abilities and focuses on the spiritual search for the werewolf fox as its key intention. And the Huli from the "Sacred Book of the Werewolf" stands on a par with numerous Pelevin protagonists, embodying basically a Buddhist view of reality and using Eastern methods to achieve spiritual transformation.

The Pelevin fox-werewolf has a homophonic name ("primary suggestive command" ^{[9, p. 67]}), which places it in two cultures: on the one hand, it is a Russian obscene expression, on the other, according to Li Geng, "A (kit. ?) is a diminutive prefix, Huli (kit. )means 'fox', which in total means 'fox' in Russian" ^{[7, p. 26]}. And the Fuck Pelevin says that "A" is her name ^{[9, p. 8]}, that is, "A" is a proper name. Yan Meiping characterizes the heroine's name as "verbal werewolf" ^{[12, p. 60]}.

In addition to the bicultural moment, it is important that the heroine's name sounds like a question in Russian. This question may have different meanings – for example, what? What? why? why? What's the use? what did you think? What the hell? Be that as it may, he ironically reports on the social disorder of the heroine and the uncertainty of her personality (which will find a Buddhist justification in the novel). Later, she will take the pseudonym "Alice Lee", which will suit her "Asian face", "and on the other hand, as if a hint: "Alice Lee?"" ^{[9, p. 18]} ("a hint at her "inauthenticity", an imaginary entity visible to others, but mistaken for authentic", and in connection with Carroll's images ^{[8, p. 27]}). The sisters A Huli – I Huli and E Huli – have names constructed in the same way, and their destinies are also to be alien in the culture where they exist, and not to have full confidence in the correctness of their lives.

And the Huli, like the werewolf foxes of Chinese literature, has longevity or even immortality. According to Chinese literature, "the older the animal (object), the more power it can possess" ^{[1, p. 49]}: "A fifty-year-old fox can turn into a woman, a hundred-year-old can become a beauty and a sorceress who knows about what is happening for a thousand li, perfectly knows the art of seduction, deceives a person so that that he's losing his mind. After a thousand years, the laws of Heaven are revealed to the fox, and it becomes a Heavenly fox" [cit. 1, p. 49]. That is, Pelevin begins the narrative about A Huli when she has already reached the age at which she can acquire a high spiritual status.

At the same time, she practically does not change in appearance: she looks fourteen years old and she is very attractive. In the story "An Amazing Meeting in Western Shu" by Li Hsien-min, a werewolf fox looks like this: "A girl of about fourteen or fifteen years old, slowly walks with lotus steps. A short fringe hangs over the forehead, the face shines like a red orchid, eyebrows like curved willow leaves" [cit. 1, p. 61]. However, it should be noted that in a bestial state, And the Fuck looks older: " – You're kind of mangy. And you look like you could be three hundred years old" ^{[9, p. 236]}. According to her, every hundred and eight years, werewolf foxes have one silver (gray) hair in their tail.

Chinese huli-ching exude the smell of musk and often smell of perfume. In "The Beauty of Qingfeng" by Pu Songlin, in the house where there was a werewolf fox, "there is a smell of orchid and musk" ^{[10, p. 22]}. In the short story "The Fox punishes for fornication" ^{[10, p. 24]}, the potion put by the fox in the food smells like musk. According to A Huli, "The fox's body really has a barely noticeable fragrant smell, but people usually take it for perfume" ^{[9, p. 172]}. Pelevin removes the artificial accentuation of the huli-ching sexuality, denoting the simple naturalness of his heroine.

But still, for the most part, the changes that occur with A Fuck happen inside. Moreover, these are not spontaneous, but controlled changes. Foxes are werewolves that "impersonate human family members" ^{[1, p. 57]}, create a "working personality", a "simulacrum of the soul" ^{[9, p. 9]} when the cultural era changes: "We fit a new self to our face, just like a dress made in a different fashion" ^{[9, p. 10]}. That is, the main inversion that A Fuck generates is not an external inversion, but an internal one, which facilitates her "mimicry and disguise" ^{[9, p. 10]}.

The word "simulacrum" appears in the "Holy Book of the Werewolf" also when A Huli characterizes her sexual organ, in place of which she has a "simulacrum pouch" ^{[9, p. 173]}. The simulative nature of reality created by the fox affects both the top and the bottom and, in the context of the philosophical constructions of the book, is projected onto a person: the human personality, according to Pelevin, as well as bodily manifestations, are primarily conditioned by the work of consciousness. Just like the "simulacrum bag", the mind of A Huli also works, which, according to her, is not a real "organ of thought" ^{[9, p. 159]}: A Huli returns what he has heard from people by himself.

And Huli feeds on qi energy and earns money by prostitution, exploiting her young appearance, which causes "strong and contradictory feelings in men" ^{[9, p. 10]}, or else – she "professionally impersonates a girl of borderline age with innocent eyes" ^{[9, p. 63]}. This appearance of hers is similar, for example, to the appearance of the Fourth Hu from the novel of the same name by Pu Sunlin: "This girl was just old enough to have her hair done [that is, 15 years - approx. Guo Wenjing]. She was beautiful, like a lotus turning pink in the hanging dew drops; like an apricot flower moistened with a light mist. She smiled coquettishly and gracefully, barely noticeably, and the beauty of her sweet face seemed to want to go beyond the limits of the possible" ^{[10, p. 31]}.

At the same time, A Fuck has no gender, since there is no reproductive system. As well as having sex with clients, she does not do it, because it's enough for her to give them a hassle. Interestingly, during contact with a Sikh, A Huli abstracts the sexual as much as possible: she reads Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" about black holes, which seems to her to be a story about cosmic sex, and not about physics. And this is not a concentration on sex, but a feeling of sex as something bodily to a small extent, because A Fuck is rather connected with the Voloshinsky divine star spaces mentioned in the epigraph ^{[9, p. 6]}. Among other things, of course, this passage is riddled with irony.

At the same time, A Fuck has no gender, since there is no reproductive system. As well as having sex with clients, she does not do it, because it's enough for her to give them a hassle. Interestingly, during contact with a Sikh, A Huli abstracts the sexual as much as possible: she reads Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" about black holes, which seems to her to be a story about cosmic sex, and not about physics. And this is not a concentration on sex, but a feeling of sex as something bodily to a small extent, because A Fuck is associated with the Voloshinsky divine star spaces mentioned in the epigraph ^{[9, p. 6]}. Among other things, of course, this passage is permeated with Pelevin's irony.

At the same time, looking at reality through the prism of the sexual still determines how the heroine perceives, for example, the urban landscape. And Fuck about Moscow: "There were several buildings of phallic architecture sticking out above them <...> they seemed to be painted. "Then there was the Kremlin, which majestically raised its ancient eldaks to the clouds" ^{[9, pp. 139-140]}. This metaphor resembles a similar image used by Aleister Crowley, who is mentioned in the novel parodically and seriously. In the essay "The Heart of Holy Russia", describing St. Basil's Cathedral, he writes: "Next is a tall phallus, a column made in red and gray tones, orange and green stripes twisted into a spiral are applied to the dome; another phallus is huddled under it, its dome is encircled by flat rhombuses of red and green color" ^[6]. But where Crowley makes a deliberate sacral "decline", Pelevin ridicules the pretentiousness of Moscow and points out the specifics of the "national gestalt" ^{[9, p. 140]}.

The motivation of the heroine of the "Sacred Book of the Werewolf" is also paradoxical: prostitution is what befits a virtuous fox, in contrast to various cheating [Pelevin, p. 39]. Although at the same time, this activity seems to her a little shameful, as well as watching a person who is at the mercy of her sexual obsession. At the same time, A Huli notices that the imposition of a hassle is not exclusively her ability, because women do it even better: "It is necessary to pass off a machine made of meat for reproduction as a wonderful spring flower worthy of a precious frame – and maintain this illusion not for minutes, as we do, but for years and decades, and all this without any tail-laying" ^{[9, p. 91]}. That is, in a sense, women also possess the ability of shapeshifting, only "a woman is guided by instinct, and a fox by reason" ^{[9, p. 108]}. The essence of the hassle imposed by A Fuck is the ability to implement the principle of "beauty in the eyes of the beholder": she adjusts the image of female beauty, which is in the mind of a particular man, for herself. But, unlike ordinary women, A Huli is capable of variability and plasticity in this process.

The habitat of were-foxes in Chinese literature is often a grave or a crypt. One of the reasons for this was that the Huli-ching was considered the embodiment of the soul of a dead person or being in connection with the world of the dead. Grave grave, for example, in the novella "The Fox from the Old Grave" (V century A.D.) by Tao Yuanming, an old fox is found in a grave on a hill reading a book with the names of those women that he once seduced ^{[11, p. 66]}. In the "Notes on the Search for Spirits" it is said that "in Han time, the Guangchuan Wang loved to open graves. He ruined Luan Shu's grave. All the signs of dignity that decorated the coffin were rotted without a trace. There was only a white fox in the crypt" ^{[4, pp. 358-359]}.

And Huli also once, in China, lived in a grave: "Before coming to Russia, I lived for several hundred years in a Han grave near the place where the city of Luoyang once stood. There were two spacious chambers in the grave, in which beautiful robes and shirts, a psaltery and a flute, a lot of all kinds of dishes were preserved" ^{[9, p. 292]}. Her secret hiding places in Russia remind her of that Chinese "grave", remote from human habitations and suitable "for a being indifferent to worldly vanity and prone to solitary reflections" ^{[9, p. 291]}. In Moscow, she lives in a subtribe room, which its owners forgot about thanks to her magic. Mikhalych, who sees the house for the first time And the Fuck, condescendingly calls it a kennel. The figurative meaning of this word here does not obscure the direct one: a kennel as a shelter for dogs is quite suitable for a distant relative of dogs – a fox. Grave grave is connected with the preposition "under": the grave is underground, her house is under the stadium stands.

Later, A Huli would open another underground shelter of his own – a "personal bomb shelter" ^{[9, p. 285]} or a "bunker" ^{[9, p. 287]} next to Bitsevsky Park: "It looked like this: in a narrow ravine, a concrete pipe with a diameter of about a meter came out of the earthen wall. A few steps opposite its edge, the opposite slope of the ravine began, so it was difficult to notice the pipe from above. Underground, it branched into two small rooms" ^{[9, p. 286]}. And Huli mentions that there "were no traces of life" ^{[9, p. 287]}, meaning that no one had been there before, but in the literal sense, one can imagine her "bunker" as a space of death, like a grave.

Both shelters, in addition to being oriented underground, are associated with a certain energy – just as graves in mythology are associated with the energy of death. The first habitation of A Hoolie is located near a transformer substation, the "bunker" is located in a ravine overgrown with plants of the umbrella family, the size of which scares A Hoolie because she thinks it is "due to radiation or chemical contamination" ^{[9, p. 287]}. Interestingly, the "plants of the umbrella family" associatively evoke umbrellas made of oil paper, which detect Chinese signs in the landscape near the "bunker". And Khuli, one of whose main life meetings is a meeting with the Yellow Gentleman, in the Bitsevsky forest, having discovered a bicycle springboard and a sculptural composition of logs, recalls the Yellow Mountain on which his monastery was located. This parallel is due to a similar topos – a high river bank (elevation); time (within the day – evening, from a spiritual point of view – eternity) (logs resembling Stonehenge); design features (in the Bitsevsky forest there are several U-shaped gates, at the monastery – one large gate with no fence there and there).

Remembering his "cozy Chinese grave", Ah Huly notices that now there is no such thing, because the old graves have been destroyed by the new infrastructure, and "in modern afterlife communal apartments and the dead themselves are cramped" ^{[9, p. 291]}. Grave grave comparison with a communal apartment can be read in the opposite direction: Soviet and Russian communal apartments are like graves, and the people in them are dead. In this sense, A Hoolie, consciously choosing for herself (for herself) "burrows" underground for solitary reflection, is not even in an equal position with people, but in a better position compared to them. Werewolf foxes in China are associated with deception, so the characteristics of "havir" from Mikhalych and "raspberry" from Sasha Gray, attached to her shelters, also turn out to be quite appropriate.

The "Sacred Book of the Werewolf" combines the motifs of Chinese stories about the werewolf fox and Russian folk tales about animals. And the Fuck falls in love with the werewolf Sasha Gray. Interestingly, the werewolf "supraphysical" transformation of her and him is described by Pelevin using contrasting images. Sasha Gray becomes a wolf "from the inside out": he "literally fell out of his own body" ^{[9, p. 129]}, "a gray shaggy tail jumped out", "he grew fur" ^{[9, p. 160]}; "his tunic and trousers transformed with him," And the Fuck – "outside – inside": she threw off her clothes and "felt her fingers coming together" ^{[9, p. 228]}.

Transformation with A Huli happens when she hunts a chicken. Chinese Huli-ching can be thieves. The short story "Student Thief Ji" tells about a fox that robbed one family, taking money and food: "Once Ji had a fried chicken, which he was going to regale the guests with. Suddenly she disappeared" ^{[10, p. 101]}. Pelevin has a chicken hunt And the Fuck is rather her philosophical occupation: this is how she comprehends the unity of all things. Huli-ching from "Student Thief Ji" continues to steal, making fun of people: "There is no need to attribute any special malice to the fox: after all, the student seemed to pull her to him humorously, well, she processed him, too, not without farce!" ^{[10, p. 103]}.

As with E. Schwartz in the cycle of poems about the Fox, in the "Sacred Book of the Werewolf" the principle of werewolf extends to various aspects of reality that A Huli observes or with which she comes into contact. Pelevin compares his characters with other characters, and in addition to indicating a situational change in their character or behavior, he emphasizes their transformational essence. Sasha Gray at the moment of "supraphysical transformation" "looked like a bear" ^{[9, p. 161]}; And the Fuck "stretched like a cat" ^{[9, p. 188]}; Mikhalych reminds And the Fuck "a huge fattened dachshund, which was transplanted with a wolf skin", he also "neighed like a stallion" ^{[9, p. 188]}. p. 375]; Internet columnist – "a creature somewhat towering over a camp shepherd" ^{[9, p. 257]}; people like tailless monkeys ^{[9, p. 359]}; Yellow Gentleman "smart as a fox" ^{[9, 2004, p. 347]}.

Pelevin also uses phraseology, ironically rethinking it, realizing and at the same time using it to create a world of people changing animals, or vice versa. So, the beneficiaries of Russian wealth, "offshore cats" ^{[9, p. 374]} "every dog knows on Rublevka" ^{[9, p. 239]}; Sasha Gray jokes that wounds will heal on him like on a dog; And the Fuck reproaches him, saying that his snout is in the gun ^{[9, p. 239]}. p. 315], another time she uses a Chinese phraseology: "I thought you were a sharp-eyed lion, but you are a blind dog" ^{[9, p. 355]}, which, when applied to a werewolf, sounds ambiguous. (N. G. Babenko believes that the novel is characterized by the presence of "verbal milestones" of the formed subtext of "lexico-phraseological bridges" thrown from one plot block to another": Lieutenant-General Sasha Gray moves from a wolf through a dog to the rank of colonel-General ^{[2, pp. 283-284]}.) The writer also rebuilds a Russian proverb, bringing it closer to the Chinese cultural context: "To be afraid of tigers, do not go to the mountains" ^{[9, p. 334]}.

In general, reality is similar to a werewolf: for example, the cottages of oil workers are similar to "rows of chickens" ^{[9, p. 241]}, as well as the oil brought to the surface by flaming werewolves in Neftekhonyevsk is the remains/remains of ancient living organisms.

Russian russians, finally, the very stay in Russia requires social shapeshifting from A Huli: "at some moments I completely ceased to understand who I really am – a Hong Kong woman with a Russian name Su or a Russian fox with a Chinese name A Huli" ^{[9, p. 311]}. According to A. N. Vorobyova, A Hoolie turns out to be "a victim of universal (total) werewolf" ^{[3, p. 94]}.

The principle of shapeshifting can also be traced in the composition of the novel: according to O. Y. Osmukhina and A. A. Suprova, Pelevin, based on the concept of "interchangeability", the presence of real and "reverse worlds", "unfolds" "the idea of the coexistence of different worlds in a single space-time continuum and continue the traditional theme of the possibility/impossibility of transition, that is, the intersection of spatial and temporal boundaries between these worlds" ^{[8, p. 28]}.

Finally, an important component of Pelevin's image of Huli-ching is that A Huli is a Buddhist in her worldview. Her Buddhism is a legacy of her Chinese origin, absorbed by her Chinese literature and mysticism, the teachings received by the fox from the Yellow Lord. The latter catches A Fuck, just as, for example, a Buddhist monk in Pu Sunlin's novella "The Lotus Fairy" caught a werewolf fox ^{[10, p. 25]}. The plot of the "Sacred Book of the Werewolf" is dedicated to the spiritual formation of the Huli-ching, which realizes its "rainbow nature", and this is its last and final transformation.

In the novel "The Sacred Book of the Werewolf" Victor Pelevin creates the image of the Huli-ching based on the diverse – mystical, cultural, literary Chinese tradition. The main heroine of the novel named A Huli combines two main cultural streams – Chinese and Russian. This is manifested in her name, appearance, character, way of feeling and thinking, choice of habitat, philosophy of life. Pelevin uses the motives associated with the Huli-ching and offers their new, expanded, in-depth interpretations, forms new connotations of the image, obscuring, but not removing the former ones ^{[2, pp. 290-291]}, creates a postmodern "author's neo-myth" ^{[8, p. 29]}. The true, higher goals and motives of the werewolf fox, which is a detached person, are not related to obtaining energy for food. Pelevin's heroine comprehends her own nature, how her mind works and how it is possible to realize the "super-werewolf" in herself. The novel focuses on the transformational nature of reality as a whole: huli-ching is a metaphor that allows you to characterize the essence of a person, time, space, language, the external world, illusory in its depth, and therefore freely changing. The fox is a werewolf And the Huli carries out "internal alchemy" based on the provisions of the eastern soteriological doctrine, while rejecting all imaginary material forms.