The system of images in A. Varlamov's novel "The Mental Wolf"

Nyu Yuetsyu Postgraduate student, Department of Russian Language and Literature, Far Eastern Federal University 690922, Russia, Vladivostok, Ajax str., 101007 nyu.yu@dvfu.ru Other publications by this author

The purpose of the article is to consider the system of images in A. Varlamov's novel "The Mental Wolf". The need to consider this problem is determined by the general literary position that the author's idea of life is expressed through a system of characters. Relevance is seen in addressing one of the key problems of literary criticism based on the material of the work of a modern author. The subject of the study is the images of the main characters in the novel, which made it possible to determine the motivational and symbolic connections between them, to expand the interpretative possibilities of the text under consideration.

The characters of the novel have already attracted the attention of researchers from different positions: prototypes of heroes ^{[1, p. 83]}, images of real historical figures that occur on the pages of the novel ^{[2, p. 358]}, about aesthetic continuity in the depiction of national character ^{[3, 4]}, description of the fates of many heroes, historical and fictional ^{[5, p. 55]}, expressing one's understanding of the revolution with an indication of the fate of various characters ^{[6, p. 159]}, dealing with the fate of characters, interspersing fictional episodes into the exact biographical outline of the narrative, subordinating the general idea of the novel ^{[7, p. 62]}. The novelty of this research lies in the systematic analysis of the characters of the novel, which makes it possible to determine the artistic world of the work through the key characteristics of an individual character.

Alexey Varlamov's novel "The Mental Wolf" has a complex system of characters, which can be divided into fictional ones (for example, Vasily Khristoforovich Komissarov, his wife Vera Konstantinovna, daughter Ulya, etc.), allowing the author to freely manipulate the characters ^{[8, pp. 180-188]}, historical ones present on the pages of the novel under their own names (such as the emperor Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, Tsarevich Alexei and others), historical figures acting in the novel under fictitious names (this group includes historical figures - heroes of A. Varlamov's biographical books: M. Prishvin (in the novel Pavel Matveevich Legkobytov ("The hero Pavel Matveevich Legkobytov has a bright imprint of Prishvin's personality" ^{[9, p. 102]}), A. Green (Savely Krud), G. Rasputin ("the man", "the elder" and "he", but never named in the novel by name), Isidore Shchetinkin, who has two prototypes at once – the stripped Iliodor and the head of the Khlystovsky sect of Chevreks Alexey Shchetinin, as well as other episodic characters ^{[1, p. 83]}. Each of the characters manifests his own system of values, enters into disputes with other characters on the main issues of existence, which leads to oppositions that determine the characterological conflict in the novel.

The novel outlines a spatial opposition: village–city. Both loci are correlated with a certain period of the characters' lives. Life is divided into pre-war (the summer before the war in the village of Vysokye Gorbunki) and military and revolutionary (several years in St. Petersburg - Petrograd).

Nature is one of the value components in the work, the attitude of the hero towards it helps to see many of the value milestones of his image. Reflection on the nature of Legkobytov ^{[10, p. 140]}, the change of natural phenomena in Varlamov's novel, reflecting the ups and downs of the novel's plot, not only help to understand the deep meaning of the work, but also give a new entry point to the theme of the novel ^{[11, p. 191]}. The novel does not describe the beauty of nature, but conveys the love of various characters for it ^{[12, p. 31]}. Varlamov's characters perceive nature in different ways due to their spiritual experience. The prototype chosen for one of the main characters naturally brings this particular topic to the fore.

When revealing this topic, the oppositions of the heroes of Legkobytov and Uli, Komissarov and Lekgobytov are outlined. The main confrontation is outlined regarding the characters' views on the harmonious coexistence of man with nature. The first pair of characters is determined by an antinomian view of the idea of the callousness of nature, the supreme idea of which is not given to everyone to understand, and the idea of compassion for all living dumb creatures, which in the context of the novel acquires a slightly different meaning: is it possible for a person to interfere in the life of nature based on his principles. The second antinomic couple in the novel are Komissarov and Lekgobyt, the clash of their views is based on the idea of the hostility of nature, which must be subordinated to man, and the idea of non–interference in her life. If we consider the ideas of the heroes from this position, then Uli's understanding of the establishment of the laws of mercy in nature and her father's understanding of submission in this case will be read as synonymous. Let's look at how these points of view are represented in the novel.

Pavel Matveyevich Legkobytov believes that everything in nature lives according to its own laws, harmonious and perfect: "This was his beloved world, that simple-minded, sweet nature with which he was engaged, felt like her only fiance, was not afraid of anything with her, boldly looked into the eyes of any predator, knew by name the animals in the He knew the names of all the trees, shrubs and grasses, saw the underground growth of roots and the movement of tree juices, and if he could ask Heaven for something, he would pray that the sequence of day and night, heat and cold, dryness and moisture, wind and calmness, clarity and khmari and that in this routine of actions he should be assigned the eternal sleepless place of a caretaker and guardian, and he does not need any Kingdom of Heaven" ^{[13, p. 49]}. It is important to note the anthropomorphic metaphor that is repeatedly used when describing nature in cases where the inner point of view of the hero is given (for example, in the above passage: "I felt like her only fiance"), we can find a similar kind of metaphor in Prishvin himself, which has been repeatedly noted by researchers of his work (N.V. Gidrovich ^{[14, p. 21-23]}, M.T. Nasr ^{[15, p. 177]}, N.A. Turanina ^{[16, p. 103-104]}, N.N. Ivanov ^{[17, p. 5-163]}). In the individual picture of the world, which Prishvin himself (the prototype of Legkobytov) expressed in his work, one can also observe the unity of nature and man. Pavel Matveevich's love for nature corresponded to Prishvin's love. "Prishvin is the prophet of ecological literature" ^{[18, p. 150]}. Prishvin wrote about the organic relationship between man and nature, about its eternal and immutable laws, not only in his prose works, but also in his diaries: "Love for nature, like the homeland of man, is the same everywhere: and it will pull into the hungry steppe if it was born in it" ^{[19, p. 49]}. The world of nature is one of the main themes of Prishvin's diaries, as he believed that nature as a kind of mirror of the soul would reveal the most beautiful sides in the human soul. As you can see, the novel attempts to fully embody the point of view on some ideological issues of the prototype in the hero.

Alexey Varlamov, as the author of the biography of M. Prishvin, admitted in an interview with Zinaida Shpachakova that he was able to express through these characters of the novel what he did not express in their biographies ^{[20, p. 46]}, thereby emphasizing the boundary between historical prototypes and fictional characters in the novel. The writer admits fiction, combines the source material, constructs stylistic effects in the novel, puts into the mouth of the hero the ideas that guided his prototype, but at the same time creates the effect of the reality of the hero himself, and attempts to equate the character and the prototype are not entirely rational.

Legkobytov's ideas in the novel are akin to the pantheistic principles of the deification of nature and the dissolution of man in it. Historically, they will be replaced by ideas about a rational attitude to nature, which will be introduced by a new society. These ideas will be voiced by the secret revolutionary Komisarov, but more on them below.

It is interesting in terms of attitude to nature that Legkobytov confronts Ulya Komissarova, who, according to the hunter, allegedly warned "animals about the appearance of a man with a gun" ^{[13, p. 51]}. Both characters seem to be united by the naturalness of their relationship with nature, but at the same time an internal opposition is emerging: Uli's desire to establish "merciful laws" in nature is opposed to Legkobytov's idea that nature is "above pity and compassion", it is kind in the highest sense, which not everyone can comprehend.

For Uli, closeness to nature is primarily associated with freedom and the opportunity to live, fly and get rid of the fear of reproduction, which left her only in summer, "when Ulya left for the village of High Humpbacks on the Shelomi River and walked there along the local forest and field roads, burning to blackness and burning in the hot air the gifts and nightmares that tormented her" ^{[13, p. 7]}. With the outbreak of war, Ulya, among other shocks, regretted the inability to return to the village. And the already grown-up Ulya was able to understand the books written by Legkobytov, because they turned out to be about her: "Oh, what a wonderful writer he was! Ulya did not even suspect that someone was able to feel her soul, to depict it through the movement of the night wind..." ^{[13, p. 280]}.

Interestingly, there is another circumstance in the novel that unites the characters (in addition to the planned love line): They both find themselves connected to the mystical element of werewolf. Ulya is a forest maiden, dryad, mermaid, capable, according to her stepmother and Legkobytov, of transformation, gifted with the ability not only to influence the world around her, but also to receive support and help from it: "... Ulya appeared and disappeared, but still swam, and it seemed that the birds were helping her as their own, and bug-eyed fish support them in the water and carry them to the shore" ^{[13, p. 93]}. The same possibility of transformation determines time travel: "... when one day her gaze met with a reflection in the mirror, she was amazed that the girl sitting opposite her looked like the one that Ulya had never seen, but always knew, felt like her sister, a girl playing dice, from the Berlin old a museum on the street under shady lime trees, which Pavel Matveyevich Legkobytov told about a long time ago, not to his father or stepmother, but to her alone" ^{[13, p. 279]}. The image of a girl playing dice becomes a symbol also associated with these two characters: Legkobytov and Beehive. Legkobytov, who met his first lover for the first time near this ancient statue, will tell Uli's parents about her. Subsequently, she will begin to recognize the features of that ancient nameless girl in herself, although she has never seen this statue in person. It occurs five times in the novel, the heroine herself identifies with her in situations of life breakdown, changes in existing existence: "She wanted to leave without leaving her name and kinship, like a girl playing dice on an ancient grave" ^{[13, p. 508]}. The seer Crood, will call her the same: "You will call me crazy, but you once almost flew, a girl playing dice" ^{[13, p. 405]}.

To a greater extent, the mystical transformation is connected with the image of Legkobytov: the dual nature of his being is noted by both Ulya and her stepmother. It is the essence of Legkobytov hidden from Uli, which she is trying to unravel, that determines the form of her perception: "... in vain Ulya followed the hunter inaudibly, guessing that this man was not just walking his path, but aspiring to the place where he lets go of the gun, hangs it on a branch and changes his appearance. <...> As soon as he went deeper into the forest and crossed an unknown border, Legkobytov disappeared, and Ulya was ready to swear that he himself turned into an unknown creature, into a bird, into a goblin or into a tree..." ^{[13, p. 51]}. In the mind of little Uli, Legkobytov is the embodiment of evil, a hunter who shoots innocent animals.

The following wrapping of Legkobytov occurred in the mind of Vera Konstantinovna Komisarova just before his fatal shot at the Hive: "A woman could swear that he had not just disappeared, but turned into either a beast or a bird. She even saw the moment of this transformation, saw how Legkobytov got down on all fours and, falling on an erased leg, jumped with a gun on his back, and she felt terrible" ^{[13, p. 218]}. The illusion of reality of what is happening in the novel is created by changing narrative instances, when the narrator's word is replaced by the word and consciousness of the heroines. Both "transformations" occur at the moment when the hero goes hunting. The reference to werewolf is conditional, since those who have seen or assume the moment of transition to another hypostasis of the heroine perceive only external signs, the halo of the demonic is removed, but the peculiarity of the hero for the consciousness of both women is beyond doubt. An interesting refrain that brings these two visions closer together is "I could have sworn" and "I could have sworn." The wrapping of the hero, in our opinion, correlates with his inner idea of himself as the "groom of nature", women felt in him exactly this attempt to break the connection with the world of civilization, to become a part of the surrounding world. The disappearance of the boundaries of the body, which Vera Konstantinovna noticed, leads to the appearance of a strange creature: on the one hand, it is able to get on all fours, on the other, there are signs of a person (the gun, with which he does not part, falls on the leg, which he erased because his wife did not wrap his footcloths). The phantasmagoric shift, which Vera Konstantinovna recorded, allows us to perceive the hero on the verge of animal and human hypostasis.

We also note that there is another woman in the novel whose opinion about the hero is given, and this vision, due to the lack of mystical connotations, quite objectively characterizes Legkobytov as a man, husband, father. Pelageya– the people's wife of Legkobytov, in her prayers for him, asks the Lord to forgive the "intellectual fool." In general, seeing all his shortcomings, such as selfishness, flighty, capricious, explosive character: "... Pelageya guessed the defenselessness, childishness and incredible secret depth and vigilance of his nature" ^{[13, p. 55]}. So, in the novel, a kind of flickering image is created, showing the possibility of a contradictory perception of the hero by women.

One of the important episodes related to the hero's werewolf is the episode on the eve of the German gas attack, in which Legkobytov falls: "Pavel Matveyevich distinguished all the details, as if he was no longer a man humbly walking to a place to sleep, but a sleepless night bird that rose above the ground and vigilantly looked out for prey" ^{[13, p. 334]}. The feeling of flight is interrupted when the hero's gaze comes across a dead body. It is symbolic that, like Vera Konstantinovna, Legkobytov will soon see a mental wolf in the flesh, shoot at it, after which the beast, appearing as if made of iron, "staggered, but did not fall, but began to lose its strict, majestic features" ^{[13, p. 336]}. This was followed by a gas attack, from which Legkobytov miraculously escaped. The experienced moments in which the hero was between life and death forced him to write about the war in a new way: "watercolor" words in defense of nature, which is destroyed by war, were replaced by a pretentious article about the victory of Russia, its ascent, the heroism of soldiers. For the first time, the hero writes as a person involved in the events. Physical werewolf (the last recorded in the novel) is transformed into a change in the hero's worldview.

In this paradigm of the characters associated with the mystical layer of the novel, it is also necessary to note Alyosha. First of all, it is necessary to indicate his own desire to change his social status. He believes that the war will help him become an officer, get out of peasant bondage. But Alyosha, unlike other heroes, completed his turn completely and irrevocably, having lost his former features so much that neither Ulya, who loved him, nor Komisarov, who took an active part in his fate, recognized him. The reader himself is given only an author's hint of a single external feature ("long eyelashes", "thick eyelashes"), which allows him to grasp the connection between the boy at the beginning of the novel and one of the jailers and rapists at the end.

Legkobytov and Uli's love of nature is contrasted with the negative or indifferent attitude of other characters. For example, Komissarov, in a dispute with Legkobytov, speaking about the general situation in the country, among other things, angrily says that man must free himself from the power of nature because of its hostility to him: "Nature must be defeated, because her kingdom is the kingdom of grief and injustice. It should be completely replaced by technology" ^{[13, p. 119]}. The mechanic Komissarov, who loves his profession and successfully implements himself in it, perhaps, could not oppose nature with anything other than technology. In his words, there are those ideas that also existed in society and in art at the beginning of the twentieth century: about neglecting nature for the sake of "rationality". Subsequently, this pathos about the transformation of nature will be approved in the 30-40s by many creative people. Slogans about the attack on nature, about its decisive conquest, and even at certain times, are a frequent phenomenon in Soviet literature.

The clash of Legkobytov and Komisarov also occurs when discussing another key topic for the novel – the theme of the motherland: "And then Legkobytov completely carried such slanders against the people and nonsense about a strong government, which is the only one this people can bring to a sense that the Commissars did not want to listen" ^{[13, p. 132]}. The opposition between the revolutionary view of the further path of the country and its society and the ideas of tsarism is manifested.

Another point of contact between the ideological positions of the heroes is the war that turned the world of each of them upside down.

First of all, the public perspective of the perception of the outbreak of war is noted, a society divided and torn apart by contradictory ideas rallied: "The war revealed the true scale of things, the personal shrank, shrank and hid in the recesses of the soul and body, and everything public became big and important. The words "Fatherland", "Russia", "sovereign", "Tsar-Grad", which the intellectuals were laughing at a week ago, suddenly sounded with all their might, no one was ashamed to pronounce them anymore..." ^{[13, p. 250]}.

The war especially influenced the worldview of the female characters in the novel. Vera Konstantinovna Komissarova, Uli's foster mother, married a well-earning mechanic Vasily Khristoforovich. The war destroyed the conventional comfort of her life and changed her thinking. Before the war, Vera Konstantinovna hated her unromantic husband, her disobedient adopted daughter, hated life in the village of High Humpbacks, aspired to a life filled with literature, art, and a salon atmosphere. Vera Konstantinovna wrote articles, poems and painted, her works received praise, which the narrator ironically says: "Poets praised her performance, landscapes – actors, and poems – artists, but she did not show any direct talents" ^{[13, p. 38]}. When the war came and her husband went to the front, she felt that she had not been a good wife, and the rebellion of her adopted daughter made her realize that she had not fulfilled her promise to become a good mother.

The epiphany that everything she aspired to turned out to be unimportant because of the war severely hit her worldview. According to Vera Konstantinovna, no one needed the war. But she was able to change, enrolled in a nursing course, where she learned to take care of the wounded. There were many women in special courses who were in a similar position to Vera Konstantinovna, but Vera Konstantinovna never talked like them about so-called patriotic duties and charity. The heroine decided to do everything she needed to do and studied diligently: "She felt good among her new sisters, with them she could not doubt, not despair, not be discouraged, but simply and without reasoning believe. She no longer woke up from fear at night, did not look with incomprehensible longing at the powders from the pharmacy, calmly walked over high bridges over the viscous Neva water, and the rushing train did not cause her attraction and fear" ^{[13, p. 276]}. But she stubbornly thought that everything she did was for her husband, for her family. Vera Konstantinovna is ready to fight the Germans: "The Germans will come and restore order. And if they dare to enter here, I will kill them... They have no place in this city" ^{[13, pp. 472-473]}. Such changes occurred with a woman who lived idly and selfishly before the war.

The war had no less influence on Vasily Khristoforovich. He went from enthusiastic acceptance to severe disappointment. At the beginning of the war, Vasily Khristoforovich decided to join the army, became a commander at the front. The war that happened completely changed Vasily Khristoforovich and turned him into a radical patriot. The war made Vasily Khristoforovich confident, decisive, brave, patriotic enthusiasm reached its maximum: "Vasily Khristoforovich has never looked so cheerful, fresh and well done. Thin, tanned, with unusually clear, deep eyes" ^{[13, p. 311]}. In the middle of the war, even before his capture, Vasily Khristoforovich came to his opinion about the war: "This war, you will see, will be for the benefit of many ... <...> War is education, war is treatment, war is our salvation. <...> The whole country should become one military camp, everything Without exception, her subjects must bear the hardships of wartime. War is like Lent for believers ...<...>... war is a blessing for Russia. It is designed to purify and refresh our souls" ^{[13, pp. 312-318]}. He believed that by winning this war, Russia would not only change from within, but also restore its former position in the world. The war gave the country the opportunity to change its fate, and if we do not take advantage of this opportunity, the country will be destroyed, "we will be the last criminals, traitors and apostates" ^{[13, p. 314]}. Voicing this extreme idea, Vasily Khristoforovich defended the dignity of the country on the battlefield, as he defended his territory. While the situation was deteriorating, Vasily Khristoforovich was still confident of victory: "Sire, sire, you should not be afraid of blood, even innocently shed, let not your heart be troubled by any complaints and reproaches. No one will condemn you even for a few thousand innocently injured people, but you will be cursed for your defeat in this war. You must be decisive, domineering and wise, not listen to anyone's advice, not succumb to any persuasion and warnings, but go to the end" ^{[13, p. 364]}. The family took second place, especially in captivity: "He was the only one who did not wait for letters from home, because he did not write them, forbade himself to write home, having no moral right to do so as a person..." ^{[13, p. 364]}.

During his time in military captivity, his return to revolutionary Russia weakened his spirit and deprived him of his former ambitions, giving instead feelings of guilt and shame in front of his descendants: "We allowed the destruction of the millennial kingdom, we lost a war that we had no right to lose. We will forever remain in history an inglorious, dishonest generation that aspired, yearned, dreamed of something, but lost everything that it had, and will be cursed by descendants" ^{[13, p. 485]}. At that moment, Vasily Khristoforovich, having lost faith, lost interest in the affairs of the world: "I have nothing more to do here. I do not know what awaits me there, but here - nothing. I am empty, like last year's beetle, which has only one shell left" ^{[13, p. 492]}.

Pavel Matveyevich Legkobytov considers the war from the point of view of ideology and culture. Varlamov formed the image of Pavel Matveevich as a writer who knows how to observe life, convey thoughts, and courageously reveal the truth. "The Shelomsky hunter, who became a war correspondent, as usual conscientiously and tenaciously described what he saw in the winter August forests during the retreat of the Russian army from Poland, in Lviv, Galicia and the Carpathians, mentioned spies and deserters, compared the war with childbirth and said that war distorts nature, changes behavior animals and birds, and nature will answer to people for this destruction. Legkobytov did not frighten anyone, he painted carefully, almost in watercolor..." ^{[13, p. 277]}.

In a dispute with Vasily Khristoforovich, Pavel Matveevich looked at his work again, and he planned to take Vasily Khristoforovich's advice and switch his creative center from nature to man: "But his writing task was not to expose evil and lack of intelligence - this is a simple matter, anyone can do it - Pavel Matveevich Legkobytov needed to not to deny, but to affirm and show the harmonious life of a man engaged to nature" ^{[13, p. 297]}. The internal dispute of the heroes continued later, after they broke up, apparently forever. Interestingly, in the novel, these people, despite the diametrically opposed views, turned out to be kind of spiritual mentors for each other, whose value orientations allowed them to reconsider their view of the world, to find their truth.

Conclusions

As the analysis made it possible to determine, the characters of Varlamov's novel form a system. Its main feature is the complex connections between the characters. The system of images in the novel is based on the idea of their attraction – repulsion.

First of all, attention is drawn to the pairing of the characters, which is realized in their dialogues, disputes, and attitudes towards each other (the latter is formulated not so much by the characters themselves as by the narrator, who often takes an internal position in relation to the hero).

Depending on the value orientations that are outlined in the novel, the characters either form antinomic pairs or become each other's doubles. All this defines the characterological conflict in the novel. The first such pair is Legkobytov and Ulya, whose connection is revealed due to such a value component as attitude to nature. In the first part of the novel, they disagree about the idea of the possibility of interfering with the life of nature. In the second part of the novel, the already grown-up Ulya accepts the writer's point of view, plunging into the world of his books, which she perceives as written about her.

It is characteristic that Legkobytov plays an important role in the process of Uli's growing up: he replaces Alyosha on the day of escape, he becomes the object of the girl's close attention, makes a fatal shot, after which Uli's rapid maturation occurs (little remains of the former light-footed teenage girl at the moment when the reader sees her sitting in front of a mirror with a piece of lead in her hand a girl reads his books and understands her spiritual kinship with him, he becomes her support in a revolutionary time when her Husband leaves her. The storyline of Legkobytov and Uli is not completed: Legkobytov is in prison, his life is under threat, Ulya freezes over the abyss in the last pages of the novel, trying to see through eternity. But if the reader knows the life story of the prototype of the novel - Prishvin, he will understand that everything will be fine with the characters, if that's how we can talk about the hardships that they will experience in that difficult period of the country's history.

An internal contradiction takes place in the personality of Uli himself, which is connected in the novel with the idea of becoming a child's personality (it is possible to identify the genre outline of the novel-upbringing). A teenage girl at the beginning of the novel goes through the stages of growing up, connected with the acceptance or rejection of ideas, awareness of herself in this world. The image of a girl playing dice becomes an invariable symbol associated with the Hive. It is important that this statue played an important role in the fate of Legkobytov himself, and it is from him that Ulya learns about this work of art, and then perceives it as her double, making it a kind of status quo. But among other heroes, only she and Savely Krud, who is also associated with the mystical layer of the novel and plays the role of a seer, defender, reasoner, perceive her in the same way.

At the mystical level of the novel, the characters are connected to each other through the ability to wrap. Here, Legkobytov, Ulya and Alyosha turn out to be interconnected.

The discrepancy of views on nature contrasts Legkobytov and Komisarov. In this case, each of the characters becomes a mouthpiece for ideas that existed at the beginning of the twentieth century.: The idea of accepting nature and not interfering in its life is being replaced by the idea of subordinating nature to man. Another topic in which the points of contact of the heroes' views are outlined is the fate of Russia: Komisarov's revolutionary views on changing the existing order are opposed to Legkobytov's ideas about strong tsarist power.

Changes in the value orientations of the heroes are associated with the chronotope, which is antinomically divided into the space of the village and the city and pre-war and wartime, revolutionary times. The revision of views and values takes place during the war, each of the heroes, while trying to combine the previous picture of the world with historical reality, partially or radically changes their views.

Having touched upon only the duality of the main characters of the novel in this study, we can assert that complex connections of attraction, repulsion and pair interaction are established between them, which in total supports the complex ideological concept of the novel. Moreover, we emphasize that the characterological conflict in the "Mental Wolf" has several semantic layers.

As for the measure of the author's participation in the conflict, the author's modality in the novel is mostly not stated. It is not the narrator, but the characters, who become precisely the center of the true assessment of what is happening, which affects the compositional fragmentarity of the novel.