Light in Rasputin's prose

Chzhan Lei Postgraduate student; Department of Philology and Methodology; Irkutsk State University 664000, Russia, Irkutsk region, Irkutsk, Universitetskiy, 70 634883618@qq.com

Introduction

In a work of fiction, light as a way of perceiving the world is important, since it reflects the specifics of the writer's worldview. Light and color create an individual creative world of the author, coming from the perception of the visible color of things and at the same time subjective perception, as well as the expression of the aesthetic principles of the writer ^{[18, pp. 112-113]}. The shades of color in painting directly depend on lighting, therefore, as an artist of the word and as a person with a subtle sense of nature, V. G. Rasputin used shades of light in his works.

Purpose and methods

The purpose of the article is to analyze the features of the use of light and its shades in the works of V. G. Rasputin based on the stories and novellas "Vasily and Vasilisa" (1966), "Money for Maria" (1967), "The Last Term" (1970), "French Lessons" (1973), "Live and Remember" (1974), "Farewell to Mater" (1976), "Natasha" (1981), "What should I tell the crow? (1981), "Fire" (1985), "Women's Conversation" (1994), "Into the same land..." (1995), "Unexpectedly" (1997), "New Profession" (1998), "Hut" (1999), "Ivan's daughter, Ivan's mother" (2003). Based on a selective analysis, it was found that the list of additional color characteristics that convey shades of light in the works of V. G. Rasputin includes sparkle, radiance, brilliance, light, flicker, sparkle. The work uses methods of structural and semiotic analysis using elements of cultural analysis, as well as a method of text interpretation, analysis of individual stylistic elements.

Results

In V. G. Rasputin's prose, light has different meanings, the words with the root "light" are used by the writer for various purposes, primarily to describe various types of interior and landscape lighting.

There is a lot of sunlight in the works. The sun is a symbol of the eternal joy and wisdom of nature in the story "The Last Term", where the light emphasizes the vanity and insensitivity of the busy children of the dying Anna, who through warmth and light tremblingly feels every minute of her passing life ("The sun was playing on the floor next to the old woman <...> and when the sun ... began to stroke and warm the bones, she felt very good..." ^{[14, p. 221]}). Reflecting on her death, Anna perceives it as leaving the earth for the sun: "... if she falls, she will fall into the sun and stick to it" [ibid.]. In the last days of her life, the heroine cannot take her eyes off him: "she was fascinated by the sun <...> the old woman, straining, looked for something in him besides warmth and light..." [ibid.].

Joyful sunlight enlivens nature: "The morning ... shone before the day, played, set", "... the sun rose in front of the old woman, and the earth was happily, devotedly illuminated" ^{[14, p. 275]} ("The last term"). A sunny day adorns the Victory Day for people tired of the war: "the sun is strong, the sun has flared up, shining everything under it with a cheerful and solemn light" ^{[8, p.150]} ("Live and remember"). During the winter holidays, nature illuminated by the sun gives Anatoly, the hero of the story "Ivan's Daughter, Ivan's Mother", hope for the future ("... there was a lot of sun, ... the trees stood in the kurzhak and sparkled brightly in the sun with splashing sparks..." ^{[6, p. 216]}).

The writer connects the sadness and hope of the characters with the light of the sun in "Farewell to the Mother", when people impatiently waited out the rain in the last days of harvesting before the flooding of the island. Expectation is conveyed through the description of the sun gradually manifesting itself. At first, it was "pale, tired, having struggled through the clouds with great difficulty" ^{[15, p.279]}. Then in the evening, "announcing its release, it rang, shone, promising that it would only go in for the night, and in the morning it would come out and get to work" [ibid.]. And then a sunny day comes: "By lunchtime, the sky ... shone and, in joyful impatience, seemed to set, circled over the earth" [ibid.]. After waiting for a sunny day, people joyfully gave their strength to hard work, although they understood that all this was for the last time.

A faint patch of sunlight ("light and thin as a dried leaf" ^{[5, p. 50]}) is symbolically associated with Kuzma's equally faint hope of finding money for Maria in the story of the same name.

If the sunlight is fading, then this is a bad sign. In the story "To the same Land", the absence of light is a sign of the dead space of the city, where all life is limited by bureaucratic limits, and human grief is a means of profit. The writer emphasizes this with descriptions accompanying the main character, Pashuta, throughout her sorrowful deeds ("It dawned with a cloudy, painful light" ^{[4, p. 279]}, "And it was already gone, the light… It was dim in the window" ^{[4, p. 288]}, "The dawn was cloudy, the day promised to be blind again" ^{[4, p. 294]}). There is no place in the dead gray city for the last refuge of Pashuta's mother, who was a bright person, grew up and lived in labor on her native land. And only the coffin made for Aksinya Egorovna was filled with light: "high and spacious, sunny" ^{[4, p. 292]}. And the place of final rest was a bright clearing in the forest filled with the sun: "cheerful and friendly in the light and the sun" ^{[4, p. 295]}, where "there is such a space around under the sun that you don't lie down" [ibid.].

In addition to sunlight, moonlight is common in Rasputin's works, which disturbs characters with a troubled conscience and illuminates them during restless wakefulness. So, Vasily wakes up with annoyance from the light of the moon ("Vasily and Vasilisa"): he "does not like moonlight, it seems to him that the moon reeks of cold" ^{[3, p. 391]}. It was restless on moonlit nights for the hero of the story "Live and Remember", Andrei, who deserted from the front ("And the brighter the moon shone, the more restless and suffocating it was for him..." ^{[8, p. 141]}).

In the story "Farewell to Mater", Daria, who sheltered Katerina after the fire, feels restless at night under the moonlight ("It became even brighter and more restless ... Half of the fence was flooded with bright and full moonlight..." ^{[15, p. 302]}). Only Daria has nothing to be ashamed of for her life, she worked honestly on her native land, without harming either people or nature. Daria's heart aches and feels guilty instead of those who made the decision to ruin her Mother for economic gain ("What is to blame, I know, but who would say what is to blame, what should I repent of, sinful?" ^{[15, p. 303]}). Daria's deeply felt feeling of "guilt–free guilt" is the voice of her conscience, her responsibility for the graves of her ancestors, for her native land, which not only fed, but also pleased with its beauty, and now is doomed to perish.

Electric light in Rasputin's works has a dual character. The headlights dazzle and do not let Kuzma, the hero of the story "Money for Maria", sleep, but in the dream of the same Kuzma, the same light points to those houses where they can help. In the story "Live and Remember" in the dream of the deserter Andrei, the spotlight appears blinding and hot, which illuminates the hero when he is being led to execution.

If it is a light in the window, it indicates the presence of human life. The lights in the house are a sign that there is still life in the village: "The entire lower edge of the village seemed to have died out, ... only in a few huts the old woman's light flickered faintly" ^{[8, p. 63]} ("Live and remember"). The light in the windows of the houses, flashing like lights from the train window, is the light of hope, a way to overcome darkness, ".. and again you have to wait for the next light ... because without them you somehow feel uneasy" ^{[5, p. 89]} ("Money for Maria").

Separately, it should be noted that there is no electric light in "Farewell to Mother". The very word "electricity", for which the Mother will be ruined, is used by Daria's grandson, Andrey, in conversation several times in such a way that the reader can easily guess the indifference of the hero and sees a speech analogy with the expressions "go to meat", "waste": "Our Mother will go to electricity" ^{[15, p. 255]}. And spending the last night on the Mater with her companions in misfortune, not finding either a candle or a lamp, Daria remains with them in the dark ("They remembered to turn on the light, but not: Bogodul, like a cockroach, has nothing to shine with..." ^{[15, p. 335]}).

Often in the works of the writer, electric light is filled with anxiety, sadness of loss. So, in the story "Vasily and Vasilisa", after son Peter brought electricity ("light") to Vasily's barn, "for some reason the swallows stopped nesting over the barn door and moved somewhere" ^{[3, p. 392]}. In "The Last Term," bright light sharply separates the dream from reality, in which Anna's daughter, Tanchora, never arrived. And the realization that the day of life has come to an end, and the beloved daughter will not have time to say goodbye, also comes to Anna under clear electric lighting, which, compared with the light of day, gives the situation hopelessness: ".. reminded her of the light, which Tanchora could not keep up with and which could not be returned or obtained by any electricity" ^{[14, p. 251]}.

In Rasputin's later works, the light in the windows of houses at night is a sign of trouble, for example, in the story "To the same land": "... two lonely glowing windows ... could not cause anything but alarm ... at this time they do not rise without trouble or illness" ^{[4, p. 264]}. Too bright a glow of electricity prevents Sena in the story "Unexpectedly" from seeing closer the inner world of the girl Katya, whom the hero tried to save. The light of the bulb emphasizes the unsettled life of Savely on the last evening before moving from the village ("Hut") and emphasizes the shrillness and hopelessness of loneliness, driving the hero from a new, hand-assembled cozy hut to another place, predicting unsettledness and unnecessary death there ("A naked light bulb shone brightly from the ceiling, illuminating empty angles" ^{[9, p. 324]}).

In the terrible time of the 1990s, when lives and destinies were breaking down, the light in the window remains a sign of a person's wakefulness, but the darkness in the souls and in the windows no longer gives hope for help and a way out of the impasse in the story "Ivan's Daughter, Ivan's mother": "wooden houses lay in the dark....; there were more lighted windows in stone, storey buildings, but try to reach them, get to them..." ^{[6, p. 12]}). The headlights of the car on which the missing Svetlana is being searched "rips black flesh in front of itself with headlights" ^{[6, p. 12]}; the "grainy" light of the electric lamp of a road pole gives Svetlana's skin a dead cold "reflection of armored immobility" ^{[6, p. 160]}. The headlights of someone else's car dazzle Tamara ("doused with light" ^{[6, p. 229]}); and no matter how she searches, the heroine cannot find stars in the sky above the city, but sees only "an iridescent rotten glow from the electric flood of the city" ^{[6, p. 11]}. And as in "Farewell to Mater" and in the stories "The Hut", "Unexpectedly", in the story, too, much is seen by the characters and understood by them in the vague, seemingly unreliable lighting of a kerosene lamp.

It is not often found in the works of the starlight, which in Rasputin's prose is associated with the motif of fate, eternity, predestination. So, the dying Anna listens to the breathing of the hut at night, which is illuminated by the "magical, languid light of the stars" ^{[14, p. 265]} ("The last term"); Nastya notices the starlight on the riverbank when she has already made an inevitable decision ("it somehow cleared up during the day and now the sky was blinking, breaking through, asterisks" ^{[8, p. 201]} ("Live and remember"). There is most of the short-lived starlight in "Farewell to Mother". The Owner of the Matera, doomed to flooding, does not see the light of the risen and soon extinguished stars. And in the remaining last weeks of departure, the farewell starfall is observed by the villagers: "the stars burned brightly, brilliantly <...> at the sight of which something alarmingly broke off in the soul" ^{[15, p. 285]}. The sparks of the native house burned by Petrukha rise up to the sky and "get lost in the stars." Proximity to God means the stars for the old woman Daria in her dream. Three lights at once – solar, lunar, and starry – are observed by the heroine of the story "The Hut" Agafya: she went out into the yard and saw how "the stars were blinking in a small, subdued way… And over her, Agafya's, hut hung a thin, transparent glow of sunlight and moonlight" ^{[9, p. 319]}.

In general, Rasputin's later works often emphasize the absence of light. The starlight almost disappears: it does not exist in the story "To the same Land", Tamara tries in vain and cannot find the stars in the sky ("Ivan's Daughter, Ivan's mother"), and in the story "Unexpectedly" starlight is only in a short Senina fairy tale, which he tells the adopted Katya, so that to awaken her childish sensitive soul. In a dashing time, it did not work out to fly up to the light and happiness of Sena, and the life of the girl Katya in a briefly found, and then again lost family becomes the same bright, but short fairy tale.

V. G. Rasputin uses the metaphor of light in describing nature, in the portrait of heroes and in describing their condition, as well as in describing the details of the material world – the works of human labor.

Bright pictures of nature associated with the sun often represent a contrast to the hero's condition, as, for example, in the story "Live and Remember": Andrey sees how a round cheerful glade shone behind the aspens ^{[8, p. 55]} and thinks about it as a good place for his grave. In "Farewell to Mother", the light in the landscapes is associated with descriptions of the last autumn for the inhabitants of the island in their homeland. This is the rain that "fell ... light and quiet" ^{[15, p. 303]}; the coming evening, which "fell warm and quiet, with a light blue in the sky..." ^{[15, p. 328]}; autumn morning, that bright ("under the sonorous, bright sun, everything rang around in the early morning and it shone..."^{[15, p. 218]}), then "late and quiet" when "the light outside the windows seemed sluggish" ^{[15, p. 192]}.

When using light to describe the appearance of characters, it can be said that the characters who bring misfortune or negative characters are dressed in light clothes, which contrasts with the negative role of the hero in the plot: in the story "Money for Mary", the inspector who discovered the shortage is "a man of about forty ... in a light cloak" ^{[5, p. 36]}, and in "Farewell to Mater" Petrukha returned from the city after setting fire to his native house "in a new, but already pretty dirty light suit..."^{[15, p. 286]}.

In character portraits, light is used twice to describe the hair color of positive, literally light-colored characters: these are the kind and hardworking Vitya from the story "Live and Remember" (with a light forelock) and fifteen-year–old Tanya "with uncovered flaxen hair, somehow shining especially cleanly and sadly in the cloudy day" ^{[4, p. 283]} - the granddaughter of Pashuta ("To the same land"), with whose arrival The heroine's life has brightened up.

It is difficult to explain the light in the portrait of the drunk "crazy" Ilya, the son of old woman Anna: "... his head shone pinkly, hotly, spreading radiance around, his eyes flashed with sudden, desperate gaiety" ^{[14, p. 279]} ("The last term"). The repetition of words close in meaning with the meaning of light (shone, flashed), as well as radiance, like that of a saint, inconsistently characterize the image of a broken inhabitant of the North, who, having arrived at his mother's funeral, drinks vodka with his brother, constantly jokes and at the end of the story almost blasphemously calls the dying Anna to the circus. Ilya's actions in the past also reveal oddities. According to the mother's memoirs, the son, with a full garden, "climbed into someone else's, had nothing to eat himself, and he gave the only piece to the first person he met" ^{[14, p. 266]}. Nevertheless, the mother, remembering how her children left her, refers to the day when Ilya went to war and accepted her blessing, the mother saw it in her son's eyes, "which trembled and shone with hope for a moment" ^{[14, p. 267]}. In the present, the older sister publicly laughs at him, bringing humiliating memories of how his brother collected grass, throwing mushrooms on top a little, and Ilya is happy to admit this. Such a reaction to public ridicule is not the norm, it is not typical for an ordinary person. All the described signs are: "the combination of the incompatible, the game, the destruction of the norm... the separation of oneself from the circle of life of other society..." ^{[19, p. 30]}, as well as the drunkenness of the hero, leaving him at home, "loss of face" (N. V. Kovtun) – it can be said that V. G. Rasputin creates a complex, dual image. Initially, this is the archetype of a fool who could become a fool (the ability to give the last, light in the image, kindness, pathetic appearance). But Ilya becomes a buffoon, and by definition N. V. Kovtun and V. A. Stepanova – the embodiment of the archetype of the "Archarite, apostate of the family" ^{[1, p. 11]}. And the light of hope in his eyes, carefully preserved in his mother's memories, turns into demonic lights ("demonic lights lit up in his eyes" ^{[14, p. 237]}).

The light in the portrait of the characters is often associated with the eyes – the "mirror of the soul". Anna's eyes "brightened" with the arrival of her friend, Mironikha ("The last term"); Kuzma sees in his thoughts his wife, who, in his opinion, looks like a miracle at the snow that reached the village with "eyes lit up in hope" ^{[5, p.126]} and considers it a good omen ("Money for Maria"); during sleep, Nastena's "round face went limp and shone through a dream with a free smile" ^{[8, p. 44]}, because she lives according to her conscience and is not afraid of human rumor ("Live and remember"). With kind thoughts and good memories, the characters' faces brighten. Daria's face brightened when she suddenly, interrupting gloomy reflections, sees the sun above the Hangar after a long bad weather, promising a good day for mowing; from her love for married Alexei, Katerina "shone and fainted with joy" ^{[15, p.276]} ("Farewell to Mater"). Anna "brightened", repeating to herself the appeal from the letters of Tanchora's daughter ("The last deadline"). An unusual metaphorical expression is used in describing the condition of the deserter Guskov ("Live and remember"): he was "illuminated by memories" ^{[8, p. 124]} of the pre-war threshing of flour at the mill. In the story "Natasha", when the heroine smiles, "her broad, large-featured face is illuminated by the light of amazing agreement with herself" ^{[10, p. 394]}.

In an unusual context, light is used in the description of the appearance of the characters in Rasputin's later works. So, in the story "To the same Land", Tanya, Pashuta's granddaughter, understands so much, looking at her great-grandmother's face "in the frame of the coffin, calmed, illuminated by an otherworldly light, turned to her alone, that the girl's sensitive soul was scorched" ^{[4, p. 293]}. In the story "Unexpectedly," Senya tries to warm the soul of the adopted girl Katya. And suddenly noticing how the girl's face was changing in the magical light of a kerosene lamp, he suddenly "brightened up all of a sudden: who told him that she had a motionless, cold face..?" ^{[11, p. 364]}.

The metaphor of inner light is also used in V. G. Rasputin's prose to convey the joyful inspiration, the peaceful state of the characters. For example, this is a short-lived feeling of joy of life that appears in the scorched soul of the deserter Guskov ("an uncomplicated, light-colored feeling like a window: I am..." ^{[8, p. 141]} ("Live and remember")). Inner light is confidence in one's rightness, in the correctness of one's actions for Daria ("Farewell to Mother"): when cleaning and decorating the hut, she felt that she was doing everything right, because "she was in a bright, secret mood when it seemed that someone was constantly watching her, someone was guiding her" ^{[15, p.364]}.

Playing on the metaphor of light, Rasputin shows the characters' awareness of the true state of things. So, Anna understands that the last meeting with her friend Mironikha gave her "a feeling of complete, clear and bright completeness and decoration of this long-standing and faithful friendship" ^{[14, p. 279]} ("The last term"); residents crowded around Katerina's burning house realize that such a fate awaits everyone and that the flame of this first the fire "brightly ... illuminated ... the fate of each of them ..." ^{[15, p. 265]} ("Farewell to the Mother"). And later, the residents of Matera come to realize that the time of friendly joint harvesting, joint evening gatherings and simple songs "stolen at parting" will be remembered for a long time and will remain in the soul with light and joy" ^{[15, p. 298]}. Before the departure of Daria and Nastasia, who leave the most precious things, the mental pain is conveyed through an epithet emphasizing the bitterness of loss: "it is unbearable to see ... light pouring into the windows that no one needs anymore" ^{[15, p. 257]}. In the story "Fire", light is used to characterize the glow that illuminates warehouse buildings and the flame that "illuminated the entire courtyard with a cool light" ^{[13, p. 390]}.

Light is found only once in the description of objects made by human hands. In the story "The Hut", the last works in the construction of Agafya's house – the roof covering – transform it: "as if light streamed over the hut" ^{[8, p. 318]}, a buffet artfully made by Savely is also shown glowing, "neat, neat, glowing with a polished white board" ^{[9, p. 324]}.

In addition to light, V. G. Rasputin's prose has such light shades as sparks, glitter, radiance, sparkle and flicker. A feature of the description of the landscape and its details in the works of V. G. Rasputin is the combination of several light shades when describing nature paintings, for example, sparkle and radiance: Lucy, arriving from the city to say goodbye to her mother, in the morning sees from the window how "the river sparkled… There was a quiet, calm radiance everywhere" ^{[14, p. 176]} ("The Last term"). In "Live and Remember", an unusual view of the river at night is shown through the eyes of the Wall, combining shimmer, shine, glow: "... a gray, underside shimmer rose from the river, in which water glittered and was lost… Above it, behind the faded gasket, another, more cloudy and faint glow was seen in stripes" ^{[8, p. 192]}. In "Farewell to Mater" on the day of Egor and Nastasia's departure, festive and vivid pictures of native nature, which the old people are forced to leave forever, make a sharp contrast with their mood: "The sun was blazing with might and main, ... through the water the stones shone lusciously at the bottom. The Hangar flashed with hot, sparkling stripes, playing, the swifts rushed into them with a whistle and were lost in the sparkle" ^{[15, p. 260]}.

When studying such a light shade as sparkle, sparkle, we can say that it is rare and is used mainly in describing the beauty of water and snow. In the "Last Term" in the early morning, Anna's daughter-in-law looks at the still dim sun and notices that the dew "glittered everywhere with burning, tempting sparks" ^{[14, p. 276]}. After a night with his wife, Guskov in the story "Live and Remember" softens, calms down, peace comes to his soul for a short time and it seems to him that "the snow puffed, sparkled" ^{[8, p. 45]}. In "Farewell to Mater", Daria sees the Angara from the window of the hut, its "sparkling, hot current in the sun..."^{[15, p. 218]}. In the story "Women's Conversation" the night sky sparkled, the snow "sparkled" ^{[7, p. 286]}.

There are isolated sparks in the description of the object ("Hut") and in the portrait of the heroine ("Unexpectedly"). So, Agafya's memories of childhood revive in her memory a picture when "they burned a splinter and spent the night near the fireplace, as smolya crackled, splashing with sparks" ^{[9, p. 307]} ("Hut"). In the story "Unexpectedly," Senya, watching Katya, sees how, while playing with the light of a kerosene lamp, the girl's soul came to life: "She turned on and off the wick, there were highlights on her face, her eyes sparkled" ^{[11, p. 364]}.

Against the general background of the image of the beauty of sparkling objects or details of the landscape, among Rasputin's works, "Ivan's Daughter, Ivan's Mother" stands out, where sparkle is associated with a negative assessment of the hero or the situation. Thus, Tamara's mother, Stepanida Petrovna, was short-tempered, therefore, giving her a description, Rasputin writes that "sparks flew from her" ^{[6, p. 37]}. Picking up the children after work in the evening, women argue angrily in kindergarten and wish the opponent not even to fall in love, but to "fall in love so that sparks fall out of their eyes" ^{[6, p.27]}. For Tamara, the main character of the story, sparks are associated with physical pain. Falling asleep near the prosecutor's office, Tamara has a heavy dream in which every stone she looks at "... begins to sparkle painfully in her eyes" ^{[6, p.107]}. Describing the escape attempt after the trial, the writer uses an unusual metaphorical turn to convey the state of passion of the heroine, who performed her actions "in bright, sparkling unconsciousness" ^{[6, p. 111]}.

In the third place in terms of the frequency of shades of light in the works of V. G. Rasputin is brilliance. In general, this shade of light is used when describing the beauty of nature. "The dew glistens coldly on the leaves" ^{[14, p. 276]} in the early morning; in Anna's memoirs, on one of the bright days of her youth after the rain ended, "everything is clean and glitters recklessly" ^{[14, p. 268]} ("The last term"). Nastya, who came to the winter quarters of her deserter husband in "Live and Remember", is frightened by "the snow outside the window, untouched by anyone's trace, shining in the sun" ^{[8, p. 42]}. The heroine sees how in the evening "brightly, blinding her eyes, sparkles played ..." ^{[8, p. 163]} the water in the river. In May, after the end of the war, the wall on the island sees how "under the low side sun the early cobwebs shone in the trees.... the butterfly broke off and could not fly out for a long time, bumping into a dense shrub" ^{[8, p. 173]}. And this picture conveys the confused state of the heroine, who got lost like a butterfly, and is about to find herself in a spider's web, because she is confused and does not know what to do now.

There is a lot of brilliance (as well as radiance and light) in the landscapes of the story "Farewell to Mother", as if the writer again and again emphasizes the beauty of nature, which will be burned and then flooded for economic benefit. Daria, having lost her way, looks around, looks around and sees her Mother, which connects to another village, "and only at its very edge a strip of water flashed" ^{[15, p. 236]}. The owner of the Matera looks from the shore of the Angara, "how the dark distances flickered layered in the open expanse; the water glittered and tinkled glassy on the lower ripple" ^{[15, p.251]}. Here, too, the writer uses several light shades in one row.

The brilliance of autumn water differs in the story "Unexpectedly", where the shade of light conveys not beauty, but threat: Senya seems to have a premonition that soon bandits will take Katya from his family, who has just found her childhood and to whom he and his wife became attached ("waves walked on the water, sparkling with the curving points of white lambs, the whole earth was humming and moaning" ^{[11, p. 362]}). "The snow caps shone icily" ^{[7, p. 290]} in the story "Women's Conversation".

When describing natural phenomena, brilliance is rarely found in the metaphorical comparison of the menacing wolf howl near Andrei Guskov's shelter with the life-threatening shiny blade of a knife at the throat (".. with a thin cutting blade, glittering in the dark, this voice approached the throat" ^{[8, p. 57]}).

In two cases, glitter is used to characterize the light source – these are the coals that "glittered" in Daria's samovar in the story "Farewell to Mother", and the flame that "with wide strokes of reflections" ^{[13, p. 363]} illuminated the roofs in the story "Fire".

A dual role is played by brilliance in the portrait details of the heroes of the works of V. G. Rasputin. In most cases, the gloss in the description of the characters' appearance plays a negative role. For example, in the story "Vasily and Vasilisa", the shine indicates physical pain: Vasily's lower back glistens, so much so that drops of sweat shine on his exhausted face in red stubble. Or the brilliance in the description of the details of the portrait can give the appearance of an inanimate object, hinting at the loss of the soul, as in the portrait of Ilya, whose "head was bare like an egg and shone in good weather as if it had been polished" ^{[14, p. 135]} ("The last term"). For his sister Varvara, who ages herself to term, gray hair does not mean the wisdom of age. The writer emphasizes this with the descriptive phrase "sequins appeared in my head" ^{[14, p. 158]}, characterizing the appearance of a woman who is not yet an old woman.

Stepanida's unwillingness to help Kuzma with money for Maria in the story of the same name and the falsity of her sympathetic words betray the comparison of her eyes with buttons in the description of the gesture: "she wiped her eyes with the hem, as if she were polishing them like buttons so that they finally shone" ^{[5, p. 88]}. The depravity of Egorovna, the heroine of the story "Ivan's Daughter, Ivan's Mother", Demin's mistress, gives out a complex description of the brilliance of the eyes: "A round face with shiny, sparkling sparkling eyes....Yegoryevna glistened both from the heat of the stove and from carnal satiety ^{[6, p. 130]}; round eyes are exposed with a filmy sheen of chaste naivety and coarse desires" ^{[6, p. 137]}.

The glitter of the eyes of the positive heroines is found only in the works "Money for Mary" and "To the same land". So, in response to Kuzma's remark that death is now free, the eyes of old aunt Natalia "faintly flashed" – she resolutely voices her desire, hoping for no one, to independently provide all the expenses for her own funeral. In the story "To the same land", in the description of Pashuta's young age, when she was still a Pashenka, the shine of her eyes is mentioned twice ("with a thin waist and shining eyes ^{[4, p. 265]}.... and she came of age – she was pretty with a sparkle of big brown eyes" ^{[4, p. 271]}).

There is a rare glint of eyes to express emotions, when the eyes of Dusi, the youngest granddaughter of Tamara's father, Ivan Savelyevich, "flashed with surprise" at the sight of the family gathered around the grandfather and listening attentively to his memories of the past. Also interesting is a single formulation that contains the wrong combination ("a glittering head") and helps to convey to the reader the pain of loss and suggests the tragic fate of the defenseless Katya among those who took her away by force and will control her fate ("The girl was quickly torn from the Canopy, ... he saw her glittering white head already in the mouth of the ship" ^{[11, p. 368]}).

The use of glitter is found only once in a metaphorical description of the psychological state of Tamara's family during dinner after the disaster, when, wanting to support her daughter, the mother bought a cake ("bitter grief also likes to shine with something like a pearl grain" ^{[6, p. 99]}).

In V. G. Rasputin's prose, brilliance, unlike light, is mainly endowed with objects with negative properties. These are new, with an "elastic shine", bottles of vodka in the story "The Last Term", prepared for Anna's funeral, found and then drunk by her wayward sons, and bottles "sparkling under fire like electric lanterns" ^{[13, p. 384]}, from which people immediately drank, saving goods from the fire in the novel of the same name. These are the "shiny chrome boots of the colonel" ^{[5, p. 57]} in the train compartment, next to which Kuzma is embarrassed to put his simple boots ("Money for Maria"). It is also an unusual wristwatch for Wall ("something round and shiny, with dots brightening like eyes" ^{[8, p. 51]}), taken as a trophy from a German by her deserter husband ("Live and remember"). Here we can also mention the "puck glistening in the sun" ^{[16, p. 304]} – a bat for playing chica, which the main character sees in the story "French Lessons" and starts playing again, because money is needed for food. Metaphorically, with the help of the glitter through the eyes of the main character of the story "Ivan's Daughter, Ivan's Mother", a smoky city and streams of cars on its streets are shown: "in a gray ... haze, a pile of ruins, among which lava merged in different directions in a heavy metallic sheen" ^{[6, p.226]}.

In the third place in terms of frequency in V. G. Rasputin's prose is radiance, which, like other shades of light (glitter, light, sparkle, etc.) and in combination with them is used in descriptions of nature. Separately, the radiance can also be included in the description of a person's appearance and/or condition, in the description of objects.

In the description of objects of nature, radiance is used to create the following images:

nights ("clear, cold radiance" ^{[14, p. 270]}, "starry mesmerizing radiance passes through the walls" ^{[14, p. 265]} ("The last term"), "murky air was crushed by a dead radiance" ^{[15, p. 334]} ("Farewell to Mother");

the sky ("I was exhausted from its radiant boundless emptiness" ^{[8, p. 141]} ("Live and remember"), "the sky was completely freed, shone" ^{[15, p. 316]} ("Farewell to the Mother");

the sun ("a fireball... shone in the sky" ^{[14, p. 221]} ("The last term"), "... announcing its liberation, it rang, shone" ^{[15, p. 315]}, "shone with sunset radiance" ^{[15, p. 349]} ("Farewell to the Mother");

frozen ice (Guskov was stopped by the "radiance of pure, green glass ice" ^{[8, p. 125]} ("Live and remember")) ,

a clear day ("The days were shining" ^{[11, p. 359]} ("Unexpectedly") or the coming evening ("the radiance of the evening day" ^{[17, p. 370]}).

Separately, it should be said about the use of radiance (and its synonym – gorenje) in the story "Farewell to Matera" in the metaphorical description of the lush forests of Matera "shining / burning greenery". This description both characterizes the natural wealth of the island ("... in the forests, fields, on the shores, the island burned with lush greenery" ^{[15, p. 254]}) and emphasizes the unwillingness of people to put up with bitter necessity and their fate ("... the greenery shone so thick and fresh before their eyes... and so everything seemed solid eternal, that one could not believe in anything – neither in moving, nor in flooding, nor in parting" ^{[15, p. 213]}).

An interesting case of using the shade is in the "Last Term", when Lucy, Anna's eldest daughter, feels uncomfortable in the forest, she is unaccustomed to being in nature and feels fear ("alone among someone else's hidden silence, where all the radiance and attention are directed only at her" ^{[14, p. 213]}).

In describing the appearance of the characters and their psychological state in later works, radiance is mainly used as a marker of the positivity of the image. There are isolated cases of using radiance in a negative assessment of characters. So, in the story "Money for Maria", Kuzma's traveling companion, Gennady Ivanovich, is not good at teasing and ironizing his rural traveling companion, while "a satisfied smile shines on his face" ^{[5, p. 56]}. In the story "What should I tell the crow?" the roguishness "shone" in the face of the driver.

Radiance to describe positive emotions in the story "Live and Remember" occurs once, when after her husband's return from the war, to describe Lisa's boundless joy, Rasputin repeats the shade of light "radiance" seven times in a short excerpt ("Lisa shone – her face shone, usually pale, dull, her eyes shone, choking with joy, the bent chest shone under the blue blouse – everything shone, everything shone, shone with might and main" ^{[8, p. 64]}).

The largest number of uses of radiance as a positive marker associated with the positive emotions of the characters is noted in the story "Ivan's Daughter, Ivan's Mother". So, according to her mother's memoirs, Svetlana turned into an enthusiastic radiance in her childhood ^{[6, p.61]} when she sang a love song with her grandmother. During a difficult evening after the disaster that happened to his daughter Svetlana, Anatoly, who was preparing for a difficult conversation, heard his mother's voice on the phone and "suddenly beamed" ^{[5, p.98]}. Later, Anatoly admires his son's beautiful classmate, who ran into Ivan, "cheerful, shining, ringing" ^{[6, p.217]}. An isolated case when radiance is used in the story in a negative context is the description of a skinhead at a disco where Ivan came, here the comparison equates the skinhead to the world of objects ("with a huge, shining, like a ball lamp, shaved head" ^{[6, p. 180]}).

The radiance of objects – details of the material world, as well as brilliance, is used in Rasputin's prose when describing situations evaluated negatively by the author. So, the dying Anna recalls the departure of her eldest daughter Lucy on a sunny day, when "the sun hit her in the back, turning the steamer into a shining toy" ^{[14, p. 268]} ("The last term"). The owner of the Mater observes the ominous glow of the fire in Katerina's house, "as the hut flickered from inside, at first with an intermittent, weak glow..."^{[15, p. 267]}, "... far around it was illuminated by this hot, unkind glow..." ^{[15, p. 265]} ("Farewell to the Mater"). The tables for wedding gifts in the story "A new profession" "shine with polish" ^{[12, p. 317]}. A blasphemous oxymoron is the description of a car "shining with heavenly azure radiance" ^{[6, p.125]}, in which representatives of the criminal world come to intimidate Anatoly, the deceptive "rainbow radiance of scattered southern abundance" ^{[6, p. 176]} is seen in the market by an unnamed heroine, who has been deceived by merchants more than once ("Ivan's daughter, Ivan's mother"). A single radiance is associated with the description of the new hut of Savely, in which "fresh floorboards shone with smooth elastic whiteness" ^{[9, p. 310]} ("Hut").

Flickering and sparkling are few in Rasputin's works, and just like sparking, they are mostly found in combination with other shades of light. Without a combination, flickering is used to describe water at night ("Far, far away from the inside there was a flicker, as from a creepy beautiful fairy tale..." ^{[8, p. 203]} ("Live and remember")); during fog ("... with difficulty, as if from a deep and dark well, a vague flicker broke through water" ^{[15, p. 384]} ("Farewell to the Mother")). The moon is twinkling ("the crescent moon twinkled in the pale sun with evil assertiveness" ^{[8, p. 133]}) and the sky ("in the dark sky from the side of the mountain, glimpses twinkled" ^{[8, p. 197]}) in the story "Live and Remember", as well as in the story "Farewell to Mother" ("dark distances flickered layered in the open expanse" ^{[15, p. 251]}). Flickering is also used in the description of a foggy morning ("in a dim blurred flicker, large and shaggy, cloud-like outlines rush past" ^{[15, p. 388]} ("Farewell to Mother") and a clear evening ("early evening twinkled under the early moon" ^{[7, p. 286]}).

A fire flickers in the heroes' dwelling and shines on the windows ("the window ... took up an intermittent scarlet flicker" ^{[8, p. 110]} ("Live and remember")). Nastena from the story "Live and Remember" sees her husband "in a faint flicker" of light from the window ^{[8, p. 17]}. "The windows twinkled icily" ^{[15, p. 331]} in Daria's hut ("Farewell to Mother"). As in the old days, by the light of a kerosene lamp, "with its reddish and dim flickering" ^{[15, p. 364]}, Daria dresses her hut with fir, preparing it for death as a person.

Flickering is rarely used to describe the appearance or condition of the characters: in the portrait of Bogodul ("From the dense thickets on his face ... red, bloodshot eyes twinkled" ^{[15, p. 226]} ("Farewell to the Mother")) and in the description of Nastena's anxiety ("the secret that she was supposed to own alone, seemed to flicker today before other eyes" ^{[8, p. 134]} ("Live and remember")).

The sparkle in the portrait of the characters in Rasputin's works is associated with the eyes and helps to express various emotions. For example, in the story "Money for Maria" this is hidden anger ("the conductor looked out at the noise, her eyes flashed" ^{[5, p. 116]}); in "The Last term" – joy ("tears sparkled" at the dying Anna ^{[14, p. 214]}, when she was glad to see a friend); fatigue – in "Farewell to Mater" (when Daria hardly whitewashes the hut, her head is spinning, "sparkling fiery stripes stretched before her eyes" ^{[15, p. 359]}). In the story "To the Same Land", a neologism was discovered, which V. G. Rasputin uses to describe the character of Pashuta's beloved man in the past, Stas Nikolaevich, who in modern times lost his purpose ("And the famous sparkle went out in his eyes, flashing unexpectedly and brightly like lightning, who was able to strike on the spot" ^{[4, p. 280]}).

Sparking is used to describe the awakening of the river in the spring in the story "Farewell to the Mother" ("The Angara opened liberally, stretching into a mighty sparkling stream" ^{[15, p. 208]}).

Conclusions

Thus, despite the sharpness of the problems of most of V. G. Rasputin's works, in general, we can say that there is a lot of light in his works. The writer uses light and its shades in landscapes, in the portrait of heroes and in the description of their condition, as well as in descriptions of details of the material world – works of human labor. In metaphorical formulations, shades of light deepen psychologism, often due to the contrast of the inner state of the hero and natural light, as well as through its opposition to electricity. Sunlight accompanies the characters in joyful moments, moonlight – in situations of anxiety and anxiety. The metaphor of light is also used in V. G. Rasputin's prose to convey joyful inspiration, a peaceful state or awareness by the characters of the works of the true state of things. An individual stylistic feature of V.G. Rasputin's works can be considered a combination of several shades of light in descriptions, especially in landscape sketches, and the use of various shades of light to describe the character's condition.