ARCHAIC RITUAL AND RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS IN POST-SOVIET SOCIETY (BY THE MATERIAL OF M. YELIZAROV’S STORY “STOLEN EYES”)

Abstract

The article analyzes the story "Stolen Eyes" from M. Elizarov's collection "The cubes" (2008) in the aspect of cognitive and psychoanalytic literary criticism. The archaic ritual, which acts as a driving and centralizing force for constructing the plot and motivating the actions of the characters, the religious consciousness and practices of “folk Orthodoxy”, actualized in the critical years of the post-Soviet era, is studied. Pseudo-occult literature, which became publicly available at the end of the 1990s, turned out to be in demand in the daily life of people who had lost the practice of church life during the years of Soviet power. In this article, we consider how a similar symbiosis of "village magic" and "folk Orthodoxy" in fiction is based on the example of M. Elizarov's story "Stolen Eyes". The study of individual ritual practices that exist in rural areas and are described in the story provides the key to understanding and interpreting not only this story, but also draws a parallel with other works of the author, which were previously considered mainly from the perspective of the deconstruction of the Soviet myth. The article also provides data from a medical experiment conducted to monitor the work of the brain during prayer and data on the mental state of people arriving in a state of "obsession" and religious psychosis, similar in development dynamics to the state of the protagonist. The significance of this study lies in the fact that M. Elizarov's prose has not previously been considered and studied using the methods of cognitive poetics, psychoanalytic literary criticism. In previously published works, the ritual is seen as a side effect of the deconstruction of the Soviet myth. This article displays the centralizing role of the archaic ritual, which directs the course of the narrative. The practical significance of this study lies in the fact that the results obtained can be used in the preparation of materials for courses in literary criticism, the latest Russian literature, and psychoanalytic literary criticism.