AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
In the novel Numbers G.V Srakandayev calls himself "Donkey
seven cents" (Pelevin 2016, p. 137). Indeed, Srakandaev is only
an antipode, a mirror duplicate of Stepa. He liked to humiliate
himself, and for sexual games he used a "bandage bandage with
two long white ears" (Pelevin 2016, p. 202), posing as an ass and
complementing this image with the corresponding sounds of the
animal. White ears - a symbol of the fact that Srakandayev
already obeys Stepa, immediately recognizes his supremacy.
Donkey - Srakandaev - according to Stepa, was his enemy, who
has no place in this world. But Stepa could not kill him. The
hero found another way to defeat the rival. He had the
opportunity to "saddle" the donkey. In the process of coition,
Stepa turned from a pokemon into a wolf: "Pikachu was a small,
quiet mumps," Stepa thought, "but the evil people broke his
heart. And he became a wolf! He is now a wolf!" (Pelevin
2016, p. 208).
It is necessary to emphasize that the wolf in the Pelevin bestiary
is one of the key characters - he appears in both "The problem of
the werewolf in the middle lane" and the Sacred Book of the
Werewolf. At the same time we will make a reservation that the
image of a wolf in mythology is very ambiguous. The
mythology of North-West and Central Eurasia shares a story
about the upbringing of a city or a tribe by a wolf. Thus, in
Roman mythology, the she-wolf fed Romulus and Remus, who
then founded Rome; in Chinese mythology there is a story about
the only surviving boy of the exterminated tribe, who was
nurtured by a wolf, who later became his wife and gave birth to
ten sons. In Mongolian mythology, there is a similar plot about
the wolf as the progenitor of the genus. Often, the leader of the
tribe acted in the image of a wolf, could take its shape, for
example: Dolon in Greek mythology, a fiery wolf in Slavic
mythology. Hence the connection with folkloric ideas about
werewolves in all mythological traditions (werewolf in German
mythology). In addition, the wolf had a connection with the
gods of war in Indo-European mythology: the cult of the god
Mars in Roman mythology, the wolves of Gehry and Freka, who
accompanied Odin. In Egyptian mythology, the bellicose deity
Vepruat was depicted as a wolf, which is a symbol of courage; in
Roman mythology to see the wolf signified the successful
outcome of the battle. However, the wolf could bring
destruction. For example, in the "Senior Edda" there is a story
about the wolf Fenrir. According to the myth, the giantess
Angrbod created the wolf Fenrir to destroy the world and the
gods. In order to avoid a catastrophe, by order of the gods, a
special chain was made to hold Fenrir, with whom he at the time
of the last battle of the Aesy with the Yotuns broke and
swallowed the sun, thereby destroying the world.
V. Pelevin in the novel Numbers creates two opposite
mythological images: the wolf symbolizing power, the Sun and
being the essence of Stepa, and the donkey is a symbol of
stupidity, humiliation, the Moon is the essence of Srakandaev.
The prose writer refuses from the usual duel between animals,
familiarizing the mythological motif and transferring it to the
sphere of the "corporal bottom" (M.M. Bakhtin). His heroes
enter into sexual intercourse, during which the wolf-Stepa
understands his true nature (a similar interpretation will be
present in the Sacred Book of the Werewolf), takes it and
overcomes the donkey-Srakandayev: "And the Stepa Wolf
realized that the Donkey was overthrown" (Pelevin, p. 209). And
here we note a characteristic feature not only for "Numbers", but
also for all novels of the prose writer: Stepa (Numbers), and
Peter Voidota (Chapaev and Void), and Vavilen Tatarsky
(Generation P), and Rama (Empire V), and fox A Huli (The
Sacred Book of the Werewolf) carry out the spiritual path, an
ascension to the heights of higher wisdom, absolute knowledge
and gaining absolute freedom. True, often the spiritual quest for
a hero or their result is presented in a "reduced" version, as, for
example, in the novel Empire V, where Rama eventually
becomes "Ishtar's friend, the head of glamor and discourse, a
komarin muzhik and the god of money with oak wings" (Pelevin
2009, p. 408), or here, in the Numbers, where the "elevation" and
"enlightenment" of the hero is obviously reduced, is realized
through coition and transmitted through images of the "close
lower".
The decisive battle of the antagonistic characters takes place at
the club "Perekrestok", the name of which is very symbolic. Let
us make a reservation that in the mythology the intersection is a
symbol of choice, and at the same time a symbol of the unity of
opposites. It is considered a point of collision of time and space,
a place where the evil forces gather - demons and witches. At
the crossroads, suicides, vampires were buried, so they got lost
and could not chase the living. The intersection is connected
with Ganesha, Janus and Hecata, who were sacrificed to the dog
in this place. In ancient Greek mythology, Hercules makes the
choice between virtue and pleasure precisely at the crossroads,
and prefers virtue. While Stepa in the Numbers chooses pleasure.
According to V. Pelevin, the intersection is the place of choice
for the heroes. Here Stepa decides to abandon the murder of
Srakandayev, replacing him with a more "pleasant" way of
defeating his rival. In addition, the very battle of the wolf and
donkey took place in the "borderland", the room behind the
mirrored panels: "I walked quickly to the mirror wall. Stopping
near her, he looked around the reflected hall" (Pelevin 2016,
p. 197). And this is by no means an accident. Mirror in many
mythological traditions is considered the boundary between the
worlds through which the otherworldly forces can pass into the
real world; man by means of a mirror, can penetrate into the
world "supernatural", thus appearing in the looking-glass.
In mythology, ideas about the mirror are connected with the
soul. It was believed that the soul can separate from the body and
travel to other worlds. Also, the mirror is capable of reflecting
the true essence of a person or his counterpart, which is
repugnant to him, but with which one should not be at enmity,
but to make friends. The mirror in Pelevin, thus, marks the
opposite of Stepa and Srakandayev. In addition, according to
folkloric ideas, mirrors reflect negative energy: if a person who
has conceived something bad looks in the mirror, then it will
direct this energy against the beholder. In the Numbers this
happened with Stepa, who could not commit the murder, thereby
losing as a man, but having defeated as the Wolf; the mirror
marks the metamorphosis that has occurred with the protagonist.
The mythological properties of the mirror reveal and reflect the
true essence of Srakandayev and Stepa, thereby helping to win
the Wolf victory over the Donkey. This is evidenced by the
exchange made by the heroes: "On the table lay the crumpled
ears of Srakandayev - a memorable gift that Stepa received in
exchange for the red lingas of victory" (Pelevin 2016, p. 211).
In the novel The Sacred Book of the Werewolf the key motifs that
the prose writer expands and reinterprets are the motives for
transformation, duality, kissing power, and turnaround. The
construction of the text of The Sacred Book of the Werewolf -
without division into chapters or indications of chronological
stages characteristic for the diary of confession - creates a feeling
of a ring composition. The plot level is complemented by the
philosophical-symbolic: all the details of the work, performing a
certain role at the level of plot development, work on the main
idea of the work. Already the title of the novel sets the
perception vector - it contains not just the text content
compressed to symbols.
The phrase "The Sacred Book", taken from the cover, taken from
the sacral culture, immediately outlines the difference with this
culture: on the one hand, for the Western socio-cultural
consciousness only the Bible can be considered a holy book; on
the other hand, this phrase refers the reader to the East (more
precisely, the Far Eastern cultural area), in which it traditionally
defines the circle of classical Chinese texts, as T. I.
Chepelevskaya pointed out for the first time (Chepelevskaya
2006, p. 234). Accordingly, the pre-determined opposition
sacred / secular pre-sets the reader to a special perception of this
semantic signal. However, the prose writer introduces into the
title the notion of werewolves, borrowed from a completely
different, mythological, cultural tradition, thereby achieving an
oxymoronic semantics: potentially religious, the sacred appears
next to the mythological. Opposition East-West finds the
potential for simultaneous functioning in different semantic
fields of the work as a common or internal frame.
- 69 -