AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
The narrative in the novel is conducted on behalf of the main
character, a werewolf fox, engaged in virtual prostitution and
generating in the minds of the client the illusion of intimacy. It
has the ancient name A Huli (in translation from Chinese "huli"
is a fox, "A" is a diminutive suffix put to the beginning), which
can be translated as "Fox". However, the heroine also has a
"modern" pseudonym fixed in a false foreign passport - Alice
Lee, who can be perceived as a common Korean surname, and as
a hint of her "unauthenticity", an imaginary essence visible to
others, but mistaken for a genuine, - "Alice is it?" (Pelevin 2007,
p. 20). And here the allusion to Alice in the Looking Glass by
L. Carroll, where the genuineness of the main character is being
questioned by Trulyal, is insisted that she is "not at all", she is
"not real" but "just dreaming" (Carroll).
Returning to the novel by V. Pelevin, we emphasize that the
heroine's game of authenticity / imaginariness (none of the
surrounding people even suspects who the mild-tempered girl is
with the appearance of the nymphet) generates the motives of
duality (concealment of a real person under a different name as a
result of crushing each other -equivalent names) and werewolves
(concealment of the true essence under a false form). The
vicissitudes of the virtual prostitute's life reduce A Huli with the
FSB General Alexander. A young general handsome,
magnificent lover and part-time wolf-werewolf, is another major
character in the novel. In addition to the central werewolf
characters, other creatures of "inhuman" origin from different
clans are mentioned: foxes are A Huli's sisters (E-Huli and I-
Huli), wolves from the flock of Alexander (the leader of the pack
is Colonel Lebedenko, werewolf "out of the ordinary" -
Mikhalych). And, if the characters-people of the novel seem to
be real animals with their limited minds and desires, the
werewolves symbolize what should be correlated with man -
they are characterized by a rich inner world, a deep knowledge
of life, an excellent education (the same properties, by the way,
will inherent in vampires as the highest race, invisibly
controlling the world of people, in Empire V and Batman
Apollo).
Werewolf in the novel includes a huge mythological layer of
culture of the East and the West. "The motif of werewolves is
correlated with the archaic concept of "mutual engraving "of all
sides and manifestations of reality" (Neklyudov 1992, p. 235),
and hence determines the existence of real and "reverse" worlds.
This allows V. Pelevin to develop the idea of co-existence of
different worlds in a single space-time continuum and to
continue the traditional topic of the possibility / impossibility of
transition, crossing the spatial and temporal boundaries between
these worlds. By the way, the prose writer resorts to Chapayev
and Void, where the past / future coexist as the only possible
reality of the protagonist, in Empire V and in Batman Apollo, in
which the world of vampires is "included" in everyday reality,
and in novel Love for the Three Tsukerbrines, where the
"profane" world and the world of spiritual insights of the
characters, overlapping each other, are nothing more than one of
the levels of the game Angry Birds. At the same time,
consideration in the Sacred Book of the Werewolf as a metaphor
for concealing the true essence allows V. Pelevin to introduce
the theme of a superscore, which is important for the ideological
content of the whole work.
Fox A lives at the junction of different worlds, not belonging to
any of them, and freely moves in this border zone. In the real
world, it falls into a chain of semi-criminal situations, which, as
we have already noted, deduce it to the special services and
lieutenant-general of the FSB Alexander (Sasha Gray). He, in
turn, turns out to be a werewolf, sending the reader not only to
V. Pelevin's early story The Problem of Werewolves in the
Middle Strip, but also to the well-known folklore character (in
the novel the last parallel is played out in the episode when A
Huli himself is to Alexander in a red cloak with a hood and a
basket of pies, and he immediately tells her an anecdote about
Little Red Riding Hood and Wolf (Pelevin 2007, p. 157).
Noteworthy in this connection is the "rapprochement" of the
eastern and western cultural contexts: werewolf foxes are most
often associated with the East, occupying one of the key places
in the legends of China, Korea and Japan (it is enough to recall
Kumicho from Korean folklore or the history of kitsune in
Japanese mythology etc.), while the stories about werewolves are
more widely distributed in the European cultural space - from
mythology to mass culture.
The image of the wolf in folkloric representations, as we have
already noted, was traditionally close to the mythological dog
and was associated with the cult of the leader of the fighting
squad and the ancestor of the tribe. Moreover, many myths
about wolves unite "the idea of the transformation of man into a
wolf", when he simultaneously becomes both "a victim (an
outcast, a persecuted) and a predator (murderer, persecutor)"
(Myths of the peoples of the world. Encyclopedia 1992, p. 242).
Wolves attributed ambivalent properties: on the one hand,
ferocity, cunning, greed, cruelty, and on the other - courage,
loyalty, the will to win. The images of the wolf and foxes in
mythological representations often had a negative connotation,
but both animals could be transformed into beings of a
completely different nature.
If Fox A's ability to werewolves is innate, then Alexander
acquired it: his story, described in the story The problem of
werewolf in the middle lane, claims that he "went out of the
way" after a certain sign-signal, sleep, in which he saw a wolf.
He is one of those who are called "elected", but his "choosiness"
was the result of numerous trials, after which he gets the ability
to transform, and was not given at birth. In Pelevin’s novel the
representation of characters capable of metamorphosis is
somewhat different from the traditional ideas about werewolves:
they are not evil spirits, they have never been subjected to
sorcery spells or curses, they are quietly living among people
visually from nothing different from them.
However, having a special, "unreal" component, Pelevin's
werewolves could safely do without "games in people", they do
not need to live a different life, but they do not. And this is the
most important reinterpretation by the prose writer of the
traditional mythological motif: werewolves are a different
"race," they are stronger and more powerful than humans, they
are given secrets that people are trying to unravel, because they
are the representatives of the "other" world and already act in
other conditions for a person. In the novel there are heroes who
are formally werewolves who live in harmony with human being
(despite their secret life). In the final, one of them remembers
his destiny, and the other, "humanizing" in emotions, hesitates in
the choice: "The marvelous power received from you as a gift, I
will send to serve my country. Thank you for her" (Pelevin 2007,
p. 367). Or: "I will go to the very center of the empty morning
field, I will gather all my love in my heart, I will be dispersed
and I will climb up the hill. And as soon as the wheels of the
bicycle come off the ground, I will loudly scream my name and
stop creating this world. There will come an amazing second,
like no other. Then this world will disappear. And then, at last, I
find out who I really am" (Pelevin 2007, p. 381).
The Pelevin's fox-werewolf, on the one hand, is a typical
representative of its clan (it is cunning, hypocritical, insidious,
capable of sending a wand, creating complex illusions in the
minds of "clients"), on the other hand, carries features that
sharply distinguish it from its own companions. She is beautiful,
intelligent, not devoid of humanity and philanthropy; in contrast
to her sister “I”, she is "virtuous", for she respects the heavenly
laws: "A virtuous fox must earn only by prostitution and in no
case should use her hypnotic gift for other purposes - it is the
law of heaven" (Pelevin 2007, p. 41). In addition, A Huli,
although cunning, but good: "Your heart is not evil. It's as
cunning as all foxes, "the Yellow Master tells her. - A cunning
heart is difficult to heal, forcing him to follow moral rules.
Precisely because it is cunning, it will certainly find a way to get
around all these rules and fool everyone" (Pelevin 2007, p. 344).
The heroine, unlike fox-werewolves, does not live in a "pack",
does not approach the cemeteries, uses its tail not for the purpose
of kindling the fire (like mythological kitsune), but for creating a
daze that plunges into illusions. This emphasizes her great
"human" nature.
- 70 -