AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
In addition, Pelevin's werewolves are capable of loving
spiritually, and not bodily, only in the guise of a person, which
also brings them closer to ordinary people. For A Huli, love
becomes the guide that made her remember her own not
imaginary, but true essence and mission. Thanks to love, she
became overreact and realized that truth is in love; it is love that
turns out to be the "key" to the heroine for understanding the
essence of things and the world that she was looking for two
thousand years. V. Pelevin again reinterprets the traditional myth
about foxes, who appear as evil demons, granting the heroine not
only the ability to philosophize, the ability to deeply love, but
also a sense of remorse: "The fox feels the full weight of his
dashing deeds; a stream of remorse, horror and shame for what
was done" (Pelevin 2007, p. 179). Thanks to love, Fox A gains
inner freedom, and therefore enters the Rainbow Stream with a
lightened soul, and not with sorrowful experiences.
Werewolf Alexander (Sasha Gray) also appears more human
than the "beast". His ability to werewolves acquired, so the
human remains in its essence in a larger volume: he is
simultaneously brave, responsible, independent, cruel and
cunning. After the heroine's kiss, an amazing metamorphosis
takes place: although he gains abilities that make him more
powerful, a kiss does not bring him happiness. The prose writer,
and this obviously, beats and "reduces" here the famous fairy
tale motif of turning a monster into a prince from The Scarlet
Flower and the motive of the resurrecting force of a kiss,
subordinate, however, to the logic of reversibility from Tales of
the Dead Princess - A brute Aulic essence, the cruelty of
Alexander is replaced by despair, a balanced fury, which even
more transforms him into a beast: "Love does not transform,"
Alexander says bitterly. "She's just tearing off the masks. "I
thought I was a prince. But it turned out ... Here it is my soul"
(Pelevin 2007, p. 283).
The image of Alexander with all evidence refers to the
characters of Scandinavian mythology, personifying the
elemental forces. Firstly, to the monstrous wolf Fenrir - the
creature of Locke, an eerie beast from the Nordic bestiary, who
was once tied up by the gods and put on the magical chain of the
Gleepnir, but when he breaks free, he will swallow the sun, and
this will mark the death of the gods. Secondly, the allusion to the
werewolf Sasha Gray is the dog Garm - the mythological twin of
Fenrir, who, in the final battle, fought with the god Tyr: "Garm
barking loudly / at Gnipaheller, / the leash will not last - / the
Greedy <...>" (The Elder Edda: The Epos 2001, p. 33). At the
same time, the destructive forces of the mythological wolf and
dog are intertwined with the qualities of Alexander the Werewolf
and Alexander the Man, as a result of which the image of the
dog P...as a watchman of Russia appears in the novel. Drawing
a parallel between Garm and Fenrir as chthonic monsters and the
dog P...ts, Pelevin emphasizes that in essence they are all guards
(Garm - the underworld, P ... ts - Russia), and with the onset of
hard times will bring the same outcome. However, the dog will
have a different fate from Pelevin than Garm or Fenrir: if Fenrir
is killed in the last battle of the gods and giants ("The son comes
here / the Father of Victories, / Vidar, for battle / with the beast
of the corpse; / sword he pierces / for his father, he /
Hodrudung's son rages in his heart" (The Elder Edda: The Epos
2001, p. 36)), the dog P...ts" will come "to the offending country,
and then fall asleep again in the snow, as the super-werewolf is
immortal. Dog P...ts takes over the duties of both Fenrir and
Garm, promising that he will change the world until he changes
completely or dies himself. Alexander stubbornly searches for
the truth, tries to understand things that are inaccessible to him,
but when secret knowledge is ready to open to him, the hero
turns out to be loyal to other values: the loyalty of the "pack" and
the public duty becomes fundamental to him. Alexander as a
demonic creation serves good, but resorts to unworthy methods.
There is no desire to sacrifice everything for the sake of harmony
for oneself and others, he is not able to distinguish love from
selfishness or experience joy for another, and therefore can not
enter the rainbow stream and acquire that higher knowledge that
is accessible to A Huli. In the final of the novel, thus, it is
emphasized that both wolves and foxes, and Alexander and A
Huli have a different fate. Therefore, love between them is
impossible - it is tragic and knowingly doomed. However, it is
love (the Christian postulate "love your neighbor as yourself"
becomes dominant for the Sacred Book of the Werewolf written
by the hero-werewolf) helps the heroes to comprehend their true
self.
5 Summary
Thus, in the novel Numbers, a reinterpretation of animal images
from various mythological traditions (the Meowth mass culture
character and the cat from Egyptian mythology, the dualistic
image of the donkey, the goldfish from folklore of Finno-Ugric
peoples, the wolf) through postmodern techniques (irony, play,
intertextuality) leads to V. Pelevin constructing his own author's
neo-myth, not just possessing a "set" of myth-poetic archetypes,
allusions and reminiscences, but offering the reader a holistic
myth-poetic image a part of which becomes Stepa as a new
mythological hero, passing through a series of trials and striving
for higher "knowledge".
In the novel The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, the rethinking of
myth by means of postmodern methods leads not only to playing
with meanings, but also to a completely new understanding of
archetypal images and motives. Through the playing of the
motives and images of the Chinese (the motif of werewolves, the
images of werewolves) and North German mythology (the
images of the dog Garm and the Wolf Fenrir ironically
bifurcating in the images of the dog Ps...ts and the main
character of Alexander) Pelevin creates his own author's neo-
myth, allowing, firstly , to comprehend the philosophical and
cultural opposition East-West, "remove" the differences between
which only the power of love is capable; secondly, the "eternal"
problems of good, evil, love, death, and thirdly, to reconsider
one of the key themes of his creativity "inter-transitions"
between worlds.
Literature:
1. Adamovich, M. M. Seduced by death. Myth-making in prose
of the 90s: Yuri Mamleev, Milorad Pavic, Victor Pelevin, Andrey
Dmitriev. 4. issue. Russia: Continent, 2002. p. 405-419.
2. Barthes, R. An Essay. Transl. by Richard Miller. New York:
Hill and Wang, 1974. 271 p. ISBN 0-374-52167-0.
3. Barthes, R. Mythologies. Transl. by Annette Lavers. London:
Paladin, 1972. 160 p. ISBN 0-374-52150-6.
4. Carroll L. Alice in the Looking Glass. Retrieved from:
http://lib.ru/CARROLL/alisa2.txt.
5. Chepelevskaya, T. Creativity V. Pelevin in the aspect of
postmodernism (Mythological theme in the novel by Victor
Pelevin "The Sacred Book of the Werewolf"). Moscow: Indrik,
2006. p. 227-245. ISBN 5-85759-387-5.
6. Ditkovskaya, I. Yu. Intertextuality of V. Pelevin's prose: Diss.
... to. Philol. sciences. Dnepropetrovsk, 2002. 210 p.
7. Eliade Mircea. Myths, Rites, Symbols: A Mircea Eliade
Reader. Vol. 2. Ed. Wendell C. Beane and William G. Doty,
Harper Colophon. New York, 1976. 550 p.
8. Maksimov, D.E. Russian poets of the beginning of the
century. Essays. Russia: Soviet writer, 1986. 408 p.
9. Mastorava: Mordovian folk epic Transl. to Mordovian
language by V. Yu. Yushkin. Saransk: Mordov. book publishing
house, 2012. 584 p. ISBN 978-5-7595-1848-8.
10. Meletinsky, E. M. Poetics of the myth. Moscow: Publishing
house Academic project; World, 2012. 331 p. ISBN 978-5-8291-
1318-6 (Academic project), ISBN 978-5-902357-91-9 (World).
11. Meowth. Retrieved from: http://www.ign.com/wikis/poke
mon-red-blue-yellow-version/Meowth.
12. Mintz, Z.G. About some "neomifologicheskih" texts in the
work of Russian symbolists. Russia: Scientific notes of Tartu
State University of Tartu, 1978. p. 76-120.
13. Myths of the peoples of the world. Encyclopedia: In 2
volumes. Vol.1. Moscow: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1992. 671 p.
14. Neklyudov, S. Yu. Werewolves // Myths of the peoples of
the world. Encyclopedia: In 2 volumes. Vol.2. Moscow: Soviet
Encyclopedia, 1992. 235 p. ISBN 5-85270-016-9.
15. Osmukhina, O. Yu. Myth-poetic field of the domestic novels
at the frontier of the XX-XXI centuries (in the prose of V.
- 71 -