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VISUALIZATION TECHNIQUES IN FORMATION OF TEMPTATION MOTIVE IN VICTOR ASTAFIEV STORY “THE HORSE WITH THE PINK MANE” // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 3 (21). P. 182-196

The article analyses the plot of the story by Victor Astafiev “The Horse with the Pink Mane” in correlation with archetypic (biblical) motive of “temptation of wife”. The temptation motive is included, as a rule, into the subject structure designated in literary criticism as “a contract of a person with a devil”. The plot is formed by several motives. Based on work of Valeri Tyupa, we can distinguish the following: temptation and casting-off of a person from the world order; partnership with infernal helper-wrecker; remorse, the intercession of a sinner and, as consequence, their reunion with the world order. The plot of the story by Victor Astafiev, as a whole, follows this invariant scheme. When analyzing the story, a special attention is given to visualization techniques that make out the temptation motive at different levels of the poetics of the story. First, the spatial organization of the story is interpreted, in which the semantics of an ascension and descent / fall is developed, as well as harmonious coexistence with the world and the loss of “world order”, casting-off from a paradise house. Second, the techniques of the creation of characters’ images are investigated. It is noted, that, first of all, this is an autobiographical story about the childhood created on the basis of the poetics of psychologism. However, the writer uses “double coding”: the image of Sanka is one of a rural hooligan boy but simultaneously refers to the image of the serpent / “demon” (“blood-shot” eyes, a head with bumps, foul language, advances with the “evil spirit” and so forth). In the story by Victor Astafiev, as well as in the Bible story, there is the problem of a free will linked not to the tempter (he doesn’t have to make a choice) but to the tempted one (autobiographical hero Vitka). A symbolical allusion plan is extremely important for understanding of the author’s concept of the work: introducing a private, household history in a biblical context, the writer expresses confidence, that a fatal choice is made by each person, and a small temptation has essential consequences (loss of harmony with the world, despair, destruction of a soul). It is essential that the central character of the story though does not feel the correlation of his life with the biblical story (the author conveys this correlation), draws a conclusion about malignancy of his choice. In the context of the development of a temptation motive in the story, the images of wild strawberry and spice-cake in the form of a horse are interpreted. Fall and purifying remorse of the main character is shown by Victor Astafiev by the episodes of tasting of wild strawberry and “crying out” the strawberry tears accordingly. The image of spice-cake on the form of a horse is polysemantic. The ambivalent semantics of a horse is accented in it: on the one hand, a symbol of liberty, a victory of low passions over spirituality/moral principles, on the other hand, a horse is a solar symbol and the image of Saint George’s helper. The image of a horse serves in the story to the expression of the author’s thought that the same means can be used in harm and in the blessing. Sanka by manipulating Vitka’s desire to receive a spice-cake (associated by him with permissiveness, freedom), inclines him to a temptation, to a deceit; and grandmother Katerina Petrovna gives him a horse with the pink mane not only to punish him by shaming but also loving him. And this grandmother’s gift and forgiveness gives a moral lesson for Vitka and metaphorically marks the victory of “angels” over “demons” in the soul of the small hero of the story. Effective means for “fishing of people” is not an intimidation but forgiveness and love, not a whip but a spice-cake.

Keywords: poetics of the visual, spatial poetics, Victor Astafiev, Siberian literature, the image of a child in literature, temptation motive