БУДДИЗМ В МИРОВОЗЗРЕНИИ ПЕРСОНАЖЕЙ В ПРОИЗВЕДЕНИЯХ ГАЙТО ГАЗДАНОВА

Abstract

In the historical context of the total disintegration that occurred in Europe between 1920 and 1940, the Russian community abroad was particularly interested in Buddhism and the Buddhist worldview. This is connected with the general pessimistic atmosphere among Russian emigrants. Because of their disillusionment with harsh reality, many of them find consolation in Eastern religion to escape from the whirlwind of earthly existence. Such an unusual phenomenon wasnoticed by the young writer Gaito Gazdanov. The writer described this psychological phenomenon in his fiction. The main purpose of this article is to discover in Gazdanov's characters a psychological mindset closely linked to Buddhism. Accordingly, the aim of the study is to highlight the main characteristics of the Buddhist worldview in Gazdanov's characters, analyse the writer's perception of some Buddhist concepts and examine Gazdanov's attitude to the Buddhist teaching on life and superrealism. The material for the study is the novels An Evening at Clare's and The Return of the Buddha, meaningful in the early and mature periods of the writer's work. The analysis of the «Buddhist text» in Gazdanov's novels reveals a number of psychological traits in the characters that are similar to the category of Buddhism, such as detachment from the major history, deliberate alienation from the real world and dreamlike meditation as the main way of perceiving the world. At the same time, a number of Buddhist concepts, such as metempsychosis and nirvana, become the theme of the writer's work as well. This shows the mystical side of Gazdanov's work. However, the article concludes that the writer also warns of the danger and harm of the nihilism and indifference to life inherent in this Eastern religion, which eventually leads to the disappearance of the personality