Abstract
This paper provides an analysis of the novel Russian Beauty (Russkaia krasavitsa) by Viktor Erofeev. Written between 1980 and 1982 and published in 1989, the novel caused a stir among critics. The paper focuses on the mythological elements in Russian Beauty. Mythological elements are visible in the novel’s structure and in its narrator-protagonist Irina Tarakanova, who recounts her life and accomplishments as a promiscuous girl, a model and a lesbian. Her navigation of obstacles can be interpreted through the lens of Campbell’s monomyth (2009), as the journey of a hero who, thanks to a calling “from above”, leaves everydayness and enters the world of adventures, eventually returning spiritually and physically renewed. Irina undergoes the same journey also based such a “calling”, but her story is subverted as the mythological is trivialised, and the spiritual downgraded to the corporeal. Irina’s independent decisions, which are diametrically opposed to “higher goals”, are interpreted through the concept of narcissism (Freud 1914; Matijašević 2016), since the protagonist successfully realises (writes) her own myth – a monomyth.
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