ТРАНСФОРМАЦИЯ РОМАНТИЧЕСКИХ МОТИВОВ В РОМАНЕ ПАТРИКА ЗЮСКИНДА «ПАРФЮМЕР»

Abstract

The article attempts to highlight the main romantic motifs that the modern German writer Patrick Süskind used in his novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. Symbolic for the contemporary cultural context figurative semantic constants (genius, loneliness, rejection, godlessness, etc.) are assigned to such motifs. The ways and means of rethinking romantic motifs in a modern novel are determined, the specifics of their transformation in a postmodern text is analyzed. The similarities between the work of Süskind and popular upbringing novels in the Enlightenment are noted: the main character of the modern German writer goes through the thorny path of formation, he improves his gift, thanks to which he hopes to change the world, subjugate other people to himself. The parody evangelical allusions that contribute to the deconstruction of the romantic figure of an unrecognized genius are analyzed. The postmodernist writer debunks and ridicules the hero, turning the imaginary king into a jester. Unlike the romantic hero, whose main function was to broadcast the divine will, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille refutes the truth of the Absolute by his existence and the ingenious gift inherent in him by nature. The article concludes that Süskind refers to a stable romantic model, implemented many times in literature and art, setting his own accents in his own way, bringing the romantic structure to its limit. This model goes through the second stage in its development, according to the Hegel’s triad, namely, the negation of negation, when any phenomenon turns into its opposite. Refuting the well-known Pushkin’s claim that “genius and villainy are two incompatible things”, the writer at the same time comes to the conclusion that evil, even without meeting a worthy opponent, is destructive to himself. We see further research prospects in the study of the novel in the context of the work of Süskind and modern German-language literature from the point of view of transforming the romantic tradition in the post-modern text.