Збирач образів: Антон Заньковський та його міфологія

Abstract

This article is both a culturological and literary-critical work. It is devoted to the world and mythology of Anton Zan’kovskiy’s works. Anton Zan’kovskiy is a writer from St. Petersburg. But he was born in Voronezh in 1988. Thus, his work is the world of these two cities and walks into his memory places. It is a solo of a trot, hiking through the forest. He is the author of the novels "Deucalion" (2015) and "Ragwoman" (2016), which were published in the literary magazine "Neva". Anton Zan’kovskiy often mentions Ukrainian culture in his novels, he also uses sometimes Ukrainian language. When a reader is immersed in the world of Anton Zan’kovskiy's novels, he feels the way of Andrei Bely, Osip Mandelshtam, Vladimir Nabokov, Alexander Blok, Anatoly Mariengof vision. These novels destroy the habitual space-time, bringing our perception closer to the primordial singularity, to the irreducibility of the birth moment of the Universe. It can be said, that these works are nostalgic and melancholic, this is an appeal to the golden age of youth and childhood. Anton Zan’kovskiy writes novels – prose works, but his novels are “werewolves”. In fact, prose novels turn out to be poems. The world in these novel-poems is depicted as unevenness, gluing. Life is represented as rhythm, hesitation, confusion. The imagery of Anton Zan’kovskiy’s works appears to be an ontology on-the-scene, thanks to the special sensuality and almost physical sensibility of the text. The author is a collector of sensations and images, after which, however, emptiness and timelessness appear, and memory is replaced by oblivion and silence. However, Anton Zan’kovskiy's works arise from a fall, from "diving for pearls" into pensive – a deep of the past, from the melancholy, from a desire to return to the past. The author wants to return to the past and to go through a phase – to feel the same emotions. It is believed that the world of these werewolf novels is born from the feelings of decadence, from the emotions of decline. That’s why the reader can see despair, disappointment, and lack of surprise: the author has lost his spontaneity, and the world has ceased to be magical. This is the mythology of perpetual motion, "topographic amnesia", flanking, labyrinth, streets, ornaments, arabesques, lines, allusions, past, childhood, nostalgia, regret, anxiety and dream.