Мифопоэтическая структура книги Елены Шварц «Литературные гастроли»

Abstract

This paper analyses Helena Shvarts’s book of short stories Literary Tours (2000), the origin and functional patterns of mythopoetic intertexts there in the paradigm of specific Russian Women’s fiction in the context of postmodern ethics and aesthetics: like other contemporary women-writers, Shvarts utilizes intertextuality and myths, biblical symbols and cultural code to be recognized by attentive readers. Fiction and non-fiction are overlapped in these memoirs which is typical of Russian Women’s writing as well, so episodes from the author’s own biography could be a fruitful soil for investigation the Myth as it is, in which oriental and western traditions and philosophies are intertwined. In Helena Shvarts’s poetic conception of the world a cross-cultural dialog between different types of civilizations (East and West) or/and archaic resources of modern European mentality had always been a fundamental basis of the narrative. Literary Tours represents a multileveled cultural utopia, in which Ancient Greek, Ancient Egyptian, Scandinavian and Taoist myths not only coexist peacefully in consciousness of a Poet as a representative of Gods, but also have an influence on the modern reality.