I.S. Shmelyov’s "Last Supper": the image of bread and wine in the epic "The Sun of the Dead"

Abstract

The article examines the bread and wine image in the epic "The Sun of the Dead" (1923) by I.S. Shmelyov (1873–1950). The relevance of the research is connected with studying the culinary and gastronomic code represented in the work by the lexical units of the bread series and wine. The topicality is also proved by studying the poetics of the text and determining the role of everyday details in it, thus making it possible to trace the character’s spiritual world and his environment. The article aims to consider how the lexical units bread and wine function in the text of the epic and to identify the specific features of the individual authorial interpretation of these lexemes and their derivatives. The research employs lexico-semantic, contextual methods and partly statical analysis using data from the National Corpus of the Russian Language. It is shown that bread names (khleb, khlebets, khlebushko/khlebushek, khlebniy) are key in the epic and carry an axiological load. Bread is a form of payment, a method and unit of measurement, the highest value. The article concludes that bread turns out to be the centre around which people’s relationships are built and certain aspects of character manifestation, as well as a person’s attitude towards animals (as to a comrade in grief, and not a piece of meat) are depicted. It has been established that bread symbols (for example, future coulibiac/kulebyachka budushchaya, gingerbread/pryanik) can be a way of expressing ethical evaluation. The article also highlights that the motif of transforming wine into blood modifies its sacral function. The Eucharist sacrament is carried out in the reverse order: blood becomes wine. The objective world and the animal world are often depicted allegorically, revealing relationships between people.