Ordinamenti Павла Зальцмана: роман о Средней Азии

Abstract

The article presents a mythopoetic analysis of Pavel Saltzman’s novel “Central Asia in the Middle Ages (or the Middle Ages in Central Asia)” (1930–1950), published for the first time in 2018. The content of the article is aimed at practical educational discourse related to a number of literary problems: the study of the work of a previously unknown, but very significant for the history of literature writer; the study of Russian literature as the text devoted to the different ethnic culture (the existential myth by Saltzman is considered as binary opposition personified in the images of the bird Simurg and the giant Zakhak which is actualized in the literature of the XXI century — in the novels by G. Yakhina “Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes” and V. Medvedev “Zahhok”, unexpectedly rendering new overtones to modern literature); the orientalist and postorientalist studies (comparing prose Saltzman with the work of his contemporaries — A. Platonov, L. Solovyov, S. Krzhyzhanovsky. The author comes to the conclusion that Salzman’s text, despite the theme and title of the novel, is an example of neorientalist prose: all the patterns of traditional orientalism are given by Salzman differently, not from the standard point of view of a Western person.