The image of the national landscape in the short novel “Pilgrimage” by Ivan Shmelev

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to examine the peculiarities of the artistic embodiment of the national landscape image in the short novel "Pilgrimage" by Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev, a writer of the first half of the 20th century. The relevance of the study is determined by the apparently growing interest of modern literary and scientific circles in the rich creative heritage of the writer, the desire to reveal the originality, uniqueness and singularity of his talent, the versatility of the artistic world. The research methods used were descriptive, interpretative and biographical. The results of the literary analysis show that the image of the national landscape presented in the "Pilgrimage" by I. S. Shmelev has a two-dimensional structure, combining realistic and ideal levels. This is explained by the peculiarity of children's view of the world, as the image of nature is given through the prism of the child protagonist’s point of view. The treatment of the theme of the native landscape is based on the motif of beauty, updated in the setting of the young hero's admiration for the uniqueness, charm and elegance of the surrounding world. The author's discourse, included in the text, brings to the narrative features of idealisation, associated with the motif of memories of a bygone childhood and a homeland lost in social cataclysms. The image of Russian nature in "Pilgrimage" develops the motifs of silence, peace, joy, joyful admiration of nature, wonder, fairy tale and spirituality. The leitmotifs in the poetics of the work are the landscape images of sun, light, dazzling brilliance, which converge with the motif of joy and the image of "golden" childhood. In "Pilgrimage", the dominant colour is the rose-gold, white and blue scale, which shades the idea of the sacredness of God's world and echoes nostalgic motifs. The symbolic images of Easter and the motif of Easter joy introduce the theme of eternal life, salvation and resurrection into the text.