Imaginary Tragedies as an Experimental Play by Pushkin

Tiupa Valerij I.,

DSc in Philology, Professor,

Professor at the Department of Theoretical and Historical Poetics

Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH)

e-mail: v.tiupa@gmail.com

The dramatic cycle of A.S. Pushkin, known under the name of “little tragedies”, is considered in the article as an integrative formation, the integrity of which is analogous to an artistic creation — single and indivisible. The unrealized idea of publishing a separate book under the title “Experience of dramatic studies” (the author’s true title of the cycle) is reconstructed. The concentration of attention is revealed on the egocentric carriers of ‘solitary consciousness’ (Vyach. Ivanov), interacting with subjects of other mentalities: archaic, authoritarian-monological, on the one hand, and convergent-dialogical (in the person of Mozart) — on the other. The four plots of the cycle, not accidentally localized in the Western European cultural area, are arranged in a sequence similar to the four acts of “The Stone Guest” and trace the trajectory of the liminal metaplot of the ‘death test’ on the path to spiritual rebirth. As V.E. Khalizev showed, the breaking of the circle of solitary consciousness is entrusted to the antagonists of “The Feast during the Plague” Walsingham and the Priest and constitutes the meaning-forming finale of the experimental work. The dramatic ‘study’ of egocentrism in Pushkin’s masterpiece anticipated Dostoevsky’s inherent close attention to the phenomenon of the “underground man”.

Keywords: A.S. Pushkin, small tragedies, experimental dramaturgy, artistic integrity, solitary consciousness, convergent consciousness

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