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UDC 821.161.1-3:81`42
DOI 10.20339/PhS.4-26.013
Valentinova Olga I.,
Doctor of Philology,
Professor of the of General and Russian Linguistics Department
Patrice Lumumba Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia
e-mail: ovalentinova@yandex.ru
The article examines the mythic nature of N.V. Gogol’s “Terrible Vengeance”, a quality that distinguishes this work both within the collection “Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka” and within the writer’s oeuvre as well as in Russian literature as a whole, making it unique. A special character of the relationship between form and content is discussed, one that testifies to the utterance (the text) functioning as a symbol. The article concludes that although the equivalence of sign and meaning is characteristic of three spheres of human existence — myth, religion, and art — it is precisely in myth, inherently alien to any form of contingency, that this equivalence becomes absolutely all-encompassing. It is argued that “A Terrible Vengeance” possesses an absolute degree of predetermination (non-accidentality), which moves the work from the aesthetic sphere into the mythic one. The study demonstrates how mythic reality materializes within the text — in rhythmically coordinated and rhyming fragments of varying length that are distant from one another — thereby transforming the meaning of everyday reality presented through the linear development of the plot. It reveals a unique interaction of temporal layers achieved through the rhythmic organization of the text, in which the future appears as already accomplished. Finally, it emphasizes the ethnic genesis of the opposition between “one’s own” and “the other”, embedded in the text and activated by a sense of complementarity — an unconscious sympathy or antipathy characteristic of mythological consciousness.
Keywords: myth, mythic text, mythic time, symbol, transcendent reality
This study was conducted as part of the RUDN project “A Systems Approach as the Foundation of Philological Thought” (Project No. 050226-0-000).
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