Estetica urâtului în proza lui Iuri Mamleev
The Aesthetics of Ugliness in Yury Mamleyev's Prose

Summary/Abstract: The objective of the present article is to decipher the main stylistic procedures used by Yuri Mamleev in his prose to generate the aesthetics of the ugly, and also to pinpoint the social, cultural and spiritual references which trigger the use of this type of aesthetics in the second half of the twentieth century. In one of Mamleev’s best known novels, The Idlers, the ugliness can be easily observed at the narrative as well as the linguistic levels. Having the murderer at the centre of his creation just like Dostoyevsky a century before him, Mamleev reveals the darkest side of the human nature – narcissism, monstrous corporality, the obscene, lunacy, proving that he gathered a rich bouquet of fleurs du mal, as Viktor Erofeev noticed later. Fuelled by the continuous search for the mysterious Unknown which comes after death, the homicides committed by the main hero and the endless discussions about the religion of “I” reveal the loss of spiritual values during the age of complete atheism in Russia. The importance of Mamleev’s works for posterity resides in the fact that they managed to successfully encapsulate the human condition of that time.

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