ЖЕНСКИЕ ОБРАЗЫ В ПРОЗЕ В.Ф. ОДОЕВСКОГО И СИМВОЛИСТОВ: К ВОПРОСУ О ПРЕЕМСТВЕННОСТИ
IMAGES OF WOMEN IN THE PROSE OF V.F. ODOEVSKY AND THE SYMBOLISTS: REGARDING CONTINUITY OF TRADITIONS

Author(s): Galina Zavgorodnyaya, Alexey M. Zavgorodnii
Subject(s): Gender Studies, Gender history, Russian Literature, Theory of Literature
Published by: Masarykova univerzita nakladatelství
Keywords: Odoevsky; romanticism; female images; tradition; comparative analysis;
Summary/Abstract: The paper is aimed at revealing stylistic continuity between romanticism and symbolism in Russian literature by doing a case study. The works of a prominent representative of Russian romanticism, theorist and innovator V.F. Odoevsky as well as the prose of symbolist writers serve as material for analysis. Images of women and the specificity of their depiction by the above mentioned authors are selected as a research object. The research has shown that although the symbolists did not proclaim V.F. Odoevsky their literary precursor and his name did not emerge in symbolist manifestos and theoretical works (as in case of F. Tyutchev and A. Fet), it is from his conceptually thematic and stylistic trials that one can draw “straight lines” to symbolist experiments clearly illustrating the continuity between two literary directions and confirming the important role of V.F. Odoevsky in the Russian literary process. The analysis of some prose works by V.F. Odoevsky allowed to reveal, for instance, the following recurrent (with some variations) female types: woman possessing arcane knowledge or/and magic powers; woman having dual nature – human and mystical; woman from the picture coming alive. The noted images, depicted highly originally, demonstrate, however, the indubitable influence of Hermeticism (including alchemical symbolism), Schelling’s philosophy and the work of German romanticists. The resemblance between female images in the prose of V.F. Odoevsky and the most frequently encountered ones in the symbolism becomes apparent when making a comparative analysis. It is revealing that semantic accumulations of the images at the beginning of the XX century are carried out in general in line with the directions traced by romanticists and, in the first place, by V.F. Odoevsky – an appeal to mythology, Hermeticism, theosophy in a broad sense; an aspiration to embody artistically the idea of synthesis of arts, religion and philosophy.

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