THE STRUCTURE OF THE CHARACTER IN LYUDMILA ULITSKAYA’S NOVELS: "THE KUKOTSKY ENIGMA"

• Main Author: Марина Петровна Абашева (Marina P. Abasheva)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Perm State University 2017-10-01
• Series: Vestnik Permskogo universiteta: Rossijskaâ i zarubežnaâ filologiâ
• Subjects: прототип; структура литературного героя; беллетристика; Людмила Улицкая; Вениамин Катаев; Павел Гузиков.
• Online Access: http://press.psu.ru/index.php/philology/article/view/120

Based on archival material, the article presents information about the prototype of the main character in the novel The Kukotsky Enigma by Lyudmila Ulitskaya. The prototype was a physician Pavel Guzikov (1885–1952) who lived in Perm (renamed Molotov in the Soviet period). Guzikov’s family and home in the Molotov-city were also the prototypical basis for incidental characters and setting in two chapters of Ve- Абашева М. П. Структура героя в романах Людмилы Улицкой: случай Кукоцкого 72 niamin Kaverin’s novel Two Captains (the writer visited Molotov in 1942). In Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s novel, P. A. Guzikov becomes the prototype of the main character, Pavel Alekseevich Kukotsky, a hero-ideologist who occupies an important place in the general typology of Ulitskaya’s heroes. The study of the character’s prototypical basis, testimonies of Guzikov’s daughter published for the first time, archival documents and memoirs may become data for historical and literary commentary on the novel by Ulitskaya. The designated social, historical and literary connections between the heroes and prototypes of V. Kaverin, L. Ulitskaya and other writers outline a kind of literary topos in the regional history of Perm literature. In terms of theory, the research focuses on the study of the structure of characters in Ulitskaya’s novels. The theoretical framework of the article embraces the methods of myth criticism, structural semiotics, narratology, and gender analysis. The characters in Ulitskaya’s novels – The Kukotsky Enigma (2001), Daniel Stein, Interpreter (2006), Jacob’s Ladder (2015) and others – are based on the combination of biographical, social, mythological, archetypal aspects, and they are subordinated to the task of mediation and harmonization of life conflicts and contradictions along with other levels of problems and poetics of Ulitskaya. The article outlines the analysis of the evolution of the model described above, which is characteristic not only of L. Ulitskaya’s prose but also of other works of modern fiction, where we can see a tendency towards document and hybridization of traditional genre formulae.