THE IMAGE OF A SCHOOLBOY IN THE B. OKUDZHAVA’S WAR PROSE

Abstract

The article analyzes the history and poetics of Okudzhava’s war prose and its role in modern literature. Particular attention is paid to the image of the schoolboy character, which structures the text. The author reflects on his orientation towards classical literature and the creators of “lieutenant prose,” but treats the past with an emphatically apprentice attitude. This trusting intonation is inherited by his autobiographical protagonist, whose image emphasises the features of a private individual, an amateur. The figure of the schoolboy combines contradictory features: courage and naivety, belief in myths and fairy tales, as well as inner weariness and self-irony dictated by the author’s position. A special place is held by the story “Be Well, Schoolboy,” which is structured according to the soliloquy principle, when the hero’s self-discovery takes place, the war becomes an initiation and a test of the book truths “about feats, about glory,” which are alienated when confronted with the chaos of reality. The author demonstrates the gap between the perception of the schoolboy by those around him and his self-perception, which opens up an ambiguous and ironic perspective. The motifs of the “naked man,” the Other, Mercurianism and the labyrinth, which converge in the image of the schoolboy hero, have become the key concepts in these texts. The traditional paradigm of the “little man,” whose home is an overcoat, is apparent behind the character of Okudzhava’s prose. A peculiar result of the author’s reflections on the war is the rejection of the epic tradition of the classics. Instead, the schoolboy inherits the old spoon of the “eternal soldier” Shongin, becoming a part of his destiny, so commonplace in its tragic nature. The most important role in the representation of the battle theme is played by the cultural centrism paradigm, which helps to include the traumatic, horrible experience of war in the memory and post-memory space.