SHUKSHIN, GOGOL, AND OTHERS: FROM THE COMMENTARY ON THE SHORT STORY ‘STUCK IN THE MUD [‘ZABUKSOVAL’]
https://doi.org/10.31425/0042-8795-2018-1-180-208
Abstract
The article deals with Shukshin’s most literary-centric short story, Stuck in the Mud [Zabuksoval]. The story reveals a number of intertextual parallels and offers interpretational commentary for some of its literary realia. A popular object of multiple and ever-increasing interpretation attempts, this story is not only marked by intertextuality (Shukshin’s most obvious technique here: quoting another text in his story enables him to utilize a wide range of philological tools), but is also significant in that the question it raises, and which sent the story’s protagonist ‘skidding’, remains the core issue widely debated by Russian intellectuals. Shukshin launches the discussion into the meta-textual level, with the main character engaging in a dialogue with practically the entirety of Russian classical literature. Such perception emphasizes the principal structural and semantic complexes of Russian literature: the themes of cards and card games, the motifs of insanity, ‘blood-soaked food’, rhetorical questions posed by the hero, etc. As a result, the text is treated as a complex expression of the author’ perception of reality.
About the Author
P. GlushakovRussian Federation
Pavel Sergeevich Glushakov, PhD. Academic interests include Russian émigré literature and the school of ‘traditionalists’, in particular, V. Shukshin.
Author of Modern Russian Poetry: 1970s-1980s [Sovremennaya russkaya poeziya: 1970-80e gg.] (2001), Essays on the Works of V. M. Shukshin and N. M. Rubtsov: Classical Tradition and Poetics [Ocherki tvorchestva V. M. Shukshina i N. M. Rubtsova: klassicheskaya traditsiya i poetika] (2009), as well as several papers published in the Russian and foreign journals. Based in Riga.
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Review
For citations:
Glushakov P. SHUKSHIN, GOGOL, AND OTHERS: FROM THE COMMENTARY ON THE SHORT STORY ‘STUCK IN THE MUD [‘ZABUKSOVAL’]. Voprosy literatury. 2018;(1):180-208. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.31425/0042-8795-2018-1-180-208
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