The museum locus in Yury Dombrovsky's novels "The keeper of antiquities" AND "The faculty of useless knowledge"

The article explores the semantics of the museum in the artistic world of novels "The Keeper of Antiquities" (1964) and "The Faculty of Useless Knowledge" (1975). The history of the museum as a social institution is discussed in order to demonstrate changes in the semantics of the museum in cultural history. Several vectors of the semantics are suggested: 1) the Institute of the official (or oppositional) approval of the world model; 2) a place of resurrection (mythologizing) of the past; 3) the system of thing-sign for the interpretation of the past for existential self-determination (this type is the characteristic of Dombrovsky's novels). On the one hand, the museum is shown as a cultural locus; on the other hand, it is an element of poetics of the piece of fiction: scenery (area of characters), story chronotope, the author's image metaphor). The traditional meaning of a museum as the sphere of saving high spiritual culture is shown (unlike the semantics of a museum as an apotheosis of simulacra in postmodern prose). However, Dombrovsky's interpretation of the museum has a special - existential - emphasis: the museum is not a text imposed on the individual, but a space for a human existential self-determination conceived through the artifacts of the past culture. The article shows different functions of the image of the museum in two novels written at different times, which manifests the change in the author's concept of an individual's self-determination in society. In the first novel, the specific problems of the museum are unfolded; the museum shows social circumstances and, at the same time, the main character accepts it as a spiritual niche where one can hide from the government (the chronotope function of the museum). In the second novel, the story unfolds in the chronotope of prison, and museum space is presented as a spiritual landmark giving the criteria of behavior in the situations of non-freedom and challenge. The novel outlines an alternative to the storage of antiquities in the museum, first of all, an art museum. The importance of the images of artists (Khludov and Kalmykov) in the novels is revealed. For Dombrovsky, the museum is a space of the personal orientation of an individual in being and in the present, a hermeneutic existential space.

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