From Mirgorod to Rome: "ontological support" of TarasBulba" by N.V Gogol. Experience of interpretation of Gogol's "local text" in the paradigm of the semantics of the four elements

Fire is mentioned about 200 times in the story Taras Bulba. When Andriy contemplates the panorama of conflagrations, the eschatological motives of the Apocalypse enter the text. The image of burning trees is actualized as the symbol of peace connected to the folklore-mythological model of the World Tree. The elements of nature are organically included into the universe of Gogol's historiosophical conception. Chiaroscuro sketches play a large role in the narration: thus, the grand celebration in a Catholic temple is opposed to the wretched Zaporizhian Sich church. In either case it is a question of the true faith; however, for Andriy, the sunbeam lighting the temple is the sign of joining the true faith. The latter is connected with art as a part of the world that the Cossacks destroy. However, art does not become a simulacrum because of this; on the contrary, when ennobling the strong and heroic characters of the Cossacks, Gogol does not deny the right to exist for the achievements of human spirit. Special emphasis is laid on the earth element; it is mentioned about 110 times in the "Mirgorod" version of Taras Bulba and about 200 times in the "Roman" version. At the very beginning of the story, Taras proclaims, "A clear field and a good horse, that's the kind of petting for you!" In his house, "Everything was cleanly smeared with coloured clay." This lexical parallelism represents an essential trait of the character; his house seems to be immersed into the nature of the Cossacks' life. This life is inseparable from rooting in the home ground that is deprived of the status of existential ontology incarnation and associated with the Cossacks' nature, freedom-loving to anarchism; so it gets some chthonic connotations and it is notable for its wild beauty. This combination of the natural and eschatological sources determines the pathos of the Cossacks' image as a universal but doomed phenomenon. Earth, as a chthonic element, determines the doom of death of the characters who are its creations. At the same time, the connection of earth existence with the air element is a result of a fact that death is interpreted as a transfer from one image to an other rather than the end. In view of this fact, it is possible to say that air (over 60 mentions in the first edition, over 90 in the second) is realized in the concepts such as "spirit", "flight", and "sky" in most cases. An important symbolization of elements takes shape in Gogol's historiosophy: earth and sky, ground and air. Water, mentioned over 110 times in different shapes in the first edition and almost 180 times in the second edition, appears in the description of the Ukrainian steppe making it similar to the endless ocean. The water element together with the earth element becomes the incarnation of the Cossack phenomenon itself, its rooting in the world of the elements. Yet, unlike the natural space whose symbol is the endless ocean, the Cossack society, so closed, even dull and unable to develop, is mostly presented with the sea metaphor, whose leading connotations are the static character and limitedness by the coast.

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