The poetics of Nina Sadur's play Chudnaya baba: mystic and mythological motifs and images

Nina Sadur's drama as a unique phenomenon of modern literature is characterized by its holistic aesthetics, philosophy and distinctive artistic language. Her works organically combine trivial everyday reality with the otherworldly and transcendent otherness. The writer turned to folk pagan mysticism in order to reveal the world-view of a modern person experiencing inner anxiety of the inconceivable chaos of life. Mythological motifs and images shown in the texts of Sadur's plays with their inherent ambivalence are used not to expose the innermost of the national consciousness, but to embody the author's post-modern message. Two parts of an early play Chudnaya baba ("The Weird Peasant Woman") are united by the plot logic as well as compositional experimental model subordinated to the issue of the world authenticity testing. Two different chronotopes, two opposite minds clash to reveal the controversy principle: pro et contra. The search for an answer to the question of life essence is not based on the behavior of characters deprived of their personal qualities and representing author's mannequins, but on the original play of concepts of life / death, rationality / transcendence. Sadur tries to provide the audience with an intuitive and ecstatic experience of the cognition of the world that lost its authenticity: the first part shows the life illusiveness on the archaic consciousness level, while the second part exposes reality's simula-tivity through the crisis of the rationalistic and pragmatic mind of a modern person who faces the transcendent. The circular composition emphasizes the tragic finale revealing the possible outcome duality: on the one hand, most characters are able neither to overcome the identity crisis, nor to break out from the ghostly existence; on the other hand, the cost of a possible breakthrough is an escape into madness followed by the death of the protagonist Lydia Petrovna, the very "chudnaya baba". Some contemporary critics allege the use of mysticism to be directed to operate the ordinary spectator's subconscious anxiety, but the author's aim is rather an expression of her world perception since the author is endowed with a mystical vision, extremely sensitive to manifestations of the Good and the Evil in the world, and she is acutely aware of the modern person's alienation tragedy. Nina Sadur's early play shows the formation of her mythopoetics peculiarities, which are typical for the writer's further works.

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