Why did Vladimir Gurkin write no tragicomedies?

Plays by V. Gurkin in this article are examined in their integrity that expresses the way the author understood the world. The basis for the research is the lyric portrait of the main character. The conflict of Gurkin's text is the testing of love's force and authenticity, and the system of values that represents naive in action. Naive of the dramatist is expression of his religious consciousness that strives to save the world by force of love and compassion. The depth of compassion and the devotion to life make the author choose and shuffle between desperation and laugh, which, in specific moments, leads to a synthesis similar to the tragic farce. But the creative model of tragicomedy, relativistic in its basis, is organically opposite to the Christian consciousness of V. Gurkin. The tragicomedy embodies the model of creative relativism in its exploratory orientation, in the axiological position of the author and in modern anthropology: "everything here is relative, everything is good and bad at the same time" (T. Shabalina), and characters lack both will and integrity ("comedies" by A. Chekhov, "Provincial Anecdotes" by A. Vampilov, the theatre of the absurd). Creative and spiritual orientations of "modern people's theatre", the creator of which is V. Gurkin (at least according to L. Petrushevskaya), are opposite to each other. This theatre does not allow its character to be spiritually defeated, because this character embodies the ideal basis of existence. People's theatre is not a genre. It is a socio-cultural mission of protecting the ideal and life, and this mission requires the author to limit himself in self-expression. A classic example is "naive" people's films by V. Shukshin which differ from his writings. Laugh in this cinema is a proof of the character's vitality. People's theater of V. Gurkin presents both eccentric comedies (Love and Pigeons, The Near Baikal Quadrille) and plays with a tragic content. The dramatist includes tragicomic episodes in the tissue of life, allows his character to fall both literally and metaphorically, mixes farces with a terrible content. But culminations of plays move events to the space of religious mysticism (Crying in Fistful) or epic catharsis (Sanya, Vanya, andRhimas with Them). Ideal characters participate in those plays being full of persuasion. High naive is a measured artistic choice of the dramatist who himself confessed in "building his own Paradise". Naive is not against tragedy, but it is against tragic hopelessness. Not denial but avoiding of tragicomedy by people's drama looks like a consistent pattern, which is proved by works of V. Gurkin. His plays cannot be rebuked for the ignorance of the truth of life. Moreover, founding on autobiographical material is critically important for them. In art, truth is the person who convinces by his artistic will. The choice of the tragicomedy and its special modus (which makes accents on the terrible and the funny), the level of the intensity of colors -all of these things are not only the truth of life, but also the projection of the author's "I". V. Gurkin had the gift of a tragicomically writing dramatist, but he did not accept skepticism, estranged absurd, venomous irony and beauty doomed to be down-imaged. High naive is devoted to protect Life, it is rigid in standing for the undefeatable nature of the organic ideal without which life has no sense. High naive proves that sacral things belong to this world.

Keywords

Authors

References