The “Plyushkin Plot” in Olga Slavnikova's A Dragonfly Enlarged to the Size of a Dog

The article deals with the role of the “Plyushkin plot” in the novel A Dragonfly Enlarged to the Size of a Dog (1997) by the modern author Olga Slavnikova. This plot allows Slavnikova to update the principles of Gogol's poetics in her novel in order to depict a materialized person. This logic of continuity between the classic and the modern author determines their convergence in the complex of anthropological and ontological problems. These problems are focused on determining the boundaries of the human in the world and are comprehended in the oppositions of the living and the dead, the ideal and the material, the mortal and the immortal, the created and the divine. Following Gogol, Slavnikova actively uses the categories of corporeality and spatiality, which metaphorically reflect the relationship of man and the world. In the spatial organization of the plots of the main characters in the novel, Gogol's principle of portraying the gap between body and soul, which defines the identification of “human corporeality” with “soulless materiality”, is presented. The mortal semantics of “domestic corporeality” in Slavnikova's novel draws the image of a dead place of human existence in the plane of earthly life. In this context, on the one hand, there is a violation of the ontologically obvious hierarchy between the natural (living) and the nonnatural (dead). On the other hand, the dead end of turning the body into a thing (when a person seeks to overcome the finiteness and imperfection of the living (natural)) is exposed. Plyushkinism as a type of an unbalanced attitude to things, to their place and role in human life is inherent in all the characters of the novel. In her novel, Slavnikova reveals not only the doom of a person who rushes to things in search of immortality but also the doom of a thing, which, having lost its symbolic meaning, only has a material status in this situation. The antithesis of living and dead things in the novel is associated with the space-time images connected with the representation of things: an orderly collection of things (a still-life) and a disorderly pile-up (a bunch). The microplot of “collecting things” associated with the gene of Plyushkinism exposes people's never-realized ambitions in ordering the material world; people only create chaos by gathering heaps of trash around them. It is through this micro-plot that the complex nature of the relationship between the material, bodily, spiritual, and the humanly personal in human nature is expressed. In general, Slavnikova retains the bidirectionality of the “Plyushkin plot”, on the one hand, interpreting the thing as a starting point for the meaning of human existence, on the other hand, viewing a person as the one who brings meaning to the existence of a thing, who acts as a mediator between the physical and metaphysical dimensions and fulfills the creator's plan.

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