The travesty of the Messianic plot in U. Karatkievich's Christ Has Landed in Grodno and V. Sharov's Rehearsals

The author examines V. Sharov's Rehearsals (1992) and U. Karatkievich's Christ Has Landed in Grodno (1966), two novels by a Russian and Belarusian writers, in the aspect of the use of the plot of the Second Coming of Christ. The problem of the writers' perception of the sacred story through travesty, with not only the "lowering", the checking of the "high", but also analyzing the "low" reality, is considered. The functioning of the plot in the poetics of the novels helps to see the attitude of the writers to their own national history, personalities in history and present historical models relevant to each writer. In Karatkievich's novel, the main character Yuras Bratchik, who accidentally played the role of Christ in a performance of a traveling troupe, is the protagonist of two projects, two performances: the social project of the supreme power and the revolutionary project of the people, in which Bratchik-Christ plays the role of the Savior who punishes for sins and gratifies for suffering. Putting on someone else's clothes, trying on the fate of Christ, Yuras Bratchik becomes a different person, discovering a willingness to suffer passions for the benefit of the people. Thus the character approaches the sacred-ness of Christ. From the point of view of the author's consciousness, Yuras Bratchik is the epitome of the New Age man, of a Renaissance man. The main character responds to the humanistic principles of the Renaissance man by nature, as the image and likeness of God, free in his choice, in choosing faith, fate and actions. U. Karatkievich, an active supporter of the development of national Belarusian culture, close to the "men of the sixties" in the promotion of the free and creative person that links personal ideals and the common good. Karatkievich's historiosophy is in the perception of Belarusian national history and culture as a progressive process in finding its own identity. In V. Sharov's Rehearsals, the mystery about Christ becomes a metahistorical act (a project of the supreme power headed by Patriarch Nikon in reforming Russian life) and an existentially meaningful choice between the good and the evil (sin) for each individual participating in the rehearsals. This understanding of the Messianic story identifies the main problem of the novel, the author's historiosophy conception. The variant of Russian history Sharov shows refers to the idea of impatience in relation to the existing reality, and commitment to change everything at once creates absurd and phantasmagorical models of history. In the end, the real history demonstrates national impatience and violence, which leads to endless repetitions and dead ends. In the novel one can see the author's warning about the repetition of dead ends of historic aspirations of the nation.

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