Transformation of the Traditions of the Medieval Mystery Play in Vladimir Solovyov's The White Lily

The article analyses the transformation of the traditions of the medieval mystery play in the play The White Lily by Vladimir Solovyov. The analysis of the text confirms that Solovyov presented the mystery component of the work in accordance with the tradition of the Russian liturgical mystery ("Christmas Drama" by Dmitry Rostovsky, etc.), quite seriously, without parodying, taking into account the catharsic possibilities of the genre, despite its designation as a "mystery-joke". The buffoon (comic) part of the play goes back to the poetics of the late West European mystery (the French The Mystery of Saint Martin with The Farce of The Miller Whose Soul The Devil Carries To Hell, etc.). Traditions of the medieval mystery play are seen in The White Lily at the level of the plot, the organization of the figurative system, key motifs, composition, language, and artistic techniques. In the original version of The White Lily, the characters' existence was considered through the prism of the struggle for their souls between the dark and light forces, which was a plot-forming feature for the mystery play as a genre. In the final form, the idea, the system of characters and individual turns of action were determined by the "love" line, but, even after the completion, the mysterious layer associated with the theme of the transforming influence of higher forces on the sinful person remained significant. Plots in the medieval mystery play had a static character, and a mirror-type composition: similar situations yet contrasted in content were depicted. Solovyov's play is also written by the same principles. The key motifs of the work are those of the spiritualization and salvation of man by love, the transformation of the world, the transition from the realm of everyday reality to the world of true values and vice versa, a call from another world. These motifs, characteristic of the liturgical mystery, largely determined the figurative system, the composition of the work and its poetics. The poetics of the mystery play was based on the belief that no single phenomenon of the world exists in isolation, but always in opposition to other phenomena and to oneself. The structure of the universe was projected on the essence of man. Solovyov always emphasized the unity of the earthly and the heavenly, the beautiful and the ugly, the deeply spiritual and the insignificant, the moral and the immoral in the world and in the human character. The characters of the medieval spiritual drama were conventional figures, bearers of a certain idea, which can also be said about the characters in Solovyov's play. At the linguistic level, the medieval mystery play, including the Russian one, was characterized by comic multilingualism. The speech of Solovyov's characters also combines "high" and "low" language. It is unpredictable, illogical, abounding with puns based on polysemy, homonymy or phonetic similarity of words. This reflects the "nonsense" and "grotesqueness" of consciousness and is a way to characterize the characters. In general, we can say that The White Lily largely reflects the specific features of the medieval mystery play. At the same time, Solovyov's ideological and creative features were determined by the aesthetic and literary principles of the epoch, by the author's philosophical and literary views, by the desire to combine the high meaning of the Russian liturgical mystery play with the poetics of the late Western European examples of this genre.

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