The Fool’s Initiation in Leo Tolstoy’s “A Landlord’s Morning”

The article deals with the plot-forming functions of the mythologem “Fool” in the short story “A Landlord’s Morning” by Leo Tolstoy. The structure of the image of Dmitry Nekhlyudov, the protagonist of the story, is heterogeneous and organized by the semantic field of mutual reflections of several personality models. The dominant among them is the archetype of the Fool (one of the popular characters in a folk tale), which is presented in opposition to the archetypal models of the Prince/Saviour. The genius-stupidity opposition, which is key for the folklore Fool, is repeatedly shown both in verbal-textual definitions, and in the plot-semantic contexts of the work as a whole. The study of the paradigm of Nekhlyudov’s image also reveals significant parallels with traditional fairytale motifs and plot situations: the search for happiness, trials and subsequent transformation, the mythologem of the Path. The central plot event of the story is the hero’s initiation through the situation of ridiculing the Fool, when Nekhlyudov, who is trying to realize himself in the mission of the “Savior of the peasants”, finds himself in the role of a Fool/Jester. The hero’s logic and the logic of the peasants collide in an ironic mismatch; peasants, who see the comic absurdity of the situation, demonstratively theatricalize their behavior. The frankly carnivalized culmination of Nekhlyudov’s travel-initiation is the meeting with Yukhvanka the Wise, whose nickname becomes symbolic because it indicates the central role of the Wise Man in the initiation of the Fool through the ironic removal of his alogisms and “stupidities”. The research leads to the conclusion that, in contrast to the folklore tradition, the hero’s initiation in “A Landlord’s Morning” is presented ambivalently in relation to its ending. Despite the fact that in Nekhlyudov’s personal self-determination in the finale new perspectives, indicated by the archetypal models of Ivan the Peasant’s Son/Bogatyr and Artist/Poet, are opened, the fate of the hero turns out to be unfinished. Nekhlyudov, on the one hand, went through one of the stages of his formation; on the other, he only reached the threshold of transformation opening up the possibility of a full-fledged “transmutation” of the Fool into the Wise Man. The chronotope of the road/path/flight performs the function of a sign in the open finale of the work: it is not only Nekhlyudov’s oneiric illusion, but concurrently a real inner state that opens the hero’s consciousness to the sense of the infinity of existence and its possibilities. Starting with attempts to a blind self-assertion in the role of the Prince/Saviour and turning out to be a Fool as a result, the hero completes the travel-initiation with a dialogical questioning of the world and himself; he is left in the situation of the choice of his path and new related trials.

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