The image-heterotopia of the ocean in Leonid Leonov’s prose («The road to the Ocean»)

The paper considers the image paradigm of the ocean, the internal organization of the space of the philosophical novel «The road to the Ocean» by L. M. Leonov. The definition of the concept «heteretopiya» on the basis of M. Foucault's formulations is given. The symbolical sense of the oceanic figurativeness of Leonov, the semantics of the images making an «oceanic» projection of artistic and philosophical thought of the writer is shown. The author of the paper characterizes an image-heterotopia of the ocean, being guided by the concepts of space taken from O. P. Florensky, M. Bakhtin, from the national and Christian tradition and from the Russian classics. Such properties of Leonov’s image of the ocean as heterogeneity and a heterophony come to light. On the basis of intratextual and contextual approaches to the analysis of the novel a conclusion is made about a close connection of an image of the Ocean with the art ontology of Leonov, with the main ideas of his philosophy of space-time, and the picture of the world of the writer. Allocating the image-heterotopia of the ocean with additional meanings, Leonov, in the view of the author of the paper, creates a figurative and symbolic cartography of Russia. The image of the Ocean is harmoniously built into Leonov’s configuration of the Russian continent, becoming one of the most important points of a convergence of the author's consciousness with reality.

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