Dionysian Сode in the image of the main character in the B.K. Zaytsev’s novel «Golden Pattern»: on the Problem of Literary Anthropology

The paper investigates the philosophical and aesthetic foundations of the image of the main character in the novel «Golden Pattern» by B. K. Zaytsev (1926). They make it possible to analyze the peculiarities of the author’s ideological evolution and creative self-determination in the period of his emigration. In spite of the writer’s conscious tendency to Christianity in the 1920s («Reverend Sergey Radonezhsky», 1926; «Athos. Travel essay», 1928) the images of the central characters of the novel «Golden Pattern» are projected on the images of ancient pagan gods and created based on topical philosophical doctrines of the turn of the 20 century. The allusive background of the heroine’s character in the novel shows the relation to Nietzsche's concept of Superman. The heroine’s inherent self-determination is not identical with the traditional Christian model of man’s spiritual transformation «from sinner - to the righteous», but it incarnates the idea of a personality’s non-linear progressive development, a harmonious combination of spirit and matter, Dionysian and Apollonian, Christian and Pagan foundations. The Religious paradigm, by and large topical for Zaitsev’s works written during his life in emigration, is not universal in his novel «Golden pattern».

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