Motifs of the beautiful and the ugly in comic plays «Alsim» and «The White Lily, оr a Dream on the Eve of the Feast of the Protection of the Mother of God» by Vladimir Solovyov

In works by Russian philosopher and poet Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900) the categories of the beautiful and the ugly fulfill a world-view function; they have a key position in his philosophical and aesthetic writings. The paper discusses his program plays «Alsim» (Al’sim, 1878) and «The White Lily, Or a Dream on the Eve of the Feast of the Protection of the Mother of God» (Belaya Liliya, ili Son v noch' na Pokrova, 1880). The author reveals a plot-making role of pair motifs of the beautiful and the ugly, explores their variants and correlations (the beauty and the beast, the beautiful and the ugly), and states the evolution of the motifs. Two approaches are applied to study the motifs: structural-semantic and typological. The origin of the motifs and their correlation with West European national tradition is considered. Motifs of the beautiful and the ugly in Solovyov’s comic plays are found to organize the character system and to reveal the artist’s core ideas and metaphors.

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