Mythopoetics of Shukshin’s autobiographic cycle “From the childhood years of Ivan Popov”

The paper describes the autobiographical features of the cycle “From the childhood years of Ivan Popov.” The autobiographical dominant can be traced at different levels: factual (thematic), compositional, stylistic, autopsychological. It is proved that the extension of the cycle in the American edition of V. M. Shukshin’s prose (“Stories from a Siberian Village,” 1996) is illegitimate because the subjects of speaking and the structure of the stories “Letter” and “Solar rings” are different from the stories of the cycle. The study of the mythological subtext of the stories shows the writer’s intuitive support for the archaic sacrificial ritual. The process of storytelling in the cycle is associated with the atonement of childish guilt (dislike for the stepfather, theft, lying, enmity, revenge, etc.). The deep structure of each story and the whole cycle is built on an invariant scheme: the initial “trouble,” “shortage,” conflict to the final is eliminated through the ransom sacrifice. The father, stepfather, one-legged chairman, bull, cow act as a substitute for sacrifice. They all embody the semantics of plant-animal-god. A child’s empathy for the “scapegoat” suffering death, disease, damage of another kind, awakens in the initiated adolescent a mature sense of pity and love for man and animal, a sense of responsibility and participation in the world. In the final story of the cycle, the symbolic victim is the narrator himself. Moral degeneration of the hero takes place, the victory of the new and the future over the old and the past. The circular scheme opens up into a spiral of the emergence of the personality of the authorized hero and the expansion of the world in which he exists.

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