Orphic code and its roles in the metaplots of Post-Symbolist narratives

The paper deals with the Orphic code of Russian Post-Symbolist prose, discussing the meta-poetical context of the immortal head motif and the plot situations of “a poet’s sacrifice” or “a poet in the underworld.” The Orphic code is viewed as correlating with an author’s reflection of the interplay between the epic and the poetical in a work of prose. In Konstantin Vaginov’s novel The Goat Song, Orphic motifs punctuate the clash between the two narrative instances - the protagonist (a poet) and the narrator. Orpheus, finding himself in the new Soviet world, loses his abilities to change the world with his art, to descend into the underworld, and to charm its goddess. The motif of a failed rescue of Eurydice (i.e., the art) becomes prominent. In Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, with the narrator and the lyrical persona having a dialogical relationship, the “Orphic code” provides an essential layer of the novel’s “intertextual palimpsest” (the Silver Age references) and becomes a way of reflecting on the unity of the epic and the lyrical. In Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales, the metaphor of the underworld becomes dominant, and the Orphic code serves as s a minus-priem, a semantic field that needs to be disavowed. A conclusion is made that the Orphic meta-plot typically involves a clash between the perspectives of an artist protagonist and a narrator, reflected both in the diegetic world (the “dying poet” motif) and in the narrative structure (the hybrid nature of the voices of both narrator and the protagonist).

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