Semantics of the initiation plot in short stories by Yu. Felzen

The paper examines the plot of initiation in the stories of the young émigré writer Yu. Felzen as a continuation of the story of the hero of his novel trilogy. In the short stories of the late 1930s, the initiation of the hero-emigrant that was reduced in the novels is found to be associated with a situation of death, provoking his personal and literary development. The plot of the story “The changes” allows correlating it with the archetypal plot of initiation: the hero, having survived a severe illness, surgery, and the departure of his beloved, seems to be moving towards gaining new consciousness, towards writing. However, considering the stories following “The changes” allows revealing the reduction of the hero’s initial transformation. The plot of the story “The repetition of the past” shows how “changes” turn out to be a “repetition” of past life situations for the hero, and he evades the existential existence. The stories “The composition” and “The figuration” confirm the conclusion about the failed initiation of the hero. The work of Russian emigrants as extras on the set of the film “The figuration” is the author’s metaphor for the fate of the Russian emigration. The author’s concept of “the repetition of the past” is the repetition of life situations in reality without being able to change anything and follow the geniuses in creative work. According to Felzen, an emigrant is doomed to adapt and repeat in the inauthentic existence of life the situations that happened to him in another culture and at a different age “The composition.” Emigration does not replace a person with another one. Neither does it form his self-sufficiency.

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