Transformation of Dante's images and plot in Nikolai Otsup's novel Beatrice in Hell

The article explores the transformation of the images and plot of Dante's Divine Comed (and, partially, of La Vita Nuova) in Nikolai Otsup's novel Beatrice in Hell (1939). The aim of the article is to identify the concept of man and the world, which in Otsup's novel is built in a dialogue-polemic with Dante. It is shown that in his Dante myth Otsup combines the Symbolist and Acmeist myths about Dante and his fiction (reception of reception). The transformation of Dante's model of the world order in Otsup's novel is revealed: the earthly reality, embodied in the image of the "worldwide Montparnasse", as hell and theater; purgatory as self-reflection and internal lynching, the unattainability of metaphysical paradise. The source of the novel's plot is specified: not only N. Gumilyov's Beatrice cycle, but also C. Baudelaire's poem "La Beatrice". The plot of Dante's Divine Comedy is inverted in Otsup's novel: it is not Dante who ascends through the circles of Hell and Purgatory to paradise, but the modern Beatrice who is in hell, trying to lead a Russian emigre artist (Rtishchev) to a "new life". Otsup's image of Beatrice is Acmeistically demythologized: Jenny Leslie is an earthly woman living in reality, not an embodiment, but "reflection" of the Eternal Feminine. She is unable to save the characters from the Montparnasse "hell" and shirks her role as Beatrice. The image of Dante is split in the male characters of the novel. Bobrov is more of a Virgil, Beatrice's assistant, deprived of internal development. The artist Rtishchev in the novel goes from Don Juan to a new Dante, who remains faithful to high feelings and approaches Christian consciousness, but his suicide, despite Jenny's love and sacrifice, shows that this is rather a false Dante. Boretsky is brought closer to the Italian poet by writing a novel Montparnasse about modern hell and his desire to correct the world, although he is not a bearer of a message, like Dante, but a seeker of knowledge in "hell", at the "bottom" of life. Boretsky's story is interpreted as the new Beatrice's failure to recognize the true Dante. In the author's opinion, he is saved only physically, not spiritually, but Otsup leaves him involved in the Montparnasse "hell" and failing to finish the novel. In general, Beatrice in Hell is interpreted as a compilation of Dante's myths of the Silver Age: Otsup's contribution lies in the transformation of the plot of the Comedy in narrative prose, in the allusive imposition of Dante's symbolic images on the collisions of the existence of Russian emigrants in the 1930s. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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