Article

Name: “Where Should We Go?” The Poetics of V. M. Shukshin’s Short Story “Cherednichenko and the Circus”

Authors: Alexander I. Kulyapin

Altai State Pedagogical University, Barnaul, Russian Federation; Russian Christian Academy for Humanities named after Fyodor Dostoevsky, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation

Abstract:

The article examines the features of the poetics of Shukshin’s story “Cherednichenko and the Circus”. The story is saturated to the limit with both open and veiled quotations from texts belonging to a variety of cultural spheres. The main character’s mind whimsically combines the incongruous: popular songs, arias from operas and operet-tas, fairy tales, Russian literary classics of the 19th century and stereotypes of Soviet ideology. Based on book samples, his plan to save the “fallen” circus performer Eva is modeled. In essence, Cherednichenko, like other heroes of Shukshin’s later works, lives not so much in the world of symbols as in the world of simulacra – signs without relation to the referent. In the artistic world of Shukshin, the spatial movements of the hero are almost always correlated with his inner, spiritual quest. Since the word “circus” comes from the Latin “circus” – circle, already in the title of the story the union “and” connects the hero not only with circus art, but also with the symbolism of circular movement: “there and back”. When trying to break out of the cycle of the usual, the Shukshin hero is immediately lost. Cherednichenko got lost, of course, not under the dome of the circus and not in the maze of alleys of the resort town. Disorientation in space is the least of his troubles. Cherednichenko’s whole life is stagnation, with rare attempts to move “at random” when he takes a step forward and takes two steps back.

Keywords: V. M. Shukshin, poetics, context, quotation, symbol, plot, motive

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