Portraiture and costume of the characters in Oleša’s envy

Abstract

The simplest mode of characterization is by naming and giving a description of the outer semblance of a character. If the name is conceived of as the signifier of the character/sign, then the description of the outer semblance is part of the denotated. On the level of this denotated one distinguishes between the portrait (the description of the physical entity) and the costume of the character. Through an analysis of these elements of characterization in Oleša’s novel Envy we have come to the following conclusions: As far as the plot is concerned, Oleša’s characters renew the archetypal mythic characters of the czar (A. Babičev), and the characters that stand in oppostion to him - the mythical slave/»šut«/»jurodivyj« (N. Kavaljerov) and the »Šut/«-ian czar (I. Babičev). At the same time, these two characters (the mythic »Šut«-ian czar is merely a variant of the s\ave/»šut«/»jurodivyj« character) function in the novel as »comic doubles«, characters frequent in Russian medieval literature and present in Gogol’s work. Because the world of Oleša’s novel is an »upturned« world (Pančenko), Oleša’s mythic czar A. Babičev is in reality only a grotesque cntrail (Bakhtin), while the *šut«-ian czar stands at the top of the axiological ladder. The novel affirms the mythic character of the cultural hero/trickster who divides into a cultural hero and his daemonic comic negative variant only with the rise of ethical dualism within religion, or with the differentiation of the heroic and the comic within poetics. The analogy with Chaplin’s Charlie confirms the fact that the ambivalent, heroic-comic character is characteristic not only of Soviet literature of the 20ies but is typical for twentieth century European (world) art.