Article

Name: TWO NOVELS ABOUT THE FIRST WORLD WAR: «ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT» BY E.M. REMARK AND «HEAVY DIVISION» BY A. LEBEDENKO

Authors: O. E. Pokhalenkov

Smolensk State University, Smolensk, Russian Federation

In the section Literary Life of the Plot

Abstract: The article is devoted to the comparative analysis of the structure of the main characters in the novel «All Quiet On the Western front» (1929) by a classic of the European war prose about the First world war Erich Maria Remarque and the novel by a Russian war writer Alexander Lebedenko «Heavy division» (1932–1933). If Remarque’ books are familiar to the public, not only abroad but in our country too, Lebedenko’s «Heavy division» is less known now, although it is one of the few works about the First world war in the Russian literature (along with the «The Quiet Don» by M. Sholokhov, «The Ordeal» by A. Tolstoy, etc.). The presented comparative analysis is based on the narrative model of «initiation», which is regarded as the basis of war prose. In the course of comparative studies the events that implement the motif-model (e.g., death, comparig past and present, front-line friendship, social adaptation, etc.) are identified at the appropriate stages of the «initiation» of the literary hero. It is based on the traditional (three-part) scenario of initiation whereby the initiated is removed from the people, endured to the deathtrasformation, and then reborn as a different person. It was found that if the medieval epics were characterized by the transformation of a participant of the war in the image of the literary hero (for example, in Spanish and French poems), in the works by E. M. Remarque and A. Lebedenko, the motif of rebirth in the core of the model is replaced by a motif of frustration in what is happening around (which is one of the starting points to the beginning of the literature of «the lost generation»). In addition, the motif of a symbolic death, which was originally in the core of the model, does not change its position. Thus it acquires a special plot-function as it cannot be more (because of the change of the functions) associated with the rebirth of the literay hero's image, and is implemented together with the motif of meeting with the enemy. The stages of initiation are also changed in the development of the war prose. The initial stages (removal of people, symbolic death, rebirth) are transformed in the stages of growing up, frontline everyday life and rebirth. The result of the analysis is a kind of invariant of the plot-model, which is repeated in each of the texts under consideration and exists, thus, in each of the national literatures, indicating a certain sketchiness, which is dictated by a literary tradition.

Keywords: e. m. remarque, a. lebedenko, comparative literature, motif, event, story, plot, the image of the hero

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