Топологія Одеси у часових вимірах в романі Максима Мікліна «Прості речі»

Abstract

Maxim Micklin novel „Simple Things” is a part of „Odessa” literature and bears the mark of the author's personality. The purpose of this article is to find the mythological structure of the art world of the novel and show how urban toposes filled with meanings that are constituted by residents in different periods of life in Odessa. Maxim Miсklin’s novel embodies mythological understanding of the world order. The image of Odessa is formed as an integral orderly world, as a space. The city world is considered as different regions of the universe that in its turn is being constituted by the consciousness – and not only material things, but the whole set of the ideal life. The Space of the city not only belongs to the reality around characters in the novel but also serves as is an instrument of ordering the outer world. The heroes of the novel walk into the catacombs three times and losing a landmark under ground, each time miraculously find themselves in a different time period: this is the WWII, the beginning of the 60s and 1916 year. They get out of the ground, get to know the city streets, but feel different semantic content of these toposes when the some time events form the historical and cultural space, filling it with different meanings. A variety of meanings can meet, talk, fight or do not recognize each other on the territory of one of the place. The novel reproduces a syncretic universal mythological structure of cosmos, where the space’s vertical layers contain the signs of time, and the time-space always incorporates the order of the human destiny. In the city, which is usually organized as a heterogeneous structure, each of the levels and neighborhoods has its semantics and performs a specific function within the system of the whole. Thus, the Opera House’s roof becomes the sacred center of the world from where we can comprehend all topos and events in a new way. The catacombs do not only embody the archaic idea of Hades, but also implement the events of the World War II into the art world of the novel. Many toposes in the book perform a communicative function: there are different cafes, pubs, Squares, Port as a place of Max’s work in 1916, and so on. And of course, this is Odessa’s yard as a space where certain order formed and validated characters, many of whom are almost gods, determining by their opinions and influences the meaning of the life for all the neighbors. Maxim Miсklin’s novel disclosed communicative function even of such a topos as a public toilet. Another important topos of Odessa in the novel is the sea It is multifunctional, and the au thor feels its semantic diversity and implements it in the novel. Understanding of the space of Odessa by the characters of the novel becomes a way of implementing the way mythologem. In the novel „Simple Things”, a real and a fictional worlds live according to the laws of the traditional carnival atmosphere, in which every event and character can not only acquire a new play, but also be perceived as a celebration of life, which carries the death and rebirth, when the beauty of the space order suddenly opens the horror of the primordial chaos.