Open Access"Reflectivity" as "Hoffmann complex" structural element in the "Mirrors" short-stories cycle by Zinaida Gippius
Author(s) -
Vera V. Korolyova
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
vestnik kostromskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta imeni n.a. nekrasova
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1998-0817
DOI - 10.34216/1998-0817-2019-25-4-113-119
Subject(s) - opposition (politics) , specularity , symbol (formal) , aesthetics , philosophy , literature , history , art , optics , physics , political science , law , linguistics , politics , specular reflection
The article continues a number of studies on the "Hoffmann’s complex" in the works of Russian symbolist writers. In this paper we consider the principle of specularity as a form of double-world in the cycle of stories "Mirrors" by Zinaida Gippius, through which one can watch an actualisation of other elements of "Hoffmann complex": the problem of mechanisation of life and a man, which manifests itself in the opposition of living – unliving, the images of a double, a doll, a machine, the image of a mirror – a symbol of transition to another world. Based on Hoffmann tradition, Zinaida Gippius reinterprets some images in her own way: people are perceived as deprived of the soul of reflection or puppets ("Mirrors"), the double becomes a friend ("Moon"). The image of the moon is a symbol of an ideal world, the transition to which even through death symbolises the acquisition of freedom of the spirit. A new version of the opposition living – unliving in Zinaida Gippius’s works is the opposition of the culture of Russia and the West.