The image of the feast as a way of presenting the concept of history in N. Polevoy’s prose

Abstract

   The article analyzes the specifics of N. Polevoy’s theme of the feast in historical prose based on the story “Feast of Svyatoslav Igorevich”. The motif of the feast has already been considered by researchers as a kind of cultural language of the “Golden Age” of Russian poetry, a transitional era when the historical consciousness of Russian society was formed and, at the same time, the rhetorical (“ready”) word was gradually destroyed. In this situation, writers and poets turn to the feast as a plot-forming motif, which makes it possible to convey the situation of “the time of one’s life” and the tragedy of a person’s life on the eve of death. From our point of view, the image of the feast, presented as a real process, taking place in real space, can be interpreted as “a place for unfolding meanings”, actualizing the semantics of the ancient topos of the feast, meaning a ritualized exit into the world of freedom and unpredictability. In the story by N. Polevoy the feast of Svyatoslav and his guests becomes a symbolic image of the unity of peoples, different in “national spirit” (Slavs, Pechenegs and Varangians), around one idea. However, when contextualizing the events shown in the story, the image of the feast as a topos reveals its semantic polyvalence, expresses the romantic concept of the author’s story, whose participant in the events is believed to fail to “guess” their true meaning and his/her place in them. Even prophecy, both magical and poetic, cannot be fully understood by man. The feast as an outlet to sacred knowledge turns out to be only an illusion, demonstrating the limitations of a person’s consciousness.