Comprehension of national cultural myths in Vadim Levanov’s works

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of searching for personal identity in Vadim Levanov’s dramatic works. Having set this goal, the playwright takes his characters through situations built on social, historical and literary myths, which gives him the opportunity to closely approach the definition of personal identity through a kind of the national myth understanding. The article proposes to trace the formation of the national myth ideas, based on the analysis of Levanov’s dramatic works. This is reflected in the ontological opposition of good and evil in the dramatic diptych “The Life of St. Blessed Xenia of St. Petersburg” and “The Most Possible Authentic and Plausible Biography of the Bloody Lady (Krovavaya Barynya) Daria Saltykova, a Moscow Noble Woman”. The stories about two real women, who became part of national mythology, served for the author of the diptych as the basis for thinking about the nature of good and evil, about the rights and responsibilities of a person to make an informed choice between these poles. From specific, seemingly very local, purely Russian stories, Levanov goes to the universal, non-national phenomena. In the paradoxical interpretation of the well-known historical events in the play “Foundation,” the author sees a kind of the Russian code. In the play “The Slavic Bazaar,” the postmodern projection of the cultural myth is seen as an ironic understanding of the way out of crisis situations, found by the Russian intelligentsia. Thus, Vadim Levanov’s plays are a vivid example of how contemporary art works along with contemporary myth-making.