LONG STORY «VIY» BY N. V. GOGOL IN THE RUSSIAN LITERATURE
OF 20TH CENTURY: MOTIVE OF DEVIL’S INTRUSION IN THE PLAY
«PANNOCHKA» BY N. N. SADUR AND IN THE STORY «HOSPITAL»
BY M. YU. ELIZAROV

Classical literature of the 19th and the 20th centuries is perceived in two ways in contemporary
Russian literature. First, it is seen in the aspect of ironic game intertextual postmodern poetics.
Second, it is understood as a part of the «tradition-novelty» issue. Based upon these principles,
N. Sadur’s play «Pannochka» and M. Elizarov’s short story «Hospital» make use of Gogol’s
motifs from the long story «Viy» to build their plots. Analyzing the motif of devil’s intrusion
in the texts of Sadur and Elizarov gives us grounds to state that each author has his/her own idiosyncratic
literary style as well as helps to define the key tendencies of the literary process
in the1990-s.
In N. Sadur’s play, the main Gogol’s character is absent. The demonic element is embodied
here by the image of Pannochka, who emphasizes the author's concept of a person as of a container
of infernal and divine at the same time. N. Sadur, not using the image of Viy in the play, naturally
changes the emphasis of Gogol’s plot. It was important for Gogol to portray the person’s
impotence in front of the mystically enigmatic forces of evil, but Sadur, on the other hand, makes
Homa Brut the Person who is capable of resisting the infernal world and defeating it spiritually. In
the short story of M. Elizarov, «Viy», on the contrary, is the central character. He is personified
by the image of the sadistic soldier Prishchepin, whose appearance in a military hospital turns into
a «small» apocalypse. «Viy» Prishchepin turns the hospital, the «topos» of Christian salvation and
mercy, into hell.
Apart from the traditional symbolism of the demonic motive as extremely ugly, contemporary
Russian authors also realize the ambivalent content of this motif, which is inherent in N. Gogol’s
poetics. The ambivalence of Pannochka image in N. Sadur’s play is created by the motif of metamorphosis:
first, Pannochka turns into an old disgusting witch, and then she turns into a child
who wants to be pitied. The image of Elizarov’s Prishchepin is also ambivalent. Despite a negative
attitude towards the sadistic soldier, the narrator, as if against his will, is delighted by
Prishchepin’s ability to expose falsity.
While the traditional, tragically absurd semantics of the demonic element in N. Sadur’s and
M. Elizarov’s works express the global sociocultural crisis at the turn of the 21st century, the
ambivalent content of the demonic motif means that the writers belong to the postmodernist literary
aesthetics with its relativity of values.