Archetypical Image of the Old Man in Buryat Literature of the 20th Century

In: Žurnal Sibirskogo Federal'nogo Universiteta: Journal of Siberian Federal University. Gumanitarnye nauki = Humanities & social sciences, S. 1995-2011

Abstract

The article reviews the archetypical nature of the image of the Old Man in Buryat literature, which originates from the character of Buryat-Mongol myths, the White Elder (Sagaan Ubgen). The article aims to reveal the typological properties of the archetype of the Old Man in a key genre for national literature, a novel, involving also dramatic and lyrical epic works. This goal necessitates involving a comparative typological analysis, as well as mythopoetic and comparative-genetic methods used in the study of traditional culture. Their use in literary criticism is important and relevant since the authors try to explain the strengthening of the universal interpretation of man in the art of the 20th century, and the desire of writers to outline ways out of the acute crisis relations between man and the world, man and nature. Earlier in the texts of national culture the socially determined explanation of these relations was sought; but at the present time another interpretation is getting up to date, precisely an interpretation based on the writers' appeal to the deep layers of mythological thinking, their reliance on universally existent, ontological causes of the crisis phenomena. The analysis of the "sacred / profane" dichotomy which is peculiar to mythological thinking showed that this hero of Buryat literature is committed to search for ancestral memory as for truth; he considers serving his kinship the essence of human existence. The presence of an axiological aspect leads to the universal ontological values inherent in the archetype of the Old Man. The leading method of analysis was comparative-typological, aimed at establishing typological patterns in the field of representation of archetypes in the literature and ensuring specificity in the results obtained. The usage of this method made it possible to distinguish such typological features and properties of the Old Man's archetype as ambivalence, poetry and ontology of binary oppositions, craving for a miraculous outcome. It is concluded that these archetypal properties impart the analyzed images the symbolic meaning of eternal rebirth, the cyclicity of life and its harmonious order