Biblical symbolism in the novel “The wanderers” by V. Y. Shishkov

The article presents the experience of reinterpretation of the novel of V. Y. Shishkov as the phenomenon of “spiritual realism”, from the point of view of identifying the role and functions of biblical symbolism and imagery in its artistic system. Biblical symbolism pervades the narration, manifesting itself both at the level of the semantics of names and imagery, and in a three-part compositional structure of the novel that conveys the author’s idea - the movement of the characters from the darkness of the underworld to the light. Life of the homeless children is depicted by the author as the “dark world”, “antiworld”, which disfigures all the concepts ontologically important for Man. The idea of spiritual commonality is replaced by the thieves brotherhood, the life of street children under the inverted barge turns into a hideous parody of monastic life, the place of the Virgin in this world is given to a prostitute girl Mashka nicknamed May Flower. In the plot of the story the motifs of the Apocalypse (destruction of the old world) and of the prodigal son in the heroes’ life stories who undergo transformations take place in parallel. The interpretation of biblical symbols, which saturated Shishkov’s novel “The Wanderers” brings new connotations, still unrevealed in literature studies, that reside in the content of this work.