Ivan Shmeleff’s “The saints of the Solovki”: axiological dimension of the literary chronotope revisited

The article focuses upon value-conditioned features of Ivan Shmeleff’s short-story “The Saints of Solovki” (1948). Built on the interaction of various spatial and temporal realities, the story is a literary representation of the idea of “permeability” of time for eternity, physical space for the metaphysical one. It is demonstrated that the “external” historical chronotope is structured by an array of axiological antitheses: pre-Soviet times are contrasted with the period of the Soviet rule; legitimate labor is opposed to the Solovetsky penal servitude; Russia in its constant-metaphysical essence is an antipode to Switzerland as a metonymic synonym for Europe. The contrast is resolved in the “inner”, suprahistorical chronotope: the tragedy of the desacralized reality of the Solovetsky camp is overcome by the revelation of the sanctified being of the Solovetsky monastery; the timelessness of the Soviet existence - by the eternity of the ideal, indestructible Russia. The focal point where both the “external” and the “internal” chronotopes coincide and blend is the icon of the five patron saints of the Solovetsky monastery: found by the main character of the story, off the road on the ground, broken into two pieces - a symbol of innocent suffering, it nevertheless continues to serve as a visible revelation of the invisible. The literary image of the icon correlates with the category of the Inexpressible and the motif of mystery that explicates the former. In the intricate verbal fabric of the text this motif manifests itself at all language levels - morphologically, lexically, syntactically. The conclusion is drawn that the image of the icon, likened by the narrator to “a martyr” and “a liberator from fetters”, becomes a visible token of the ultimate victory of good over evil.