Morbual code in the stories of I.S. Shmelev and V.N. Lyalin

The article is devoted to the reflection of the motives of illness and recovery in the stories of I.S. Shmelev “The Mercy of St. Seraphim”, “Spruce Paws”, as well as the author of the turn of the 20th-21st centuries V.N. Lyalin “Obsession”, “Unexpected Joy”. The study is structured taking into account the special attention of modern humanities to the trends in the medicalization of society and on the basis of an analysis of the phenomenon of the morbual code in literary and artistic creativity. It is obvious that both writers were guided by the Orthodox tradition, from the perspective of which they considered such categories as illness, suffering, recovery, death, immortality. These categories in the works of both authors are perceived in the unity of physical and spiritual discourses. In this situation, the disease is seen as the starting point for the internal evolution of the character, his moral improvement, sometimes expressed through the creation of a specific spatial paradigm. The transition of the patient character from a secular to a liturgical locus sacred for the Orthodox mentality is obvious. The study is based on a plot chain that includes the following episodes: crisis-situation, choice-situation, revelation, miracle. It is observed that literary texts reflect both the sequential alternation of these episodes (“The Grace of St. Seraphim”, “Obsession”, “Unexpected Joy”), as well as a shift in emphasis in favor of one of them, for example, a choice-situation, which leads to the reduced nature of the image of crisis, revelation and miracle (“Spruce Paws”). This transformation indicates the author's special attention to the spiritual consequences of the patient's previously experienced crisis and places greater emphasis on his acceptance of a theocentric picture of the world.