“Going through purgatory” as a motive of Russian traditionalist prose: artistic experience by M.A. Tarkovsky

Statement of the problem. The article is devoted to the traditional motive of Russian prose - the motive of “going through purgatory”. The example of M. Tarkovsky's literary narration reveals the variants of realization and features of the transformation of the archetypical motive underlying the well-known Old Russian apocrypha and reflected in the iconic texts of “village prose”. The purpose of the article is to reveal the features of functioning the motive of “going through purgatory” in M.A. Tarkovsky's prose as one of the prominent representatives of modern traditionalist prose. Research methods: cultural-historical, mythopoetical, structural-semiotic analysis of the text. Research results. In the prose of the modern Siberian writer M.A. Tarkovsky - one of the prominent representatives of neo-traditionalism, the motive of “going through purgatory” reflects the artistic picture of the writer's world plot-wise and is presented differently: on the one hand, it is realized through the idea of compassion, mercy, compassion for one's neighbor (“A Spoon of Soup”, 2001; “Foundation”, 2004), on the other hand, through intuitive knowledge of the nature of sin as a basis for salvation or an exit to the transcendent (“Grandmother's Alcohol”, 2004).