The figure of female warrior in the drama by M.Ye. Loevberg “Joan of Arc” (1920)

The article considers not yet published drama by a little-known poet and playwright of the Silver Age Maria Evgen'yevna Loevberg about Joan of Arc. The history of its creation is traced, and it gets embedded into the general frame of Loevberg's artistic work which is characterized by the desire to establish a new gender order and to give the women “masculine” roles. As the archetypal masculine role Loevberg rightly sees that of the warrior, which turns into the role of a knight because of the Neoromantical manner of the writer. The main characters of the play are analyzed in their connection to each other, the system of motifs is reconstructed. The author of the paper shows that these motifs are typical for the plots about the female warriors (the lack of recognition of the maiden disguised and acting as a warrior; the duel; the equality and deep kinship of the female warrior and the chosen hero; the motifs of lightning, storm, thunder; the motif of flames; the parallels of the female warrior and Virgin Mary, of the female warrior and angel); at the same time, it is demonstrated the distinctiveness of their use in this play. The plot also is analyzed, and its events are compared to the historical sources; its main arc turns out to be as much Joan's fight for the liberation of France, as salvation of the soul of a great sinner, Gilles de Rais, under the influence of his love for the saint warrior. The author proposes the hypothesis concerning the reasons why this drama created for the project of “historical scenes” under the aegis of the publishing house “Vsemirnaya Literatura”, was never staged