The image of the pilot and his functions in the children's literature of the 1920s (on the material of the novel by K. Minaev "Letuny")

The article deals with the image of the pilot and his functions in children's literature of the 1920s. The material of the research is the K. Minaev’s story «Letuny», writing in 1926. It is representative of the chosen period, it shows the features of the social realistic canon, which allows it to be attributed to the phase of protocanon. Social realistic schemes and images are viewed through the prism of the traditional cultural opposition «city - village», through which another, no less significant opposition «old - new» is realized. The image of aviator is obtained from two different points of view - by the urban residents and villagers - by barbarians, which allows to use the traditional opposition «city - village», the most studied explored image of the most widely spread on two paintings of the world. The barbarian demonizes the aviator, progress and everything connected with them. The airplane, for example, they perceive as «Chudo-Judo», which indicates that in their minds the airplane is a phenomenon of the unreal, extramundane world. Rural villagers cannot identify the pilot himself at all, they have problems even with the nomination of elements of his clothes. However, the central hero - the village boy Kiryuha - perceives the pilot in a fundamentally different way. The very figure of the pilot inspires the child, makes him want to join the world where such people live. The child age of the elder hero in this context is deeply symbolic - youth embodies the future, which inevitably tends to progress and a new life. The Kiryuha’s escape on an airplane is the basis of the storyline. On a figurative level, this escape is comparable with degeneration - death in one area and birth in another. This is clearly stated in the story, there are detailed description of the extraction of the child from the womb of the airplane and the name of the «christening». After the escape Kiryukha is considered a drowned man, and the mother even asks for prayers for the repose of his soul. It is noteworthy that the figure of the mother is static, the mother does not make the transition, on the contrary, she resides in the city space, she strives to return to the village, she says, that she «dies». The hero will find a new family in which there will be no place for blood ties. The pilot in such plot will perform the function of a guide between worlds. Thus, air transportation in the context has a guide function (psycho-pomp), enlightener, ambassador of progress. It is noteworthy that the pilot is not in any of the opposition seats. In the village he is only an ambassador, and in the city only his portraits are pasted, he is not even a communist. The Aviator is represented as a being of another world, as higher-order being, which is symptomatic for social realistic literature. The story organically fits into the general trend of the literature of the 1920s: the leading device is the juxtaposition of the new man and the man of the «former», the old.