The imagery of the lyric novella «The way of the pigeon» by V. I. Strazhev

The article focuses on the imagery of «The Way of the Pigeon», a collection of poems by V. I. Strazhev (1908). «The Way of the Pigeon» is discussed within the framework of the symbolist tradition (the author of the article notes the two-dimensional plot and the ambivalence of key images). The word «Pigeon» in the title refers to «The Book of the Pigeon» as part of the historical and literary background to the collection. The fact that V. I. Strazhev chose the apocryphal «Book of the Pigeon» as a reference point, which combines both pagan and Christian views, reveals his ideological and aesthetic principles and fits the ideas about superiority of Christianity over paganism, which were popular at the turn of the XXth century. Though V. I. Strazhev avoids direct citation of this well-known sacred book, he refers to it in the context of acquisition of the secret knowledge about the world order. The imagery of «The Way of the Pigeon» is determined by the real/ideal and explicit/implicit (secret) oppositions. The dimension of the «real» consists of descriptions of nature or - more rarely - society, while the dimension of the «implicit» is revealed by the main character's visions when he seeks to understand how the world order works and what place in the world he occupies. The sphere in which he searches for the absolute is love, which is believed to be a «bridge» between the real and ideal worlds. The plot is built on the unity of the imagery that refers both to the sacred «Book of the Pigeon» and to the symbolist myths of the World Soul and the Eternal Feminine. The character does not find God in love as it turns out to not be the solution to mysteries, but a dream which is a symbol of death. The terminus of the character's road is a hermitage and a monastic cell. He abandons «deceitful efforts» for a prayer that helps to resist bait and temptations. The question of what god he is going to pray to remains open: as there were both monks' and Old Believers' cells in the hermitages, he could have practised either orthodox religion or heresy (paganism or sectarianism). The author gives no hint of which confession the main character belongs to, and this is an essential sign of pantheism, which is one of the key features of the symbolist world view. The life of a hermit is a probable but not an inevitable destiny for the main character. He is approaching the cell's «dark threshold» and is about to step over it, but this «step» is left beyond the «lyric novel»'s plot.