Images of mythical birds in modern Russian prose (T. Tolstaya "A date with a bird", E. Nekrasova "Sestromam")

The article considers the images of mythical birds, which undergo a number of changes in the space of the author's literary text. The depiction of the birds Sirin and Alkonost in Tatyana Tolstaya's story "A Date with a Bird" and the Gamayun bird in Evgeniуa Nekrasova's story "Sestromam" reflects the trend to use individual mythological elements in modern Russian literature, which is determined not by an attempt to build a holistic picture of the world, focusing on the collective consciousness, but by the desire to resolve is- sues of personal self-determination or trauma experience. In "A Date with a Bird" the mythological image is built into the worldview of the protagonist - a boy, whose childish consciousness easily and freely combines a fairy tale with reality. In the story "Sestromam", the appearance of a mythical character is the result of an internal unspoken sense of guilt of the central character. So, both stories emphasize that the transformation of the images of mythical creatures reflects a partial, local appeal to the mythological picture of the world without its completeness and systemic nature. In such a subjective individual version, mythical elements perform the function of complementing the images of the central characters and actualize the possibilities of resolving a “personal” conflict.