Reception of the hagiographic tradition in A. Varlamov's story “The little star”

The article is devoted to study of the hagiographic tradition in A. Varlamov’s story “The Little Star.” An inherent connection between the image of the main female character Liza Nepomilueva and hagiographic images at the value and structural levels is established. In addition, there is connection between the short story and the text of E. Bagritsky’s poem “The Death of a Pioneer,” where the opposite motive is at the core: the refusal of a little girl to wear a cross on her deathbed. A. Varlamov’s story can be viewed as an axiological antithesis to E. Bagritsky’s text and, more broadly, to the idea of a new and revolutionary type of hero actively established in Soviet literature of the 1930s. The story under consideration presents a different type of literary ideal based on evangelical values. The central image of the first grader Liza Nepomilueva has the characteristic features of a hagiographic hero, while the artistic space of the story associated with Liza’s image encompasses the idea of the sacred. The pattern of the heroine’s image is determined by the cardiognostic dominant, or, in other words, the comprehension of the world through the heart. The cardiognosis category not only places Liza’s image in the space of the Beatitudes but is also plot-forming and determining the entire architectonics of the literary work. The author’s appeal to hagiography is also revealed in a special complex of motifs: the motifs of suffering, the cross and cross-bearing, the meek bearing of reproach, which can be considered an allusion to the martyr life. Thereby, the reception of the hagiographic tradition in the text of A. Varlamov allows us to speak about the perfect nature of the main character’s image, thereby elevating it to the idea of holiness, and about the belonging of the work to the national spiritual tradition.