The tragedy of the “decaying” (“vymorochny”) clan in “The Golovlyov family” (1880) by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin and “Absalom, absalom!” (1936) by W. Faulkner

This article attempts to analyze the artistic means by which two writers - William Faulkner and M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin - in their novels written in the genre of the “genealogical saga”, are depicting the decay, degeneration and abolishment of a fading noble family. In addition to the natural signs of the degeneration of the noble family (such as drunkenness and in the case of Golovlyovs, the criminal sources of enrichment in the case of Sutpen, and the departure from the patriarchal canon in both cases), both writers also appeal to metaphysical reasons - in particular, such as the predestination of death, the initial doom of the noble family due to this or that sin, the “wormhole”. Faulkner and Shchedrin develop the metaphor of the noble estate as a mausoleum in which its inhabitants are imprisoned; coffin or tomb, where they rested during their lifetime; the image of the ice Dante’s hell embodied on earth in the world of a noble estate. These metaphors and images are reinforced by demonic features in the images of the main characters of the novels - Thomas Sutpen, Arina Petrovna, Iudushka, - reinforced by extensive parallelisms. Both writers create in their works a special text using all kinds of images: mythological, biblical, even fabulous; our task will be to trace their artistic identity. Moreover, as an additional task, we will try to identify the common places of the two novels and to prove that the “Golovliov Family” by M.E. SaltykovShchedrin could have influenced W. Faulkner and reflected on his artistic worldview during his work on the novel “Absalom, Absalom!”