MYTHOLOGICAL AND REAL WORLDS IN A.S. PUSHKIN'S DRAMA “RUSALKA” (THE MERMAID)

MYTHOLOGICAL AND REAL WORLDS IN A.S. PUSHKIN'S DRAMA “RUSALKA” (THE MERMAID)

Author:  O.G. Zgurskaya

Affiliation:  National Mineral Resources (University of Mines), St. Petersburg

Abstract:  An artist’s work presents a complex connection between the author’s everyday life and his inner intellectual and spiritual experience. The fusion of the above mentioned components is so natural, that it is impossible to separate one from the other.
Harmonically balanced research approach being equally intent and considerate to both the outward everyday life of the author and his inner private life could have moved the existing understanding of the creative process forward. However, the custodians of the author’s everyday life – museum workers, the guardians of his creations and philologists work separately and rarely enter into a research contact.
The separate, independent work can be effective to some extent, but it is quite obvious that many of the arising problems could be solved in collaboration. The museum workers, for instance, being immersed in the creator’s everyday life tend to interpret situations and circumstances in the creation as the main source of his creative work. The philologists, on the contrary, often overlook the fact that even a completed work retains living connections with everything that has contributed to its birth , including life circumstances as well.
One of the examples of such a missed opportunity of museum workers’ and philologists’ cooperation is the history of interpreting of “The Mermaid”, an unfinished drama by A.S. Pushkin.
 S.S. Geichenko, one of the most famous museum workers in Russia, a former custodian of Mikhailovskoye in the second half of the XX century, considered that the plot of “Rusalka” was based on the story of Pushkin’s love for a peasant girl Olga Kalashnikova. However, serious discrepancies between the realities of life and the plot of the literary work escaped the researcher’s attention. Meanwhile those discrepancies show precisely that the links between the events that occurred in reality and their literary reflections are far from being direct.
However the philologists who study the author’s spiritual and intellectual life sometimes show lack of due interest to it. Actually this private field like no other one gives us the opportunity to feel that almost intangible imprint that identifies the author. In 1897 when the sequel of the drama ascribed to Pushkin was published the philological world received the opportunity to carry out a thorough comparative analysis of the sequel and the original. That possibility was used by only one philologist F.E. Korsh but his fundamental and most interesting work was not appreciated either at the end of the XIX century or in our time.
On the whole the consideration of even the individual results of the independent work of museum workers and philologists show the need for a more fruitful joint work.

Keywords:  drama “Rusalka” by A.S. Pushkin, mythological picture of the world, comparison, authenticity of the work of art, interpretation of a literary work

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