THE LITERARY TRAVEL IN O. MANDELSHTAM’S ESSAY “SEVAN”: THE ALLUSIONS TO EDGAR POE’S STORY “THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR”

• Main Author: I F Golovchenko
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) 2017-12-01
• Series: RUDN Journal of Studies in Literature and Journalism
• Subjects: мотив; мотивный анализ; По; Мандельштам; аллюзия
• Online Access: http://journals.rudn.ru/literary-criticism/article/view/17081

The article is devoted to the essay “Sevan” by Mandelshtam from the cycle “The Travel to Armenia”. The prose by Mandelshtam has the special sequence of ideas: instead of sequential telling of the plot the author uses the “montage”, and the “key” to this montage could be both the causal association and the concrete text. This research is devoted to the comparison of two texts: the essay “Sevan” and the Edgar Poe’s story “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar”. This story has a chain of motives: mesmerism - a man of angularity - sickness and death - the frontier state between life and death. The same chain of ideas with another content is the base of “Sevan”.