Culturological discourse of A. Averchenko's story “The Death of an African Hunter”

Abstract

The article reconstructs the figurative concept of personality, embodied in the story of A. Averchenko “The Death of an African Hunter” (1914), through the prism of the author's value orientations and psychological transformations of the hero experiencing adulthood. The study of cultural discourse in the projection of artistic expression on the social context promotes the disclosure of the author's attitude to the characters and events and the comprehension of the “life-death”, “freedom-non-freedom” set forth in the work of philosophical oppositions. Sincerity as the highest manifestation of a person, typical for children and lost by adults, a rebellion against everyday life, farewell to illusions as a reaction to a collision with the real dimension of the modern world – all this turns out to be in the author's objective, objectively, psychologically and symbolically detailing the scale of life values within the framework of artistic integrity story. The comprehension of artistic models that embody the problem of the maturation of the personality, the “before” and “after” childhood conditions, the loss of illusions and the adaptation of the personality to the real world, allow us to reconstruct from the private artistic experience a picture of objective philosophical and psychological contradictions to which the individual aspires to resolve.