HUNGER IN THE ARTISTIC PERCEPTION OF I. SHMELEV, K. HAMSUN, LIU ZHENYUN

Abstract

The author of the article identifies the typology of images of hunger in the works of writers that belong to Russian, European and Asian cultures - I. Shmelev (“The Sun of the Dead”), K. Hamsun (“Hunger”), Liu Zhenyun (“Remembering 1942”). The author analyzes the motives and images in the context of the specifics of different historical conditions, national mentality, biographical situations and marks style dominants of the texts. Describing hunger as a personal or national tragedy, an existential, ontological, socio-historical phenomenon; showing the limits of physical and moral suffering; depicting the psychotypes of the famished and their reflections; Hamsun, Shmelev, Liu Zhenyun built a narration on similar keynotes. A man is represented in the conditions of a downward evolutionary ladder as a biological, but also a rational, phenomenon towards salvation. It consists in establishing literary analogies, general and specific characteristics of artistic perception of stressful situations. The content of the article is an example of comparative studies.