The death of own and the death of alien in Gogol' story "Taras Bul'ba"

Abstract

The article examines the features of the depiction of the death of characters in Gogol's story "Taras Bulba”. The main attention is paid to the relationship between spatial spheres, one of which includes Orthodox Cossacks, and the other Catholic Poles. The subject of narration and description in the story is death in the war for faith that the Cossacks are waging with the Poles. The author proves that the position of ethnocentrism occupied by the narrator, with an emphasis on the special connection of national feeling with religious feeling, determines his attitude towards the deaths of characters belonging to different spatial spheres, as the death of own and the death of alien. The attitude of the Cossacks to death is studied from the point of view of their value system as good death and bad death. It is shown that the narrator depicts the deaths of the Poles as one of the moments of the battle, which do not have such eventual significance as the deaths of the Cossacks. At the same time, the narrator corrects the position of ethnocentrism, combining the subjective perception of images of death with an objective assessment of what is happening.

Keywords

• Gogol'
• Taras Bul'ba
• own
• alien
• Cossacks
• Poles