From black glove to black vinyl: the poetics of the image of the “cursed thing” in Russian prose of the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries.

Ozherel'ev Konstantin Anatol'evich ORCID: 0009-0002-9077-8424 PhD in Philology Associate Professor; Department of Philology, Journalism and Mass Communications; Omsk Humanitarian Academy Head of the Department of Philology, Journalism and Mass Communications; Omsk Humanitarian Academy 644105, Russia, Omsk, 4th Chelyuskintsev str., 2A, room 300 ozhereljevc@yandex.ru

In modern Russian literary criticism, the study of various aspects of the categories of "terrible" and "scary" as a moral and aesthetic dichotomy is still at an early stage of scientific development. It should be recognized that over the past hundred years, Russian literature, addressing the problems of mystical riddles and the "dark" sides of existence, has been considered exclusively as a kind of either fantastic discourse ^{[1, 2]}, or as a genre-style supplement to a literary fairy tale (as an option – a romantic poem / novella) ^{[3, 4]}. In the Soviet period of the existence of the science of literature, such "mimicry" was more than justified, since any analysis of a "terrible" topic inevitably addressed one or another idealistic (read – "erroneous") concepts: solipsism, hylozoism, spiritualistic teachings, etc.

The newest stage in Russian philological theory on the study of the poetics of the "terrible" as a special sphere of mastering the artistic world should be attributed to 2015, when a collection of articles "All the fears of the world ..." was published, devoted to the specifics of horror in various forms of art, including literature ^[5]. The presence in this academic compendium of important and meaningful works from a methodological point of view on the formulation of the very problem of the "terrible" in a humanitarian perspective ^{[5, pp. 5-20]}, on the study of poetological variations of "fear" in the lyrical heritage of V.A. Zhukovsky ^{[5, pp. 39-53]} and A.S. Pushkin ^{[5, pp. 54-64]}, and also, understanding the demonic topology of the acmeistic ballad ^{[5, pp. 122-133]} or the motif complex of the "living dead" in Russian fiction ^{[5, pp. 84-99, 112-121]} does not remove the question of the lack of study of this phenomenon within Russian literature.

Valuable articles by I.G. Lebedeva published in recent years (on the linguistic and semiotic content of the atmosphere of "horror" among Russian and foreign writers) arouse interest in this topic ^[6] and A.A. Fedotova (on the study of the lexical side of the aesthetic category of "terrible" among Russian authors of the XX-XXI centuries) ^[7]. However, many details of the figurative world in the "mysterious" texts of classics and contemporaries still remain undisclosed; the boundaries and semantics of the ethical and aesthetic mode of "fear" and "horror" in native literature, their connection with the Old and New Testament symbolism and their direct dependence on the patristic tradition of perception of "demonic" are not conceptually described or reflected. started it." This equally determines the relevance and scientific significance of the proposed work, dedicated to the interpretation of one of the most curious images of Russian mystical prose – things and artifacts that have been cursed.

Academician V.N. Toporov rightly wrote about the importance of a special attitude to "things" as the "nodal" components of the objective world in the artistic anthropology of any writer (it does not matter whether he is a classic or a "second–line" author), who emphasized, on the one hand, the inevitable optional and "secondary" nature of a thing (after all, any a thing is, in essence, a "product" of a person, the result of his activity), and, on the other hand, he pointed out that the "material" substrate of "poetic reality" (in V.V. Fedorov's terminology) is always a kind of semantic sum of signs of perception of these things by the subject (person) himself: "Through signs a person penetrates into existence, and this also connects him with the thing" ^{[8, p. 29]}. Thus, an image-thing that is expressively highlighted in the text (by a coloristic epithet: black, silver, etc.; by an intonational accent in the title of a work or by frequent use in various grammatical forms) can act (and most often acts) in specific stylistic formats (philosophical, adventurous, or "terrible" literature) as a kind of semantic indicator. determining both the nature of the plot structure and the arrangement of the value maxims of a particular work.

In this article, we will briefly consider (since the problem itself, stated in the title, requires a detailed and thorough study in the future) some key, in our opinion, motivic-figurative parallels to the artifacts of the "dark forces" in Russian prose of the XIX–XXI centuries, indicating that the "cursed thing" as a phenomenon includes the list of fundamental, "invariant" concepts of the Russian picture of the "terrible" world, and when translated into the "language of native aspens" (according to the famous expression of I.S. Turgenev) it is undergoing significant ethical and aesthetic transformations.

Despite the "black glove" that was placed in the first part of the title of our work, the starting point and primary way to analyze the poetics of the "cursed thing" in the Russian literary tradition (at least chronologically) should still be considered "portrait" (a variant is "painting"). N.V. Gogol's widely known novel "Portrait" (1831, edited in 1841) is undoubtedly one of the most vivid and deeply philosophical reinterpretations of the problem of the correlation between artistic inspiration and creative success.

The story of the artist Andrey Petrovich Chartkov, who actually sold his soul to the devil for the opportunity to be a popular, successful, sought-after and "fashionable" gallery owner, is told by Gogol not only with the help of recognizable, typically romantic attributes and exotic coloring (the soul of an Asian moneylender enclosed in a cursed portrait; the "living eyes" of a creepy "oriental old man" watching for all who look at his image, etc.), but also through the "voice of the author" (according to M.M. Bakhtin), consistently pursuing the timeless tenets of Christian axiology: non–possessiveness, to the limit - the rejection of money (even their curse) and, most importantly, repentance. It should be emphasized that Chartkov's mirror "double", his predecessor, who once created an ill-fated portrait (and not just an artist, but also an iconographer), who himself first encountered the immoral "swarthy" elder, immediately recognized his demonic essence – he <the artist is K.O.> "... every time I couldn't resist saying: "The devil, the perfect devil!"" ^{[9, p. 117]}. When an outstanding portraitist realizes that he is becoming a hostage to a satanic plan, he subjects himself to the most severe austerities, retires to a hermitage, and only after long spiritual labor, regular fasts, abstinence, and prayers does he finally begin the main pictorial plot of his life – the Nativity of Christ. However, the cursed portrait is eventually stolen, and evil thus remains in the world.

With certain reservations, it can be admitted that one of the first attempts to transfer the Western romantic image of the "diabolical thing" into Russian literary ontology was both the elegantly ironic and, at the same time, the "scary" epic story "Lafertovskaya Makovnitsa" (1825) by Anthony Pogorelsky (A.A. Perovsky). It is here that the "cursed object" appears, which has not yet been reduced to clear figurative artistic specifics, but is visible, real (almost mundane) – the key to the treasure chest of an old poppy seed cake vendor, who, according to legend, knew evil spirits. And for Pogorelsky, as for Gogol later, the defining ethical imperative that prevents one from succumbing to temptation and seizing "unclean" riches is the piety of the main character, Masha: "Take back your gift! <...> I don't need your fiance or your money <...> She threw the key right into the well <...> A heavy stone fell from her chest" ^{[10, p. 29]}. However, it is only in N.V. Gogol that the "cursed thing" acquires its figurative and symbolic content, explicating its close connection with the motive of temptation and seduction, which, as we will later note, is a specifically Russian feature of the interpretation of this semioesthetic complex.

On the other hand, it is impossible not to take into account the plot-forming and semantic potential of the image of the "cursed thing", rediscovered by N.V. Gogol for both domestic and foreign prose of the subsequent time. Such a "cursed thing" is "nomadic" in nature (in space and time), goes hand in hand and, eventually, disappears from sight of the main characters, but continues to "live" in the world as undissolved evil, and only a bright ethical principle (the fortress of faith and life according to Christian commandments), according to thought The artist will inevitably dispel the darkness of the curse.

It is interesting to compare N.V. Gogol's novel "Portrait" with O. de Balzac's novella "The Unknown Masterpiece" ("Le chef d'oeuvre inconnu"), written in the same year, which also presents the dilemma between "pure" genius, talent's zeal for unprecedented perfection and the moral price for the opportunity to comprehend all the mysteries. artistic crafts. It is worth noting that Balzac, walking hand in hand with Gogol, anticipated, to the same extent, the mass, uninspired, painting "to order" and positioning itself as the "advanced" art of modernity, the avant-garde of the early 20th century, with its intention to the so-called "supersynthesis" of all types of fine arts, but and, at the same time, with the deformation of the moral basis of creativity (this manifested Balzac's proximity to the Russian literary tradition), the violation of the boundaries of different types of art and, as a result, the notorious "dehumanization of art" (according to H. Ortega y Gassetu).

One of the key characters in the "Unknown Masterpiece", the old artist Frenhofer, is a true rigorist in everything related to art issues – for example, he has been painting his most cherished painting for ten years. Like Gogol's Chartkov, he goes crazy (after burning his paintings), however, despite the fact that Balzac's text does not contain a direct reference to the portrait as a "cursed thing", we can see that the French literary master has a theme of criticism of pride, as in his novel "Shagreen Skin" ("La Peau de Chagrin", 1830), has as its root cause the pernicious connection of the author-creator of an unsurpassed masterpiece with evil spirits – Frenhofer is explicitly referred to in the text as a "diabolical nature": "... there was something diabolical in the old man's face and something else elusive, peculiar, so attractive to artists" ^{[11, p. 76]}.

It is difficult to deny the influence of Gogol's "Portrait" on the enigmatic "novel" (in the author's genre designation) by K.S. Aksakov "Walter Eisenberg" ("Life in a Dream") (1836), although it shows much more strongly the features of German romanticism, the stylistic manner of E.T.A. Hoffmann and the Jena masters of the word (in particular, Novalis). The hero of Aksakov's story, Walter, is also an artist whose vulnerable genius is defeated by dark forces and diabolical temptation, personified in the image of a fatal succubus woman, Cecilia, whose mere presence destroys everything authentic and spiritual (including Walter's creations). Desperate to escape from the all-encompassing power of the cruel Cecilia, the painter finds shelter not anywhere, but in his own idyllic painting, where he goes (is transferred) after its completion. However, the price for staying in the world of dreams turns out to be more than cruel – Walter, having preserved and imprinted himself for eternal life among the beautiful images of his creation, dies in earthly existence. But a curse also penetrates the world of dreams – a serene painting with three beautiful girls and Walter himself is redeemed by the ubiquitous Cecilia and, ultimately, destroys it (burns it). This motif (moving the character into the picture) had an interesting coincidence and refraction more than a century later (of course, without the direct influence of K.S. Aksakov's story) – in the acclaimed horror film by Italian director L. Fulci "The Seventh Gates of Hell" ("E tu vivrai nel terrore! L'aldilà", 1981) the heroes, pursued by the forces of darkness, try to escape by hiding in a large painting depicting the lifeless desert of Sheola, but, in fact, they end up in the infernal abode of the dead.

Researcher M.L. Sidelnikova correctly notes that the motif of the "animated image" in Russian literature, dating back to Nikolai Gogol's novel "Portrait", in the historical and literary perspective (in particular, at the end of the 19th century) "... acquires an almost symbolic sound" ^{[12, p. 106]}, which indicates that the original multidimensional nature of this image. Characteristic modifications of the "cursed portrait" in various variations can also be observed in the unfinished novel by Mikhail Lermontov. <"Stoss"> ("At the count. In ... there was a musical evening ...") (1841), where there are also images of a demonic old man (here – a ghost) and, again, an artist (Lugin), as it was in Gogol (see the character pairs in "Portrait": "oriental old man – Chartkov / virtuous painter-monk and his son"). In parallel, the motif of playing cards, which "cements" the plot framework in the same <"Shtoss"> is directly related to the "terrible theme" in Russian prose (the textbook "The Queen of Spades" (1833-1834) by A.S. Pushkin) and, according to the deep observation of Yu.M. Lotman, has quite transparent references to the demonic predestination of any gambling action (including "perfect art at any cost"): "The game became a clash with a powerful and irrational force, often interpreted as demonic" 13, p. 798]. Another Western European parallel, unconsciously (or consciously) coming from Gogol's meta–image, is O. Wilde's famous novel "The Portrait of Dorian Gray" ("The Picture of Dorian Gray", 1890). It should be noted, however, that many paintings in all these texts are destroyed (burned, torn, cut, etc.) either by the artists themselves (Chartkov – in relation to his author's opuses), or by other people, most often antagonists of the main characters (Cecilia).

In V.F. Odoevsky's short story "The Black Glove" (1838), the basis of the plot collision is not only the appearance of a mysterious and frightening attribute of clothing, but also the finding by the characters on the wedding day of a mysterious warning letter genetically related to folklore narratives (for example, magical "letters of happiness"). The mystical and "scary" element in the mentioned text turns out to be a slightly ridiculous and irresponsible piece of art by a well-bred Anglomaniac uncle, however, the issue of the collapse of values, which was provoked by the appearance of the mysterious glove, remains the main one in Odoevsky's story, which additionally highlights the ethical aspect of Russian mystical prose in the first third of the 19th century.

The literary theme of the punishing glove / "black" hand / the terrible artificial "hand of retribution" dates back to European legends about the Swabian knight Götz von Berlichingen, who lost his arm in battle and replaced it with an iron prosthesis, with which he continued his military exploits and, moreover, wrote famous memoirs. In the Western European literary tradition, the image of the terrible "punishing hand" that took the side of the people's court during the peasant wars in Germany in the 16th century was first embodied by J.W. Goethe in his outstanding tragedy "Götz von Berlichingen with an Iron Hand" ("Götz von Berlichingen mit der eisernen Hand", 1773). Then, as a self-sufficient "scary" element, this image was first used by the Belgian J. For example, in his "weird tale" (1943) "The Hand of Goetz von Berlichingen" ("La Main de Goetz von Berlichingen"), and was subsequently reworked by one of the most famous American horror novelists, co-authors of the posthumous "Lovecraftiana" (a collective writer's portrait of H.F. Lovecraft's associates and students), by F. Leiber (see his short story "The Glove", 1975). And J. The legendary arm of the knight von Berlichingen is "revived" by the hero's eccentric uncle, Frans Quansius, on its own, separating from the human essence of its master. Thus, her heroic past and anthropic character are emasculated, she becomes "just a hand" (in fact, a bare iron prosthesis is "revived") and, thus, turns into an uncontrolled instrument of unscrupulous murder.

This is the main difference in the interpretation of the image of the "black hand" in Russian and foreign literature – gradually, the compositional dominant of the same J. Rae (and here he is, of course, an apologist for Lovecraft) becomes the ancient "Chthonic" horror as such, from which any moral and ethical premise is removed. Meanwhile, Russian authors of the 19th century (except V.F. Odoevsky, the names of I.V. Kireevsky, O.M. Somov, K.S. Aksakov, E.A. Boratynsky should definitely be mentioned here) understand "horror" in a harsh oppositional ethical and aesthetic confrontation with the categories of "beautiful" (ancient Greek "καλός") and "good" (again, the ancient Greek concept of "ἀγαϑόν", but in a broader – ontological projection). Moreover, the priority among Russian prose writers is given to the humanistic tradition of referring to the "scary" and "terrible", while the "cursed object" in Western horror literature is very often transformed into an illogical and often noumenal, "... an alienated and unambiguously aggressive object - an innovation in the morphology of the nightmare" ^{[14, p. 500]}.

In the case of the image of the "black glove" by V.F. Odoevsky, one can only conditionally speak about the direct influence of the tragedy of J.V. Goethe on the story of the Russian romantic and point out, in this regard, to the article by F.I. Buslaev, which has not yet been fully appreciated, about the curious similarities in images and motifs that are far apart in time. and the geography of the works is "The remarkable similarity of the Pskov legend of Mount Sudoma with one episode of Cervantes' Don Quixote," in which the author convincingly shows that such precedents must necessarily have a common literary source ^{[15, pp. 129-130]}. And Odoevsky's work, as we well understand, was not so chronologically distant from Goethe's dramatic opus, especially since the Russian artist could well have been familiar with the text of the German genius in the original language.

However, the theme of "black gloves" had an equally original, although easily readable, refraction in Russian literature of the 20th century: for example, this image acted as a synonym for an economic crime (see the screenplay by L.I. Gaidai and V.E. Bakhnov "Black Gloves", 1973) and was an important visual part of the short film of the same name. tapes (directed by L.I. Gaidai, 1973). By the way, one of the storylines with the virtuoso thief Georges Miloslavsky turned out to be so vivid and comical that it was included almost unchanged in the full–length version of the future popular film about Ivan the Terrible and the Moscow inventor Shurik ("Ivan Vasilyevich changes his profession" (1973) - based on the play by Mikhail Bulgakov "Ivan Vasilyevich", 1936). In the scenario version of the short film, the theme of money, easy money and dazzling wealth was scoffingly ridiculed, and the ethical aspect of the issue invariably permeated the plot background.

Much later, in the second half of the 20th century, some of the variants of the image of the "black hand" ("red" / "yellow" / "blue" / "shaggy" hand") will smoothly pass first into urban and children's "scary" folklore ^{[16, pp. 36, 52, 61, 73, 88]}, and then into the "children's literary horror" on Russian soil – the novel by E.N. Uspensky "The Red Hand, the Black Sheet, the Green Fingers" (1990). The latter will become a rather successful domestic analogue of "horror stories" and "horror films" for children by the American writer R.L. Stein (see his cycle "Goosebumps", 1999-2006).

It should be noted that the image of the substitute "black glove" can be found in twentieth-century Russian prose, even in an author as far removed from the "scary" theme as B.S. Zhitkov, who is invariably certified as a "children's Soviet writer," for example, in his short story "Elchan-Kaya." (1926). This text, presumably borrowing legendary legends from the life of the multinational Old Crimea, presents a plot on the subject of the possession of "unclean" treasures (an ironically good-natured variation of this plot could be found in the 19th century in O.M. Somov, in his "Tales of Treasures" (1830)).

B.S. Zhitkov carries out an interesting transformation of the image dating back to the "black hand" – in the story its substitute is the severed hand of the "righteous man", killed by stone soldiers of the dead Turkish ship Elchan-Kaya (here is an obvious reference to the plot of the "Flying Dutchman" and the ghost ship). The hand with the ring guards the treasures ("treasure") of the bloodthirsty Turkish robbers, obtained by them in an obviously unfair way (robberies, robberies, murders). Moreover, the artistic numerology in the text of the story "Elchan-Kaya" transparently refers to the biblical symbolism of numbers.: The Turkish soldiers are lined up in "thirteen rows" (infernal semantics), the total number of them is "forty people". The latter fact can, with minor reservations, be interpreted not just as images of punishing ghosts typical of "scary" literature, but also as the "forty days and nights of temptation" from the Gospel of Luke (Luke 4:2), when Christ was tempted "... by the devil and ate nothing during those days." and at the end of them, he finally became hungry," but remained firm in his faith ^[17]. In the story under consideration, the image of the "cursed thing" undergoes an ethical and aesthetic gradation away from the poetics of the "terrible" to the so-called "symbolization" of an artistic object, which, by and large, is characteristic of Russian horror literature of the XIX–XX centuries ^[18], and since the main character, a Greek peasant, is Christo (abbreviated name from "Christopher"), and this name, as you know, is a name doubling from "Christ", then you can interpret this plot as a struggle with the devil of temptation (which the hero eventually loses, unable to resist the temptation to take possession not only of all the treasures, but also the "ring" with dead hand).

Anticipating the possible objection of opponents that the image of the "ring" should also take its rightful place in the Russian catalog of images among the "cursed" artifacts, let us disagree with this. One of the most textbook texts playing up the image of the "cursed jewel" is the novel (sometimes referred to as a "novella") by E.A. Boratynsky "The Ring" (1830-1832), which we do not consider in the general series, since the theme of "scary" is reduced here to a joke and an anecdote, although conditionally the "cursed object" is present – this is the ring of the foolish landowner Opalsky himself. At the same time, Boratynsky's image of the ring, as A.E. Yeremeyev correctly shows, serves for a philosophical rethinking of the "eternal drama of man's misunderstanding of man" ^{[19, p. 67]}, and the author's artistic searches in the field of philosophical narration capture the most important spiritual collision of the characters – when "... the feeling of the goodness of life is combined with a painfully acute experience." the tragedy of personal self-awareness" ^{[19, p. 68]}. But some researchers rightly attribute Boratynsky's "Ring" to the Russian texts, the forerunners of the world detective story, or rather to the "protodetectors" ^[20].

In some works of modern literature in Russian, which are equally devoted to the themes of fantasy and the "terrible," there is a complex combination of two or more images that go back to J.W. Goethe ("the iron hand") and his unwitting successors (in fact, the figurative contamination of the "prosthetic hand") and to V.F. Odoevsky. ("black glove") – see, for example, the image of the "black leather prosthetic glove" and its similar variations in the prose of representatives of the sixth (so-called "color") wave of Russian fiction, for example, in Y.A. Zonis (the novel "Children of the Gods", 2010; the short story "The Chess Queen", 2005).

Leo Tolstoy's novel "The Fake Coupon" (1904) is not, in the strict sense of the word, a representative of "scary literature," but typologically it also goes back to the story of a wandering "cursed thing" that sows discord, grief and death. The ethical dominant is not just sharpened here – throughout the development of artistic action, Christian motives of repentance and humility prevail. It is hardly by chance that the father of one of the main characters, the incorruptible and honest citizen Fyodor Mikhailovich, bears the "talking" surname Smokovnikov. Fig fruits in the Bible are an allegory of a number of concepts and qualities. In particular, in the legend of good and bad figs, the former are synonymous with "virtuous people" (Jeremiah 24:5): "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: like these good figs, I recognize as good the emigrants of Judah, whom I sent from this place to the land of the Chaldeans" ^[17]. The biblical context here reinforces the axiological "background" of the literary text. Interestingly, even in the above-mentioned story by E.N. Uspensky ("The Red Hand, the black sheet, the green fingers") there is, albeit in a slightly ironic (but not blasphemous!) For example, there are elegant references to the Bible, when one of the boys (Peter) is called as an eyewitness to a crime and is succinctly addressed as "Witness Peter", which implicitly implies a reference to the Apostolic Acts and the first epistle of Peter, where such a phrase occurs (1 Peter 5:1) ^[17].

Let's fix other examples of the functioning of the image of the "cursed thing" in dotted lines. A whole conglomerate of objects that have materialized a generic or other curse represents the prosaic legacy of an outstanding economist and, at the same time, a virtuoso neo-romantic stylist, a consistent student of E.T.A. Hoffman in prose, A.V. Chayanov. So, in his story "The extraordinary but true adventures of Count Fyodor Mikhailovich Buturlin, described according to family legends by the Moscow botanist H. and illustrated by the phytopathologist W." (1924) we see occult grimoires, a mysterious page from the medieval Latin treatise on the "art of dying" (i.e., pious death) "Ars Moriendi", a magical deck of prophetic "dark" cards of the sorcerer Jacob Bruce, secret insignia of the Illuminati Masons, etc. Playing cards retrospectively refers us not only to Lermontovsky <"Shtoss">, but also earlier – to other important "scary" Russian texts: "The Missing Letter" by N.V. Gogol (1831) and to the already mentioned "Queen of Spades" by A.S. Pushkin, moreover, in Gogol, Lermontov and Chayanov, the hero plays with evil spirits (in Gogol, for example, the grandfather of the narrator, Thomas Grigoryevich, plays a fool with a witch and defeats the latter only by "crossing himself maps"). The owners of "cursed objects" (paintings, maps, pseudo-theological books) or their terrible secrets are, as a rule, repulsive images of old men / old women (see: the old Countess Anna Fedotovna Tomskaya ("Countess ***") – in Pushkin; "swarthy oriental old man" – in Gogol; "dead the figure of the "old man" is in Lermontov; the "giggling" decrepit Count Bruce "in the uniform of Peter the Great" is in Chayanov).

In the last third of the 20th and early 21st centuries, in short stories and short stories of different styles, but representing the most interesting trends in compositional and final solutions in modern Russian horror literature by authors A.P. Vladimirova and A.G. Ateev, the image of the "cursed thing" was organically included in the general register of artistic artifacts of Russian mystical prose. The novel by A.P. Vladimirova with the characteristic title "Temptation" (1998) is an adaptation of the plot of Gogol's "Portrait" in modern realities (by the way, A.P. Vladimirov loved Gogol very much, considered him his "style" mentor and even wrote the text-continuation of his "Overcoat" – "Overcoat -2 (what Gogol didn't mention)", 2020). According to the plot of "Temptation", the "cursed thing" that deprives the artist Dmitry Ivashov of sight is a videotape (VHS film) with a mysterious film by Hollywood director Samuel Shore "The Blind Genius", after watching the movie masterpiece, which, according to legend, the viewer goes blind, but manages to see the work of an unsurpassed master of painting, artist N. Ivashov. he does not just succumb to temptation, like many of the aforementioned literary heroes who could not cope with the diabolical temptation, but manages to realize that he has fallen into an ingenious trap, because in fact, the immortal creations of the artist N. served only as an enticing form-shell for the biographical painting-"masterpiece" of Shor, which he shot in a completely helpless and clumsy manner., issued under the guise of "author's cinema", or arthouse. Ivashov's epiphany comes late – the artist, who had previously blindly believed in the genius of the American film director, in the finale of the novel, deciding to destroy the mediocre film, literally goes blind after an unexpected explosion of the TV screen and kinescope fragments piercing his eyes. However, the ending of the work is still enlightening and sad - the tape will be destroyed, and the Russian images of Dmitry Ivashov's paintings will live in history and eternity. A.P. Vladimirova's novella is, in the same way, an aesthetic program, and even a political (anti-Western, anti-cultural) allegory; we see in it a continuation of the traditions of symbolizing the "damned" in general and the "terrible" in particular images in Russian "mysterious" prose. It is impossible not to note the amazing similarity (first of all, externally) of Vladimirova's novel with the film novel by J. P. Blavatsky. Carpenter's "Cigarette Burns" (2005) from the television series "Masters of Horror" (2005-2007) – as a "cursed thing" in the TV version, there is also a movie (film) called "The Absolute end of the World" ("Le Fin Absolue du Monde"), viewing which is fraught with the subsequent madness of the viewer.

In the work of one of the most gifted Russian masters in the subgenres of modern horror literature, A.G. Ateev, "cursed things" serve primarily as a plot-generating factor for increasing intrigue and suspense, while the ethical aspect is either weakened or plays a secondary role (there is a tendency to return to "pure" the poetics of horror). In the short story "Black Vinyl" (2010), a pernicious artifact is a mysterious gramophone record ("vinyl") by one of the Western rock bands, which falls into the hands of a fanatical Russian music lover. According to the annotation located on the vinyl booklet, whoever listens to it will surely die. In the space of "Black Vinyl" there is also a "talking" character Nechaev, whose last name ironically forms the "demonic" context of the figurative world of the story (the real nihilist S.G. Nechaev, as is known, was the prototype of Peter Verkhovensky in F.M. Dostoevsky's "Demons" (1870)). In Ateev's novel "The Bottom of the Mind" (2009), almost from the first pages, the image of a mysterious coin with a Latin inscription appears, which was found by a little girl in the cemetery of a typical Soviet settlement – a fictional Social city. As a result, the coin "wanders" through the hands of various characters in the novel and brings untold troubles and sufferings to its temporary owners.

Thus, we can preliminarily conclude that many images of "cursed things" in the Russian "terrible" and philosophical literature of the XIX–XXI centuries. (portrait / painting; glove and its variants: hand, prosthesis; folio book; money coupon; film; vinyl record; rare coin) are not just images of a "terrible" and "cursed" world, but are also a substitute for many cherished human desires: wealth, fame, inspiration, power love, expectation of a miracle, and many others. The plot-forming motif complex in the texts of the most diverse prose writers from the point of view of individual manner and style is usually the same – devilish temptation and seduction. With the possible exception of the characters A.G. Ateev and E.N. Uspensky (since this is a special case – a childish interpretation of the category of "terrible"), almost all the authors' characters, even when left with nothing, either experience repentance as fallen Christians ("Lafertovskaya Makovnitsa", "Portrait"), or "voice the author " "points out" to them the need to rethink the former sinful path ("Fake coupon"). Russian literature, borrowing some expressive images from the Western European tradition of addressing the "terrible" world, gives them a fundamentally new sound, preserving the "mysterious" and "gloomy" intonation of the narrative, the "terrible" flavor and the objective "Gothic entourage" and, at the same time, enhancing the ethical (ideally Christian) sound of the eternal themes and images.