Meta-worlds of A. G. Ateev and A. P. Vladimirov as two compositional and stylistic trends in contemporary Russian horror literature

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 Other publications by this author

Theoretical introduction (the problem of literary meta-world)

The proposed work is devoted to some selected aspects of the phenomenon of Russian prose in the field of "terrible" and "scary", which is little studied in modern literary criticism (a kind of domestic – deeply specific – analogue of Western European and world horror, as well as the subgenre "weird tales"). This article, in fact, is an application for making certain adjustments to an obvious and long overdue theoretical problem – the constitutive description of the figurative and compositional-stylistic features of the so-called literary meta-world (variant – "literary universe"); more precisely, our work can only be called an "introduction to the problem", a kind of prolegomena, if to use the famous Kantian terminology.

The object of consideration and theoretical understanding in the work are the subject-figurative and plot-compositional features of the works of two of the most famous and, in the opinion of the author, "characteristic" of modern Russian literary horror fiction writers: A.G. Ateev (1953-2011) and A.P. Vladimirova (1958-2023), who clearly demonstrate with their work two fruitful artistic-stylistic trends in Russian "scary" literature:

1) conditionally optimistic, based (with certain reservations inherent in the "mass genre") on Christian conceptology with elements of the "neo-Slavophile" value paradigm (A.P. Vladimirov);

2) gnostic-dual ("neo-Western"), in which the "evil" principle in the world is perceived as inevitable, which ultimately determines the author's almost "indifferent" attitude to the problem of retribution and justice (A.G. Ateev).

To explain why this article uses the phrase "literary metamir" rather than other terminology, let us turn to the history of the study of this theoretical and literary phenomenon (although it is quite possible - with a more detailed space-time perspective – to talk even about the "metaverse" of the authors analyzed, however, the books of A.G. Ateev and A.P. Vladimirova In our opinion, they did not develop such a broad and detailed artistic concept, despite the fact that the chronology in their texts is quite mobile – there is a topical present ("Crossroads of Minds" (2010) by A.G. Ateev) and a distant past ("The Wolf Thicket" (1999) by A.P. Vladimirova).

One of the first concepts that stated the need for an autonomous (immanent aesthetic, not obscured by sociology) consideration of a literary work was the work of the outstanding medievalist D.S. Likhachev, in which the scientist proposed the concept of the "inner world of an artistic work" ^[1], which made it possible to expand the research optics not only for the period of ancient Russian literature, but also for subsequent ones. stages of development of Russian literature (including the XX century). An original and somewhat innovative development of D.S. Likhachev's ideas was the monograph "On the Nature of poetic Reality" by one of M.M. Bakhtin's most consistent students in poetological studies, a prominent representative of the "Donetsk Philological School" in the USSR, V.V. Fedorov ^[2] ("poetic reality", according to the researcher, was becoming re-created, an artistic version of real life, which nevertheless had its own laws and rules, different from those of earth, including grammatical, logical, etc.).

The mentioned works, as well as M.M. Girshman's theory of the artistic integrity of a literary work that arose a little later ^[3], were based, by and large, on Bakhtin universals and the ontological status of a literary text, appealing to the facts of "serious" literature and classical models. V.V. Savelyeva subsequently identified the problem of organized interaction of elements of the structure of the work in the dichotomy "the artistic world is an artistic text", examples of "mass literature" have already been used for analysis ^[4]. At the present stage, V.V. Abashev and M.P. Abasheva consider the so-called "fictional worlds" in the context of transfictionality; scientists use the term "literary universe" and rightly note that "Russian mass culture still shows some timidity in the construction of literary fictional worlds" ^{[5, p. 77]}.

The tendency to create literary meta-spaces, characteristic of the creative method of a number of fiction writers who combine "end–to-end" toposes, characteristic loci, frequency ranges, and even some common "philosophical" background of the events described in several of their works, became the subject of study by a number of humanitarian researchers at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries: V.I. Kozlov (who draws attention to first of all, attention is paid to the historical transformation of the category of the "artistic world" ^[6]), S.V. Kazakova and I.A. Bubnova (analyzing the so-called "quasi-realities" within the fictional "literary world" ^{[7, p. 62]}), R.V. Epanchintseva (pursuing the idea of the integral connection of the "artistic world" created by the writer the world" (as a collection of his works) with the "value orientations of its creator" ^{[8, p. 20]}), A.K. Karimova (who interprets the "literary space" including as "... a space of non-fiction literature, which houses: philosophical, religious, scientific, political, economic, etc. literature" ^{[9, 68]}), L.N. Lunkova (who uses the concept of "possible worlds" in literature ^[10]), Yu.G. Pykhtina (who suggests using the definition of "virtual space in literature" as an appropriate approach ^[11]), A.F. Sedov and M.Z. Tugusheva (who supplement more or less in their work a well–established version of the term "the world of a literary work" ^[12]), I.V. Neronova (describing "possible worlds of literature" from the point of view of Western analytical philosophy, in particular modal logic ^[13]) and V.V. Dubrovskaya (using the theoretical definition of the "poetic world" ^[14]).

As we can see, none of the above-mentioned researchers actually speak about the "literary meta-world", although even in the historical, literary and theoretical phenomena of the "inner world", "universe", "possible"/"poetic reality" similar phenomena are guessed (commonality of figurative and objective constants, chronotopic – "end–to-end" - the certainty of a fictional reality, recognizable characters, etc.). Let us add that the concept of "metamir" in the Russian humanitarian tradition is found in detail, perhaps, only in I.D. Levin [see about this: 15, pp. 176-180], but in an exclusively philosophical interpretation, which goes beyond the scope of our reflections, whose subject is nevertheless the "mass" literary genre.

In the proposed work, the term "metamir" is used (by analogy with how the "metatext" of an author's work is understood: "Shakespearean", "Pushkin", "Gogol"), the distinctive features of which, in our opinion, are the following terms:

1) recognizable, characteristic loci (toposes) – fictional or real (villages, cities, institutions, geographical "reference points", plot "reference points" – i.e. starting points, etc.);

2) color or other (for example, symbolic) coloring in a number of texts (favorite epithets of the authors, creating a recognizable "atmosphere" of the world of human fears and "horror");

3) familiar characters and character pairs passing from one text to another.

4) intertextual dialogue with Russian and world literary (and cultural in general) traditions;

5) regularly recurring subject images and artifacts that grow into universal "concepts" in the plot space of works;

6) the "sequel" (with a tendency to continue) nature of many texts included in the "metamir", one way or another determining the nature of their finales (conditionally positive or "indefinite");

7) a consistent bias towards genre diffusion, even within the framework of a chosen stylistic and compositional strategy (for example, a "terrible" story or a "scary" novella).

It is necessary to emphasize once again the importance of the "meta–world" precisely for "fiction" and "mass literature", which tend to the notorious "formulaic poetics" (according to D. Cavelty), since "popular" literature (and "horror" is no exception here) lacks, for example, such a characteristic feature of "serious" (in the limit of classical, philosophical, etc.) prose, such as "... the thought of thought <here and further, I have highlighted <K.O.>, but specific paintings, phenomena, and life situations in such a work acquire double value and are intended to explain and confirm the course of thinking of the author or hero aimed at comprehending the philosophy of life" ^{[16, p. 90]}.

Constitutive signs of metamirov A.G. Ateev and A.P. Vladimirova

Let us briefly and abstractly characterize (literally list) the key features of the organization of the artistic space of the two prose writers. In the works of A.G. Ateev, a professional journalist with a philological education who made his debut under the pseudonym "Arkady Butyrsky" (he gained national fame after publishing the novel "The Riddle of the Old Cemetery" (1990) in Smena magazine, in 1993-1994) and A.P. Vladimirova, who began his professional career in science (a talented economist and teacher, PhD, published his first work, the novel "The Sixth Dimension" in 1991), there are significant signs of the artistic metamir for the literature of "horror": characteristic loci / cities / "destinations" (the real / poetized Stary Oskol (the writer's small homeland) and the fictional Svyatograd and Neznamovsk – by A.P. Vladimirova (in more than half of the texts); invented by A.G. Ateev, Sotsgorodok – in the novel "Bottom of Reason" (2009) or Tikhorechensk – in the novels "Rabid" (another name is "The Doomed Prophet", 1996) and "The Rosicrucian Code" (also known as "Stepsons of the Night", 1997), the sinister village of Likhodeyevka in the most popular "Mystery of the Old cemetery"; the town of Svetly, erected, by the way, on the site of the aforementioned Likhodeyevka ("City of Shadows" (also – "Shadow Theater"), 2000).

A similar topic, as is widely known, is found in the "classics", the Western "kings of the genre" of "scary stories": S. King (see fiction cities in his novels and novellas: Chamberlain ("Carrie", 1974), Haven ("The Tommyknockers"), 1987), Derry (excerpt "The Bird and the Album", 1981; "It", 1986), Jerusalem's Lot, Castle Rock ("The Dead Zone", 1979); H.F. Lovecraft (creepy towns passing through a huge number of texts (Dunwich, Innsmouth); the mythical Miskatonic River, near which the University of the same name is located; gloomy Arkham, where there is an infamous asylum for the mentally ill).

Some of the characters of A.G. Ateev and A.P. Vladimirova often act as "end-to-end" characters of a whole group of texts. For example, Ateev meets the scientist Strums several times – in fact, the "doppelganger" of the famous doctor of occult sciences Van Helsing from the novels of B. Stoker and his followers; an important plot role is played by the antihero with the "talking" (infernal) name Asmodei Chernopyatov ("The Riddle of the old cemetery", "Rabid"); librarian Petukhov, who became unwitting The writer makes the witness of the ritual with the real risen dead zombies first the main character ("The Mystery of the old cemetery"), and then the secondary character ("The City of Shadows").

Vladimirov's frequent plot subjects are historians of local lore, who keep secret secrets of the past. Thus, the masterly story novel "The Tribe of Cain" (2002) features archivist Vladimir Koshelev, editor of the magazine "Renaissance of Russia" and author of scientific works "History of the Russian Black Earth Region" and "Disappeared Tribes"; the novel "The Show of Sinister Storytellers" (2009) mentions "the scientific and historical work of Methodius Vikulov: "The story of Stary Oskol" ^{[17, p. 8]}, and in the mystical space of A.P. Vladimirova's last novel "The Enchantress. Confessions of a Witch" (2020) there is a certain Charsky, an eccentric historian of the Belgorod region, who strongly warns the main character against encountering otherworldly forces. Let us point out that Ateev also has a similar image – the colorful curator of the mysterious museum in the "City of Shadows", the archaeologist Sergei Beloyarov (who is also the so-called "white magician"), who guides the hapless treasure seeker Georgy Leskov.

In the chronotopic perspective of the works of A.G. Ateev and A.P. Vladimirova, there are also vivid artifacts that grow to the level of "iconic" concepts that determine the very nature of the plot denouement (often connecting different layers: pre-Soviet, socialist, perestroika). Such objective ("material") images include, for example, a tin can from under a box of pre-revolutionary sweets from the famous Apricot factory in Ateev's short story "Black Vinyl" (2010) and in the already mentioned novel "City of Shadows"; there are also clearly non–accidental linguistic references - the surname of one of the heroines (Adelaida Apricotova) in "Mad" it rhymes grammatically and in meaning with the mentioned iron box from the "apricot" sweets widely popular in tsarist Russia (this object appears in the text as an image of a terrible secret kept for centuries).

The motif of treasure hunting and the multidimensional image of swamp (more precisely, "cemetery") lights appear in almost every work by A.G. Ateev (especially often in "The Riddle of the Old Cemetery", "Mad" and "City of Shadows"), which directly correlates with the Russian tradition of depicting the "mysterious" and "terrible" (cf. with not actually "scary", but "mysterious" and, at the same time, "instructive" "Tales of treasures" (1830) by O.M. Somov). The ancient cursed coin "with a cross and a hole" in Ateev's novel "The Bottom of the Mind" performs the same destructive role as the fake coupon in Leo Tolstoy's novel of the same name (1904). A vivid and memorable image of the "Black Book" found by a modest medical university student, Venya Radishchev, on the ruins of a destroyed old house ("The Show of Sinister Storytellers" by A.P. Vladimirova); the cursed diary read by teacher Oleg Tuzov in "Mad" by A.P. Ateev, and the legendary "Necronomicon" from the works of H.P. Lovecraft – They are links in a single figurative-symbolic chain that connects many texts of these authors into a single figurative-conceptual meta-space (actually, the "meta-world").

The connection of the tram image in Russian literature with the theme of death, "terrible" fate, "monstrous" and "terrible" beginnings originates, as is well known, from the textbook plot twist from Mikhail Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margarita" (1928-1940) (the terrible death of Berlioz). A figurative parallel to Bulgakov's severed "Berlioz's head" and the deadly tram can be not only the "dead heads" ("instead of cabbage and rutabagas") sold in a greengrocer's shop in N.S. Gumilev's "polycode" and multi-layered poem "The Lost Tram" (1919), but also the initially unexplained death (under the influence of the hero's magical desire) under the wheels of a tram of one of the "thug" characters in A.G. Ateev's "Day of Reason". By the way, A.P. Vladimirov also entered into an original, artistic polemic with Bulgakov in his novels (the writer himself admitted that he was close to the interpretation of "The Master and Margarita" proposed by Professor M.M. Dunaev, about the "satanic" and gnostic overtones of the novel; about this, without a negative assessment (but and not directly), prominent Soviet art historians wrote at the time, for example, I.F. Balza ^[18]). Regarding the figure of Mikhail Bulgakov, it is worth noting that both modern authors in the genre of "horror" like to use the displacement of time layers ("the distant past – the present", according to the principle of installation), as it was in "The Master and Margarita".

In A.G. Ateev's work "Mad" there is a topos of a psychiatric hospital that is common not only for Russian, but also for the world of "horror" (the already named Arkham Asylum by H.F. Lovecraft): so, in the city of Tikhorechensk, an unusual visionary patient, Vladimir Sergeevich, languishes in a similar hospital, not understood by most, but undoubtedly knowing some important secret. Similarly, at the beginning of A.P. Vladimirova's novel "The Enchantress. Confessions of a Witch" appears once upon a time by a popular writer, Andrey Firsov, imprisoned in a psychiatric ward as a "creative person" who has lost his mind (which, as you might guess, only partially corresponds to reality). This is undoubtedly a mutual homage between the two contemporary writers to Mikhail Bulgakov and a recognizable reference to the plot situation "The Master in a psychiatric clinic" from the artist's most famous work of the word. In A.G. Ateev's "Mad", the images of Kozopasov and Sitnikov are important for the entire compositional and ideological structure of the novel – sharply and distinctly "otherworldly", reminiscent collectively of all the companions of Bulgakov's Woland (Azazello, Koroviev, etc.). A certain "cat-like man" also appears there, who was "dressed in a perfectly tailored suit and a starched white shirt with a bow tie, pinned with a gold pin with a dark green transparent stone" ^[19] (this portrait is, of course, a very definite "reminiscence quote" on the "dark" trickster, The Hippopotamus cat from "The Master and Margarita").

The epithet "silver", which is a frequent semantic correlate of countering evil spirits and, less often, connections with the "terrible" and otherworldly, can be found in both authors: Ateev has a motive for "killing with a silver bullet" in "Rabid", as well as in the novel "Black Business" (the second name is "Silver Bullet", 1995), and in Vladimirova's image, the silver Cross of Prince Ignatov, which he passed on to his son before his death as an object testament (the story "The Wolf Thicket"), becomes a symbol of the protection of the Russian land from diverse evil spirits in Stary Oskol of the century before last. It should be noted that a contextual parallel to A.P. Vladimirova's story can be formed by one of the most interesting texts of A.I. Kuprin's short prose in the genre of "scary story" (legend), "Silver Wolf" (1901), which originally plays on the Polessky (and common Slavic) legend of the werewolf man ("vovkulak / volkolak").

The key compositional and semantic (more broadly, conceptual) difference between two, at first glance, typologically similar writers is their attitude to the plot–compositional outcome of their works, which has not only artistic, but also axiological implications. The positive ending of the works, which sometimes turns into a schematic "happy ending", is the prerogative of most of A.P. Vladimirova's works, while the open ending (postulating the idea that "evil still lives in the world") is A.G. Ateev's favorite compositional and stylistic "hobby horse" (see the famous expressive image of the "black bird" in the finale of "Riddles of the Old Cemetery").

With reservations, one can recognize the "neo-Slavophile" (sometimes even with a touch of nationalism or harsh conservatism) and "neo-Western" (tolerant of various ideological constructs) positions of the writers (Vladimirov and Ateev, respectively). It is characteristic that A.P. Vladimirov gives his antagonists emphatically non-Russian, foreign-language names (Georg Herschel, Dan Sibirius in the novel "The Power of the Damned" (1999)), and the Slavic anthroponymy of his characters is a substitute for defenders of the Motherland and ascetics of the Russian faith (journalist Svetlana Dodonova in "The Tribe of Cain", artist Dmitry Ivashov in the novel 1999 G. "Temptation"). However, it can also be said that in the last period of his work (shortly before his death), A.P. Vladimirov partially departed from the trend of a "happy ending" in his works, and, for example, in the finale of one of the best late stories "The Overcoat – 2 (which Gogol did not mention)" (2020) (combining It combines the features of the so-called "continuation text" and "interpretation text" [see about this: 20]), not only the bright hypostasis of the image of a poor official (actually Akaky Bashmachkin) was presented, but also his "infernal" copy (Francois Apollonov).

The stylistic origins of the work of the two authors. The problem of intertextual connections

A.P. Vladimirova's style teachers in literature and culture (recognition and evidence of this have been repeatedly made both in the author's video lecture course "Technologies of the Creative process" on SSU-TV, and in numerous interviews with the writer): A.S. Green, E.T. Hoffman, N.V. Gogol and M.A. Bulgakov. The last two, despite Vladimirov's difficult attitude to the ideological layer of Bulgakov's works, undoubtedly influenced the modern fiction writer in terms of artistic language: cf. examples of ecphrasis from the "Show of Sinister Storytellers" ("There were hams, ruddy pies, silver fish on silver trays <once again, we note the seemingly annoying emphasis on the "silver", "unclean" (unreal) sign of wonderful food in this passage – <K.O.>, caviar glittered and sparkled with red and black sparks, honey glittered with gold, wine splashed in bottles" ^{[17, p. 106]}) with the famous description of Sobakevich's table in Gogol's "Dead Souls" (volume 1, 1842) or with exquisite dishes served by Professor Preobrazhensky in Bulgakov's "Heart of a Dog" (1925).

From S. King and D.R.R. Tolkien, A.P. Vladimirov borrowed the "running away – catching up" plot model, which was subtly used, for example, in the "Sinister Storytellers Show". It is difficult to overestimate the role of R.L. Stevenson for a modern author – the motif of duality, dating back to the images of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, has become dominant in such works by Vladimirov as "The Dark Face of the Doppelganger" (2009), "Doppelgangers. The Split of the World" (2011). A. Dumas, the father, influenced Vladimirova in terms of plot (a "twisted" plot, several plot plans) and the portrayal of types of heroes – for example, the Russian hunter characters of the "Wolf Thicket" veiledly refer to the signs of famous Musketeers: hawkmoth and brawler Athos, gluttony and the narrow-minded in general Porthos, the loving and cynical handsome Aramis (see: "Victor was already over forty. There was courage, will, and determination in his hard face and black prickly eyes. The second hunter was tall, fat, liked to eat well and was famous for his extraordinary strength. Next to Peter rode Nikolai, a man with a handsome but too pale and gloomy face. But the opposite of Nikolai was Ivan, a twenty–two-year-old dapper guy with a shock of shoulder-length curly white hair. He chatted and laughed endlessly" ^{[21, pp. 318-319]}).

The figurative ornamentation of W. Shakespeare's lyrics and dramaturgy is also in the first row of literary influences on A.P. Vladimirov's style. Among the phenomena and personalities of literary history highly appreciated by the novelist of the past and present are poems stylized by A.K. Tolstoy in the genre of "epic" (this was directly reflected in "The Tribe of Cain"), selected poetry of the Silver Age (I. Severyanin, V.V. Hoffman). However, the excessive inclusion of "epic" and "neo-folklore" elements in the narrative fabric of A.P. Vladimirova's works sometimes violates the artistic measure of "fiction" and "topicality", which makes it possible for some critics to fairly attribute such cases of "literary stylization game" to postmodern exercises such as "pastiche" or ironic intertext ("In the main The plot is chaotically inserted completely inexplicable chapters, retelling the plots of Russian epics in a postmodern manner. Vasily Buslaevich harasses vampires who love horror movies and punk rock on Sorochinskaya Hill, or Vasilisa Mikulichna leads the movement of Novgorod feminists" ^{[22, p. 279]}).

Stylistic and imaginative "phantasms" of K. Barker's fictional worlds with his fantastic monsters, asexual anthropomorphic entities (such as the "mystif" in the novel "Imajica", 1991), murderers with knives or crippled avengers with hooked hands like the creepy punisher "sweet tooth" Candyman (from the story of the British horror master "The Forbidden" (1985), A.P. Vladimirovu served as a visual basis for describing the types of immoral villains from the thriller "Messenger of the Night" (1999, in particular, the "timeless" killer on a motorcycle with a cold weapon), the fantasy novel "Utopia of Chaos" (2016) and the mystical and philosophical detective story "Charovnitsa. Confessions of a Witch" (the earthly version of the "eternal witch" Enchantress has a crippled hand after a terrible lynching by an angry crowd ("claw hand"), just like the Barker Candyman).

Vladimirov's novel "The Messenger of the Night", as well as the short stories "The Man in the Hat", "The Conspiracy of the Dead", "The Redhead" (from the cycle "Chronicles of Horrors", all in 1999) are connected by the theme of duality, and a common topos (the writer's constant and beloved Stary Oskol), and "through" characters (for example Colonel Fyodor Sazanov appears in "Messenger of the Night" and "The Redhead"). In the novel "The Conspiracy of the Dead", it is no coincidence that the author chose the name of the main character, which is strange for Russia, Cora (an obvious reference to the ancient Greek Persephone (whose middle name is Cora, from the other Greek ΚόΡη); the deceived woman seems to be taking revenge from the underworld on the betrayed people, and she, as the queen of the world of the dead, is subjugated for revenge to the unfaithful husband of the shadow of other dead and betrayed people). The motive-plot parallel is also applicable to this novel, typologically dating back to the story of D. Du Maurier "The Apple Tree" (1952; the motive of revenge of an already deceased wife, from the other world, to her husband) and to the plot of the already mentioned story of Candyman by K. Barker (a similar motive of betrayal of a wife by a frivolous husband and subsequent retaliation).

Other types of art that influenced the poetics of A.P. Vladimirova's literary metamir: painting by K.A. Vasiliev (pseudonym "Konstantin Velikoross") (as a sample shown in "The Tribe of Cain") and musical operetta (I. Kalman, I. Strauss, F. Legard, N.M. Strelnikov; again – in "The Tribe of Cain", for example, the part of Mr. X ("Back to where the sea of lights ...", from "Circus Princess" and. In the troubled mind of journalist Dodonova, the duet of Silva and Edwin (from Kalman's "Queen of Chardash" ("Die Zirkusprinzessin", 1926) is replaced by the duet of Silva and Edwin (from Kalman's "Queen of Chardash", 1915): "Do you remember how happiness smiled on us?"). Among other things, it should be noted that A.P. Vladimirov is stylistically very cautious about profanity (most often he uses punctuations -"hints" of obscenities).

The figurative and stylistic influence on the artistic specifics of most of A.G. Ateev's texts (according to an online interview with the writer ^[23]) was exerted by E. Poe's writings (but not the "horrors" themselves, but the detectives: "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), "The Gold Bug" (1842) – and it was during the early period of his passion for literature). The "Russian King of Horrors" (according to V.G. Tikhonov) was rather restrained towards the poetics of H.F. Lovecraft ("it is important for me that the mystical line does not dominate, but organically intertwines with the real life texture" ^[23], but not vice versa, as in the case of the completely invented worlds of the brilliant recluse from Providence) However, he loved and appreciated S. King very much, although he was far from his "style".

In the novel "Mad", Adelaida Abrikosova shows schoolteacher Oleg Tuzov a wonderful mandrake root – in her words, "the first witchcraft remedy" ^[19]; in "City of Shadows", the ancient practical guide "How to dig and use the mandrake root correctly" is also mentioned, which together is a very specific intertextual reference to the novel "Alraune: The Story of one Living Being" by an outstanding representative of the so-called "Prague" German-speaking school, G.G. Evers ("Alraune. Die Geschichte eines lebenden Wesens", 1911) – according to the medieval legends of many European peoples, "alrauns" were called spirits of lower beings who lived just in the roots of the mandrake. The image of the Old Mariner (as one of the characters in the City of Shadows is called) is a reminiscence of one of the artistic versions of the image of the "Eternal Wanderer" ("The Wandering Jew", "The Flying Dutchman", etc.) from the great poem by S.T. Coleridge "The Legend of the Old Mariner" ("The Rime of the Ancient Marinere", 1789).

Professionally engaged in numismatics, Ateev widely applied his knowledge of the semiotics of metal banknotes to literary realities and displayed impressive images of "diabolical" or "cursed" coins in novels and novels, described with meticulous and charming detail ("Bottom of the Mind").

If A.P. Vladimirova's musical favorites, leitmotivally mentioned in the space of the artistic metamir, are operetta and popular music ("ABBA", "Arabesque"), then A.G. Ateev's priorities of a sophisticated music lover (such as the writer himself and many of his characters) are the indefatigable "drive" of heavy rock. and romantic classics, thickly mixed with mysticism and "horrors" (for example, among the latter, in the novel "Mad" there is a non–accidental mention of "Devilish Trills" by G. Berlioz - there is probably an accidental author's contamination in the title: the actual work by D. Tartini called "The Devil's Trill" ("Il trillo del diavolo", circa 1713) and the 5th part of G. Berlioz's opus "The Fantastic Symphony" ("Symphonie fantastique", 1830), sometimes referred to as "The Witches' Sabbath" ("Songe d'une nuit du sabbat")). Ateev is very fond of rock stylistics (more precisely, hard-n-heavy images): the glam poetry of Alice Cooper (he has, among other things, a pronounced "terrible" beginning in the lyrics and album titles), the shocking symbolism of "black", "heavy metal" King Diamond and the neo-Gothic coldness of the lyrics of the band Lacrimosa); this fascination is reflected in the above-mentioned story "Black Vinyl" from the 2010 collection "Avatar of God".

A. G. Ateev bizarre twists in his works, like the Hebrew tradition (see the ironic transformation of the legend of "Dybbuk" (first literary processed in the drama S. A. An-sky's 1916 "Gadibuk" ("צווישן צוויי וועלטן - דער דִבּוּק") in one of the false stories in the novel "the Ninth life of evil", 2004), and the Slavic mythological dual images (see the "equilibrium" confrontation followers Chernobog and Belobog in the "City of shadows" – in fact gnosticisme-Manichaean, the author's motivation is inseparable Union of "good" and "evil" in the world).

By his own admission (from an earlier interview), the Russian classics are closest to A.G. Ateev: N.V. Gogol (the prose writer's favorite author), N.S. Leskov, A.K. Tolstoy (but, unlike Vladimirova, who appreciates the poet's linguistic "stylizations" for "antiquities" and "epics" Ateev is interested in Tolstoy's "terrible texts"). Among the contemporary artists of the word, it is worth noting such dissimilar writers as S.D. Dovlatov and Yu.I. Koval (A.G. Ateev turns out to be internally consonant with the "stingy", emotionless prose language of the "Russian American" Dovlatov ("stolen air" in the definition of the critic V.G. Bondarenko, from the well-known formula of O.E. Mandelstam) and the juicy, vivid imagery of Koval, the creator of the multilevel novel "the parchment" (1995 / 1998). The main literary levels for Ateev are "plot" and "style" ^[23]. Let's clarify that Vladimirov, among such constants, means "idea", "plot", "images" and "language ("syllable")". It is noteworthy that the two original authors never accepted a strict division into "low" and "high" literature, into "serious" and "frivolous" writers, singling out only "talented" and "not talented" written texts.

A.G. Ateev is more tolerant of obscene language than A.P. Vladimirov. As for the pictorial intertext of his prose work, Ateev's "Mad" contains a tapestry reproducing A. Durer's famous engraving "Knight, Death and the Devil" ("Ritter, Tod und Teufel", 1513), the iconographic imagery of which partially (for the most part suggestively) refers to the plot twists and turns of the entire Atheist metatext (and thus the author's meta-world), where there are companions, guides and thoughtful observers (as in a painting by a German master).

Both A.G. Ateev and A.P. Vladimirov experimented with the genres of "mass literature", going far beyond pure "horror" and detective works: for example, Ateev paid tribute to the genre of "secret service (conspiratorial) action in the book "Scorpion attacks first" (1998) (although it also contains elements of "horror" literature – for example, the scene of the death of a flighty skinhead from rats in an Old Moscow dungeon is very reminiscent of the creepy paintings from the story of H.F. Lovecraft "Rats in the Walls" ("The Rats in the Walls", 1924)), and Vladimirov managed to try himself in writing an alternative fiction story – in the manner of V.P. dystopia. Aksyonov's "The Island of Crimea" (1981) created the fantasy novel "The Ghost of the White Country" (2015) (according to the writer himself, the novel's idea was influenced, not least, by the famous K. Menol film in the genre of the alter-story "Fatherland" ("Fatherland", 1994; adaptation of the novel of the same name R. Harris, 1992). Even in his own "terrible" texts, A.P. Vladimirov conducts transparent political-fantasy allegories (in the acclaimed "Tribe of Cain", Cainite villains can be unambiguously understood as foreigners and strangers, and in Charovnitsa there is an even stronger immersion in modernity, even to the point of exposing the most pressing problems illegal migration, the war for Donbass, the uneven distribution of state wealth between the people and the ruling elite). Vladimirov wrote about the mysterious Egyptian pyramids ("False Absolute", 2012) almost in the spirit of E. von Daniken's "Chariots of the Gods" ("Erinnerungen an die Zukunft: Ungelöste Rätsel der Vergangenheit", 1968), which were once recognized as quasi-scientific; frequent mythological place names in his artistic search for the ancestral homeland of mankind are "Hyperborea" and "The Arctic."

Both authors tend towards pretentious (sometimes even overly pretentious), "enticing" titles of their opuses ("You will die in the Castle of Ghosts" (2000), "The Creator of Terrible Idols" (2010) by A.P. Vladimirova; "Avatar of God" (1991), "The Rosicrucian Code" (1997) by A.G. Ateev), which additionally highlights the "fictional" (in some ways downright "commercial") aspect of their work.

Relation to folklore and literary tradition. Reception of humanistic heritage in culture

A.P. Vladimirov was sincerely worried about the loss of kindness and a bright beginning in modern literary fairy tales and created new interpretations of famous fairy tales ("Go there – I don't know where, or Holy Simplicity" (in 10 parts, about Tsar Berendei), "Kolobok's Wanderings" – both 2019) and literary ("Alice through the Looking Glass: The Modern version" (2018), "Overcoat – 2 (what Gogol didn't mention)" (2020)) A.G. Ateev considers it "normal" and "positive" to have a subgenre of "children's horror stories and horror films" (this reflects the "sequel" trend of the artist's work of the word, additionally addressing the phenomenon of a "literary metamir" that is always "in its infancy" (in statu nascendi).going back to R.L. Stein) and calmly perceives (as a kind of "given" independent of man) the crisis of monotheistic religions (Christianity, Islam) in the modern world ^[23].

If we take the attitude to the humanistic tradition in culture, then A.P. Vladimirov (albeit with reservations) is a man of the "modern" era, a humanist, an opponent of any change in human nature: "chipping", "cloning", etc. ("The Last Times", 2018). In turn, A.G. Ateev is "indifferent" to these concepts in artistic creation, since he is interested in "pure entertainment". Both writers express a complex attitude towards "virtual reality", which sometimes, in their opinion, acquires shades of a truly "diabolical" design. For example, Ateev's Avatar of God, which, as a research perspective, would be interesting to compare with E.I. Parnov's novel The God of the Web (1997), closely intertwines the theme of the "terrible" and the "virtual" (human clones); among other things, Avatar of God has a subtle play on cultural concepts of the past (see the night club with the strange name "No Sfera Too", which forms an obvious "vampiric" context and a respectful homage to the cult film adaptation of B. Stoker's novel "Dracula" ("Dracula", 1897) ("Nosferatu, symphony of horror" ("Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens"), 1922, directed by F.V. Murnau).

Among the latest interpretations of scientific, philosophical and metaphysical problems by the two authors, it is worth highlighting the consideration of the phenomenon of "indigo children" ("Indigo is the race of the future" (2015) by A.P. Vladimirova) and the idea of mind migration, "metempsychosis" ("Crossroads"), solved in a "seriously ironic" (according to M.M. Bakhtin) way. razumov" (2010) by A.P. Ateev). In the space of the last of the stories, the "minds" and "souls" of her reckless motorcycle brother (whose vengeful will eventually overpower the rest of the "energy centers"), an elderly citizen Andrei Vladimirovich and a naturally shy lawyer Shlagbaum will converge (in the person of a fragile girl).

In conclusion, it is worth noting that the issues we stated in the title undoubtedly require more detailed and thorough research, and important questions that remain outside the scope of our work (about the influence of the two indicated compositional and stylistic trends in modern Russian horror literature on certain young authors, about the modification and conceptual "mobility" of data trends, etc.) should become a topic for the future of a large theoretical and literary work.