Michaił Zoszczenko a doświadczenie melancholii

• Authors: Aurelia Kotkiewicz

Title variants

EN

Mikhail Zoshchenko and melancholy

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

Melancholy is usually associated with the feeling of satiety, fatigue, suffering, and longing for things lost. However, this particular kind of sensibility can also be perceived as an embodiment of ahigher intellect, asource of inspiration, and ahealing power. Melancholy accompanied Zoshchenko all his life. The writer gave it different names but always saw it as adisease which he, as aman and awriter, had to fight. The time when Zoshchenko lived and created his works was not favourable for his concentration on the analysis of his psychological state. The epoch of radical changes in ethical and aesthetic values, of belittling the role of the individual and glorifying the group required different personality traits and different protagonists who should be strong, healthy and unreflective. For Zoshchenko, the way to achieve mental health lay in an attempt to combine the scientific explanation of the causes of melancholy and acultural dialogue on the level of cultural signs. The writer’s “I” is represented in his works by areal, mentally disturbed and highly sensitive artist as well as his doubles: professor Volosatov in Youth Restored, the host of “superfluous men” in Sentimental Tales, Michel Sinyagin, the narrator in Before Sunrise and The Blue Book. They are all contrasted to strong, physically and psychically healthy people, who become the object of their envy. Melancholy, which Zoshchenko tried to cope with all his life, became astimulus for his writing, asoul-saving force, adefense mechanism, and finally — asource of self-knowledge and inner development.

Keywords

EN

melancholy; Zoshchenko; health; disease; self-knowledge; меланхолия; Зощенко; здоровье; болезнь; самопознание

• Publisher: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wroclawskiego
• Journal: Slavica Wratislaviensia
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 158
• Pages: 259 - 267

Contributors

author

Aurelia Kotkiewicz

• Uniwersytet Pedagogiczny w  Krakowie, Polska