HOUSE, DOOR AND WINDOW IN GOGOL’S EVENINGS ON A FARM NEAR DIKANKA AND SEMIOTICS OF THE EASTERN SLAVIC HOUSE

Abstract

The article discusses Gogol's mythopoetics of the house considered in the context of the Eastern Slavic ritual culture. Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka reflects the cosmogony, social and communicative aspects of meanings related to the structuring of the house space. Gogol emphasizes the special role of the house already on the description level, which, being quite detailed, is saturated with socio-characterological and / or cosmological meanings: it helps to introduce the reader into the world of the character, and to locate the character in the universal mythological space. In cosmological terms, the house in Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka is an intersection point of the vertical, linking heaven and hell, and horizontal, social and routine, organization of space. From a social point of view, the house is, above all, the kin, the family. Gogol's house is strongly associated with the world of the family: the creation of a new family is the construction of a new house. In his story, the writer preserved many gender-generational signs in the structure of East Slavic dwellings based on the location of male and female characters, parents and children. In the plots of Gogol's stories built on love-adventurous conflicts, domestic life of the female half, going exclusively inside the house, is moved to the background, and women appear in communicative situations, in moments of contact with the outside world, that are often genetically related to the rituals of courtship. In these rituals, a significant act is crossing the border - the door and the threshold. In Slavic folklore, the wedding, a ritual of initiation, overlaps with the funeral and includes images of death, penetration in the other world, contact with the ancestors. In Evenings, the instance that determines the legality or illegality of the guest's presence and the possibility of his contact with the female half, especially in the form of courtship, is always the owner, a man, a kind of a guardian of the border. This is determined by the publicity of their position in the family community where they are the ones to carry out authorized communication. Free communication of inhabitants of one village is a distinctive feature in the world of Evenings, which reflects the collective nature of family life and strength of social ties. "Visitality" requires special attention to the act of crossing the border - the threshold of the owner's home, the area thoroughly regulated in the East Slavic rites. The opening of the door at the entrance and exit for the hosts and guests is significant, it is accompanied by a "micro-rite" of the meeting, farewell and seeing off. The role of the house as a center of ritual also includes the information and regulatory function. Joint meeting at home and storytelling in Evenings, as in the title, determined the genre itself and the cyclization principle. Evenings, on the one hand, are the space of wedding and love games that should result in the construction of a new house; on the other hand, they are a reason for transmitting important information, ancestral memory, sometimes in the narrative form of true stories and legends. For the gathered people they are mythological precedents of the "old time" set to prevent "abnormal" behavior, and to establish its ethical and ritual norm.