PLAYS OF ELENA POPOVA IN THE CONTEXT OF RUSSIAN DRAMA OF THE «NEW WAVE» (AUTHOR’S STRATEGIES FOR THE ARTISTIC INTERPRETATION OF THE WORLD AND HUMAN)

The comparative-typological aspect of Russian and Belarusian dramatic art research in the end of the ХХ and the beginning of the ХХI centuries remains actual and prior in modern literary criticism. In the article we researched plays by famous Belarusian (Russian) playwright E. Popova in the context of the «new wave» of Russian drama (L. Petrushevskaya, A. Galin, A. Kazantsev, V. Slavkin, L. Razumovskaya, M. Arbatova). We try to reveal the relationship between the plays of these playwrights in the end of the ХХ and the beginning of the ХХI centuries at the level of the hero, conflict, chronotope. Our aim is to single out two main authorial strategies, which reflect difficult relationships between man and post-Soviet society, – social-existential and existential. It predetermined study methods: biographical, historical-literary and comparative.

The typological affinity of their plays of the 1970 – 1980-ies was a natural consequence of a uniform historical context, the general Soviet reality which have generated similarity of attitude, an author’s position, a foreshortening of a new hero aesthetic searches who has become a disturbing symptom of the “stagnant” time, and has reflected the opposites of private and public, moral and spiritual relativism and conformism. In the end of the ХХ and the beginning of ХХI centuries there was a cardinal change of social and cultural paradigms, which led to «a mutation of stereotypes deeply taken roots in Soviet period» (Y. Levada), valuable «accent changes», therefore, total loneliness, confusion and vulnerability of the person were extremely bared. The generality of genetic Belarus and Russia relations, affinity of separate aspects of social and cultural conditions which have developed on the post-Soviet territory, have defined the problems of «transitive» time which has reflected both social crisis, and destructive inwardness of the modern person (self-identity loss, loss of personal integrity, wreck of moral and ethical hierarchy).

As a result of the study we proved changes in authorial strategies of representatives of E. Popova and «new wave» of Russian dramaturgy are traced in 1990-2000-ies, which had not previously been the subject of literary analysis. For the first time, the general tendencies and principal differences in the development of Belarusian and Russian dramaturgy of the end of the ХХ and the beginning of the ХХI centuries were revealed.