The poetics of light and darkness in Valentin Rasputin's prose

Abstract

The theme of light and darkness is one of the structural constructs of Rasputin's fictional world, the analysis of which reveals the originality of writer’s artistic and philosophical thinking and the inherited medieval aesthetics. The predominance of motifs of sunlight, candles, rainbow, burning stars associated with a belief in the prospect of harmonization, the spiritual resurrection of the world and man on the basis of traditional values (generic, Christian) is cus-tomary for author's early texts. In his late texts the writer resorts to light sym-bolism usuallyin a religious context. However, dominant is the idea of personal self-identity. Orthodox symbolism speaks with the language of aesthetics, dra-wing entirely new meanings.