Tradition and intertext in S. N. Durylin’s play Don-Juan

Abstract

The article analyzes the previously unexplored play by S. N. Durylin Don-Juan (1908), which is important for identifying the writer’s creative establishment. Durylin’s innovation in the interpretation of the archetypical plot about Don Juan is considered. Following A. S. Pushkin and in dispute with him, Durylin creates a new version of how we can interpret the hero. The author first introduces the image of the Bright Maiden as the protagonist of the play about Don Juan. In such a manner, he shifts the semantic accents of the text: this plot is not about retribution, like Pushkin’s, but rather about the forgiveness of the hero by the Light Virgin. The marker for this conceptual bias is the replacement of the statuary characters. Durylin has a Statue of the Light Maiden, not a Commander. The interpretation of the famous plot is shown in the context of the Silver Age of Russian literature. In pursuit of his beloved, he is ready to sacrifice his most precious life. The figure of Don Juan, frozen on a horse before the precipice, beyond which the expanse of the sea is revealed, undoubtedly evokes in his readers’ memory the image of the bronze horseman with the entire complex of eschatological meanings actualized not only by Blok, but also by other symbolists. In this image and its almost statuary completion, Durylin indisputably creates an artistic forecast of the historical future, foreboding the discontinuity of the foundations of Russian life.