“The Undertaker” (“Grobovshchik”) in dispute with the genre of the fantastic story

Abstract

A. S. Pushkin’s “The Undertaker” is considered in the genre context of a fantastic story. In the 1820s begins the formation of this prose form in Russian literature. At that time, the works are still heterogeneous, but quite clearly show some common tendencies. By depicting the “invasion” of the supernatural, the early fantastic story initiates doubt in the reader about the established worldview only to lead him or her to an “outcome” of the fantasy plot. Such an outcome, as a rule, lies outside the aesthetic sphere — it is either a moral admonition, an appeal to the principles of a certain philosophical system, or an explicated question about order of the world. The fantastic itself has a purely service role. Although many features of “The Undertaker” (the plot, the image of the hero, the depiction of an emphatically domestic setting, etc.) indicate a high degree of its traditionality in relation to the fantastic story of the 1820s, Pushkin violates the genre canon at its very foundation. The possibility of problematizing the fantastic plot and, as a consequence, of resolving it in any of the traditional ways mentioned above is eliminated from the narrative. The author’s play with literary conventions creates a whole system of allusions to the “dualistic world” principle (“dvoemirie”) of the story’s organization, but consistently reduces its symbolic dimension. The coexistence of life and death, not being destroyed within the plot level by the “intrusion” of the supernatural, gives the artistic world completeness and integrity. The comprehension of the problem of human existence returns to the realm of art, and literary fantastic becomes free from its service purpose.