Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
1104222 Russian Literature 2007 24 Pages PDF
Abstract

The three tales in The Monkey Link, Andrei Bitov's “pilgrimage novel”, seem disparate but share an array of motifs. The central tale, ‘Man in a Landscape’, is an Aesopian tour de force recapitulating in miniature the novel's unifying design. Its basic element is a spiral: retracing his route in memory, “the author” reaches deepening levels of self-knowledge. The spiral is intersected by an elaborate set of parallels to Dante – mischievously inverted and perverted – as “the author” searches for his Russian soul in the sunset of the Soviet empire. Insights generated at points of intersection are dramatized later in the novel.

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Social Sciences and Humanities Arts and Humanities Language and Linguistics