Concept of HORROR in Prose of Silver Age (“Vampiric” Stories of A. Amphiteatrov)

This study examines the novella writing of A. Amphiteatrov within the context of the “vampiric” prose tradition. The novelty of this research lies in its exploration of the specific representation of the concept of HORROR in the author’s stories for the first time. It is established that in Amphiteatrov's novellas, terror arises from a total sense of hopelessness and the characters' inability to comprehend their circumstances. Notably, in the story “He,” the means of representing the concept of HORROR include a gothic chronotope and a vampire, which disrupts the characters' ordinary lives and places the protagonist in a realm of uncontrollable terror intertwined with passion and an intense desire for closeness with the object of attraction. It is demonstrated that in “The Cimmerian Illness” and “The Story of One Madness,” the embodiment of the examined concept occurs through the figure of the vampire, which serves as an allusion to a character in the poem “The Corinthian Bride.” The authors conclude that the concept of HORROR in Amphiteatrov’s analyzed novellas contributes to the formation of a discourse on the abnormal and psychopathic in Russian Silver Age literature: characters confronted with infernal forces experience pathological horror — stemming from their inability to delineate the boundaries between the real and the unreal, the rational and the irrational, as well as from their awareness of disorientation in the “real” world and ultimately, the loss of self.