“Queen of Spades” and “Petty Demon”: Pushkinian Allusions and Their Functions in F. Sologub’s Novel

The problems of the undertaken research are associated with the uncertainty of the semantic mechanisms of intertextual interaction between Sologub’s novel “The Petty Demon” and Pushkin’s story “The Queen of Spades”. In the research literature, particular overlaps between these works have been noted, but the systemic semantic connection between these two texts has not yet been identified, which determines the relevance of the article. The hypothesis of the work is that Pushkin’s “Queen of Spades” serves as a structural prototype for Sologub’s novel “The Petty Demon.” This structural prototype collects individual reminiscent elements of Sologub’s text into a single semantic plot-organized unit. The purpose of the study is to identify the constructive elements of this prototype in Sologub’s novel using the method of semantic comparative analysis. As a result, it was proved that Sologub uses the key semantic blocks of Pushkin’s “Queen of Spades”, while in the recipient text these blocks include both themes and motives and images. Significant elements include: the theme of cards, the motive of card addiction, the motive of madness, the motive of pragmatic marriage, “double” infernal female images. It is shown that the specificity of the implementation of this narrative structure in Sologub’s text is associated with the inversion of pathos: Pushkin's ironic pathos is transformed into burlesquetragic, and tragic connotations are embedded in the paradigm of the comic. All this allows us to conclude that the grotesque-parody function is the key for the intertextual dialogue between Sologub and Pushkin.

The Queen of Spades, The Petty Demon, A.S. Pushkin, F. Sologub, structural prototype, parody strategies, inversion, mysticism of cards