Werewolfism as a way to gain transcendent reality (on the material of Yuri Mamleyev's short stories «The Teacher», Martha Ketro's «The Fox Wife» and Dmitry Vodennikov's «Confession of a Chinese Fox-Werewolf»)

The article analyzes the image of a werewolf fox, formed in the Far Eastern mythological tradition and Russified in the stories of Russian authors Yuri Mamleev, Marta Ketro and Dmitry Vodennikov. The motive of werewolf among these writers has an indefinite character: on the one hand, werewolf can be understood literally by them, on the other ‒ as a metaphor (for example, feminine nature or poetic otherness). The werewolf foxes in the stories "The Teacher", "The Fox Wife", "The Confession of the Chinese Werewolf Fox" are placed by the authors in the Russian cultural and everyday context of the 1980s and the 1990s of the XXI century and are embedded in the space of a changing but unrelenting Russian spiritual search. In these works, they act as spiritual seekers and mentors in contact with two worlds, striving for a transcendent reality and revealing it to people. The presented article was written as part of a large study on the "Chinese text" of modern Russian literature. In addition to these works, it mentions some domestic novels, which also feature a werewolf fox. The relevance of the article is determined by the active interest of Russian literary criticism in borderline, intercultural phenomena that give rise to new artistic meanings. One of these phenomena is the Far Eastern werewolf fox, whose image variants have appeared in recent years among a large number of Russian writers. The relevance of the article also lies in the constantly expanding links between Russian and Chinese cultures. The novelty of the article is determined by the comparison made for the first time between the mentioned texts in the aspect of different and at the same time similar development and understanding by writers of different generations and different aesthetic attitudes of the image of the werewolf fox.

Yuri Mamleev, Marta Ketro, Dmitry Vodennikov, werewolf fox, Chinese tradition, Japanese tradition, bestiality, werewolfism, russification, transcendent reality