Information about the author:
Viktor M. Guminsky
Viktor M. Guminsky, DSc in Philology, Director of Research, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7837-178X
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Abstract:
The paper is a kind of historical, literary and cultural commentary on individual passages form the poem “The Star of Dawn” in their correlation with the pilgrimage tradition. The poem is placed on a par with other epic works by M. Lasuria (“The Golden Fleece”, “Fatherland”), and in its epic scale with Homer’s “Iliad”, “The Epic of Gilgamesh”, the Nart Epic, and Dante’s “Divine Comedy”. This epic monumentality fits into a certain geographical space (route: Sukhum — Moscow — Jerusalem — Bethlehem) and an equally certain time frame (2016–2017), which expands before our eyes to infinity, absorbing the confessional nature of the narrative with deeply personal, even family-intimate details. A comparison of “The Star of Dawn” with “The Voyage of St. Brendan” reveals a theme important to the author’s concept in M. Lasuria’s poem: the hero’s attainment of the desired goal — a return to his homeland, his spiritual homeland. Thus, medieval Ireland, 21st- century Abkhazia, J. Bunyan, A. Pushkin, V. Sokolov are brought together.
