Abstract:

The concept of “turn of the century” in Western languages borrowed from French Fin de Siècle literally refers to “the end of the century”. The term corresponds with konets veka [конец века], which means “the end of the century” as well in Russian literary theory. The concept also determines the general principles of the artistic and intellectual creative process, which is called the Silver Age and dated to variable years by different researchers. The Silver Age is considered to have lasted approximately from the last decade of the 19th century to the first quarter of the 20th century. In this study, one of the important representatives of the Silver Age literature Zinaida Nikolayevna Gippius’ Fiction: An Evening Story [Вымысел: Вечерний рассказ] is analyzed. It is aimed to evaluate the author’s approach to the problem of “free will”, which is frequently discussed in turn of the century Russian literature through the Gothic perspective that suits the pessimistic spirit of the age. The story appeared in I. A. Pankeyev’s Silver Age Gothic Prose [Готическая проза Серебряного века] published in 2009 as a Gothic text. The story takes its name from the tradition of “evening/night stories”, which is a narrative method frequently used in Gothic literature. This tradition is spread to Western literature by The Arabian Nights (One Thousand and One Nights) and to Russian literature through romanticism. It prepares a suitable ground for the reflection of the dark imagination embraced in the Silver Age. The sense of uncanny dominates these evening meetings, where fictional characters come together to tell each other mysterious stories until the late hours of the night and it provides the texts a Gothic atmosphere. In this study, Gippius’ interpretation of “evening stories” is read from a motif-centered perspective and the world of twilighty motifs that Silver Age prose shares with the Turn of the Century Gothic [Fin de Siècle Gothic], which has recently been introduced to the literary theory is analyzed. It is concluded that at the turn of the century, while scientific developments made life easier, the rapid progress of technological innovations, which is difficult to keep up with, the exploitation of people under a series of wars and rapid urbanization awaking the sense of alienation lead to uncertainty in society. Therefore, Silver Age literature is flourished on the axis of a dualist reception, fed by the ambiguous atmosphere created by challenging conditions typical of that period and this development is reflected through Gothic motifs in Fiction: An Evening Story.