Время двух пандемий в „Повести о смерти” Марка Алданова

Abstrakt

One of the key subjects of M. Aldanov’s A Novel about Death is the cholera pandemic of 1847–50. The author of this article views Aldanov’s work in the context of history, medical science, poetics, philosophy and aesthetics and applies the historical-literary and cultural-historical methods of research. Doing so demonstrates how the phenomenon of the pandemic is construed by M. Aldanov in the paradigm of the philosophy of a happenstance. The article traces how the motif of sickness in A Novel about Death is intertwined with Aldanov’s attempts to comprehend the strive for revolutions that engulfed Europe, and analyzes in detail how the use of a morbid code is metaphorically extrapolated on the entirety of issues raised in the novel.