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Abstract:

The article studies how the elements of the “estate text” function in the novel “Paths of Heaven” by I.S. Shmelev. The author of the study, based on the typology of V.G. Shchukin, finds and characterizes these elements in the structure of the literary work. In the second volume of the novel, one can find motifs, images, details, plot twists characteristic of the “estate text”: arrival at the native nest, a fresh morning the next day, images of an old house, a library, a linden alley, a flower garden, an old ser- vant, a pure spiritualized girl, a motive of gratifying nostalgic sadness, etc. The “estate text” of Shmelev is supported by the Turgenev context: the space, in which the action takes place in the second volume, is the Tula — Oryol places where “The Hunter’s Sketches” were created, where Spasskoye-Lutovinovo and Turgenevo are located. For the emigrant writer, this topos has a special semantics denoting the lost homeland. The article concludes that the elements of the “estate text” play a symbolic role in the ideological aspect of the novel: through the estate space, the characters move towards spiritual salvation, towards inner rebirth. In this regard, in the artistic structure of the “Paths of Heaven”, the “estate text” undergoes a kind of semantic inversion: the estate is conceived not as a paradise lost or being lost, but on the contrary, as a paradise found, as a gift for the suffering experienced and fidelity to God.