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Black Monkey’). Egor from ‘The Pathologies’ is the only one takes responsibility to become a father, i. e. to set an example, therefore his fate works out well.

In Zakhar Prilepin’s literary world a father’s figure gets close to a God figure. Losing the father, Prilepin’s male character loses for a time the orientation in the living space. The dividing force behind Sankya- a party-member is a melancholy

fatherless seeking those, he is needed as a son [9*, p.145].

It is important to emphasize that all of his comrades are also fatherless. After his father’s death, the main character is separated from the homelands, the family and the past. At the same time, when he returns in the village with his father’s coffin, Sasha for the first time cries out to the Lord, blaming Him for the meaningless of his life.

How foolish it is, the God! — I wanted to scream. [9*, p.109].

The episodes of this type can be seen in ‘The Pathologies’. The main difference of the ploys is that Sasha loses his father already being a young man whereas Egorka was a small boy, therefore the last one expressed his pain as a child. His first appeal to the God was the phrase of despair which was written after his father’s death:

After the funeral I came back home, put the kettle on, began to sweep the floor. Then I threw the broom and with the jingling of the rusty kettle I wrote on the wall: 'Oh my God, a purulent vampire', - I remembered how to spell the letter 'v' [4*, p.42].

This naive and furious abuse made a mark in Egor’s image. The character blames the God as well as his father who ‘leaved’ him and dared to die.

My father couldn’t leave me [4*, p.40],

Egor thought at six years olds — and nevertheless he left.

Suffering a severe shock in his childhood, the character began to have doubts about the God’s majesty. After spending the most part of his life without love, he connects it with the feeling of orphanage from childhood:

Believe those people who can doubt, whose doubts are unsolvable. Those who can’t settle their own doubts start to believe. Wild animals haven’t got any doubts, so they don’t need to believe in something. But a man sees his/her doubts in absolute terms

[4*, p.51].

Losing his father, Egor has left the belief. Especial sons’ worries have been shown in ‘Abode’ by Prilepin. The main character, Artyom Goryainov serves time for his father’s murder. This fact has a huge semantic charge. The character does not just lose his father; he kills him for the betrayal by his own hands. In the Christian context he breaks two commandments: ‘You shall not murder’ and ‘Honour your father and your mother’. In the act of his father’s murder there is an allusion connected with Ham (Noah’s son): Artyom kills his father for ‘the nakedness’. In ‘Above’ the writer gives the explanation of the connection between father and God, putting his words into the main character’s mouth:

— God is naked here. I don’t want to see the naked God. God on Solovki is naked. I don’t want Him anymore. I’m ashamed of Him. <…> found himself seeing not God, but my own father — naked — and told about him. <...> God is my father. But I killed

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him. So there’s no God anymore. Only me, son. I’m the Holy Spirit myself [10*, p.664665].

There is a parallel with many others Prilepin’s characters, where the succession of family lineages in the male line is the key asserts for preserving race and motherland as a whole. The boy should love his father, i. e. identify him with God. In an effort to be more like his father ‘a Russian guy’ goes through a sophisticated growing-up and over the years he assumes the role of his all-powerful father.

Father must be beautiful and inaccessible, all his non-perfect sides must be unknown.

That’s why Artyom says:

That woman… It wasn’t so hurt that he was with her… It was terrible that he was naked. I killed my father for the nakedness [10*, p.462].

Zakhar Prilepin provides his characters with his inner emotions he felt in his past. For example:

When my father died, I was very young and I was worried that he never spoke with me, never gave me advice. Then, many years later, having my own children, I understood that was the proper behavior. I never speak dogmatically with my sons: ‘Come along, son, I’ll teach you to use the plane’. Because only human example is a sample of ideal upbringing [5*].

To kill for the nakedness — i. e. for the confession of having humanistic, usual, nonperfect, weakly features.

This quotation corpus confirms that in Zakhar Prilepin’s literary world God and father are the same great figures. Moreover, even not a father is as great as God, but God looks like a father. And when the father disappeared from the main character’s life, the main character began to have doubts in God’s greatness and power.

In his publicism Zakhar Prilepin is in the character’s father position, and naturally he is far from deifying himself. For example, in his essay ‘Three eras of coming-of-age. Angels, surrounded by father’ the author calls himself

Arina Rodionovna [3*, p.115];

The merry milkman [3*, p.115];

The stone wall is made of a red unshaven brick [3*, p.116].

and another both self-mocking and tender childhood nicknames. Children in this case are ‘angels’, i. e. ‘celestials’.

Zakhar Prilepin’s publicistic tone contrasts with the pathetics of fates of all his ‘lost’ characters, who can’t give a single answer to the question.

And I understood, it is possible to prove something only by setting your own example, that family gives you a lot. Do that and you’ll never feel very lonely [11*].

Zakhar Prilepin provides his characters with his own feelings, he had in the past. For example:

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When my father died, I was very young, and I was worried that he never talked to me, never gave me a single advice. Then, years later, having my own children, I understood that was the right behavior. I have never talked to my sons dogmatically.

‘Come along, son, I’ll teach you to use the plane’. Because only human example is a sample of the ideal upbringing [5*].

The using of verbal means such as ‘Do that’, ‘example’ in Zakhar Prilepin’s publicistic speech is symptomatic.

There are utterances, possessing ‘factualiziruyuschy modus’, i. e. those that present

‘reality as the knowledge, getting the result of logical and thought processes or in the result of the constant surveillance (review) or the experience in author’s essay, that is devoted to the problems between children and their parents [17, p.68].

For example, the words ‘must’, ‘fact’, ‘inevitably’, ‘I’m sure, I know’, ‘need’:

‘We must treat to every child as a national treasure’ [3*, p.88];

It’s an objective fact. Large families have lived there before us and we’ve been born there too. Mixed human emotions … will inevitably make you more wiser, more observant and sharp-sighted. [3*, p.93-94];

I’m still sure that we’ve behaved in the right way [3*, p.99];

I know that he’s not a ‘nabalovok’ [3*, p.99];

It is clear that the current education is intended on a one-child family [3*, p.113];

Firstly, it is necessary to ask the state. [3*, p.148]

(about the problem of large families).

These quotations and lexical units of factualiziruyuschy modus, using in them, confirm that in his essays and interviews Prilepin adopts a role of an all-knowing teacher of life, suggesting the answers, but in his literary creation — he only asks questions.

In 2008 there was much discussion in the press between the banker Pyotr Aven and Zakhar Prilepin. It is notable that the writer has never hesitated to take part in literary scandals, he always openly responds to the opponents in the media and social networks. (The discussion over ‘The Letter to Comrade, Stalin’, the writer’s trips to the Donbass and etc.)

These discussions are the reason for expressing thoughts about the same subject from different perspectives (for different readers), creating ‘a composition’ from texts, which can be a mini-collection. As Nora Buhks writes in the book ‘The semiotics of the scandal’ ‘scandal isolates the event from the flow of routine and transforms it into a separate text. Therefore any scandal, the participants of which are symbolic figures, can intends on autonomous existence in the category of artistic convention’ [18, p. 8].

Also Prilepin’s texts addressed to Aven and his supporters tend to be ‘a diptych’ of discourses about Russia and its nation.

What is more, the discussion with Pyotr Aven was the reason for analysis by Zakhar

Prilepin his own attitude to the characters of his works. In the notion ‘I didn’t want to be serious, but I have to’ the writer notes the similarity of the views, belonging to him personally and his characters.

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As a result I should be responsible not only for my characters but also for myself

[12*].

Prilepin writers that he as well as his characters ‘have done and overdone’ civic duty and mention ‘apocalyptic’ presentiments according to the earth’s future’. The characters in Prilepin’s books, in the author’s opinion, looking for happiness but not suffering.

It is notable Prilepin’s utterances:

I guess that the characters of my book often feel that way. (even several of my books)

[12*];

I’m not really sweating my rightness, and I’m not sure in it, I only seek it (what I tell to discriminating readers about in my novel over and over again, directly and indirectly) [12*].

This uncertainty of his position ‘guess’, ‘not sure in the rightness’ opposes the derisive tone of the article as a whole (for example, in evidence of carrying out civic duty to send Aven cleaned socks, washed by himself).

No matter how much Zakhar Prilepin noted the similarity of his views with Tishin’s position from ‘Sankya’, the difference between the author’s and the character’s mindfulness is obvious. Compare Sankya’s description, who is the ‘lost fatherless’.

To achieve the power he never thought seriously, he wasn’t interested in it, he didn’t know what to do with it [9*, p.114].

With a self-assured, assertive Prilepin’s discourses about the current situation in the country:

It was noted that at that time, while I emphasized statistics, quoted figures about street children and unemployed, took care of demography and geography, my irritated conversants began their answers with the words: ‘But my neighbor’, ‘But I have’, ‘But me’, ’But my classmate’ (the essay ‘I really don’t understand’ [12*]).

This comparison helps to see: the literary character’s blind, almost childish desire to get the power, just because he ‘wants’, but not for something concrete opposes the author’s view, who presets himself as analyzing, taking care of all the researcher and the reformer of Russian life. Prilepin apologizes to the opponents for saying ‘trivial and obvious’ things, and closing the range of main interests on family and motherland, notes:

I’ve made every effort so that this Government doesn’t hold it against me. I’ve grown the garden, have nursed my race and will continue to grow and nurse [12*].

The purpose of the irony in Prilepin’s publicistic quotations is to solve two main problems: ‘First, it’s an intellectually veiled mockery, which can put the object of the mockery in the worst light. Second, the ability to mock bigs up the status of the subject himself/herself, strengthening its competence and significance’ [14, p. 59].

Among Zakhar Prilepin’s literary characters-protagonists with few exception hardly family men, though married men expose. What is more, the sweethearts of these characters have also shown no inclination to become wives and mothers. For example, Dasha’s lighthearted behavior from ‘The Pathologies’ and Yana’s phrase from ‘Sankya’ ‘I don’t like children’ [9*, p.156] said not to the point have been proved it.

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When Yana-revolutionary, taking care for the future of her country confesses to the antipathy to children, Prilepin-publicist actively and convincingly proves the necessity to support large families and teens’ quality education for the purpose of revival of Russia ( essays ‘The National Idea’, ‘We’ve already invented’, ‘The Air Balloon Flight in the ideal company’, ‘One day in the life of the large family’, ‘Homeless elders in orange jackets’, ‘Skeptic, bites your lip [3*] and etc.)

In his publicism Zakhar Prilepin has noted many times that a woman (as well as a man) can’t establish herself, deliberately refraining from the childbearing. The essays ‘Good People’, ‘Girl, where did you get so big children?’ [3*] Zakhar Prilepin develops religious and love themes:

Holy Mother is the one who had a baby [3*, p.132].

However, common corpus of Zakhar Prilepin’s publicistic texts is almost free of Godseeking motives, the author concerns this subject very rarely, and in one of his essays he expresses the follow utterance:

‘You’re an atheist’, my wife said quietly. I looked at her also quietly and felt nothing. <…> God exists. I know that for a fact. But my knowledge is free of any tremble and the feeling of belonging to something unknown and great [3*, p.243].

Although the archetype of a devout person didn’t meet in the author’s literary works, it is notable that the phrase opposes conceptual Prilepin characters’ view of the world and fatherhood. Prilepin’s protagonists often appeal to God in the moments of despair.

We would cite as an example Egor Tishin from ‘The Pathologies’: the character argues a lot about the religion and the Divine Providence with his co-worker called ‘The Monk’. Despite Egor invariably contests his comrade’s orthodox maxims (sententiae), the hope for God’s power flicks more than once in the moments of the highest hazard. In such moments he appeals to the Heaven with unskinful prayers:

Oh my God, please not right now! Let’s a bit later, dear God! My dear, good, please not right now! [4*, p.61]

Should I pray or something? — I think. I don’t know any prayer. Mercy me-Mercy me

–Mercy me-Mercy me… [4*, p.176]

— before a complicated task, and, finally, in the process of the final ‘blood bath’, when his co-workers keep dying, Egor thinks:

Now we get out of here and it’s over! Mercy me, God! Forgive me, God! I’ll never, no one, never again! [4*, p.306].

We should note Artyom Goryainov’s attitude to God. We would cite as an example, one of the brightest episodes of the novel: ‘Abode’: the mass prisoners’ confession on

Sekirka (Sekirnaya Mount). While all the prisoners reach out for the priests, repent and ask them mercy, Artyom accepts all his sins, he is almost proud of them:

What a wealth I have! I’m as if in beggar’s lice. As if in orders! Is there any sin I don’t have? [10*, p.562].

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Moreover, in the half-feverish dreams Artyom sees the sins in the forms of a lot of fish, eating each other, which ‘tilt out’ of him and the character is not going to absolve of the sins.

Artyom got them back: my, me, my, me, back there, where are you going? [10*, p.566].

So, Artyom Goryainov stands in the way of the theomachy that implies the belief in God, but an obvious disagreement with the laws of his world.

These quotations is proved that Zakhar Prilepin’s characters, certainly, believe in God, but they don’t agree with his acts and tend to contest God’s existence. Nevertheless, in the difficult moments of life the characters appeal to God with unskillful prayers.

The characters’ theomachy principally differs from ‘atheism’, in which Zakhar Prilepin confesses in his essay ‘It’s wonderful without wonders’ in a certain way. This is atheism, of course, of a special kind: Prilepin-publicist considers that there are plenty of wonders in the world, which are definitely positive, ‘delightful’, unusual events don’t require no God’s action. Prilepin’s characters, on the contrary, don’t agree with God’s actions but they confess their independence of Him.

It’s also interesting to estimate Prilepin’s characters and Prilepin-publicist’s attitude to it. It is easy to note that the author shows all protagonists in his literary works at the moment of the mental disorder and tragic life events: Sasha Tishin takes part in the awful revolutionary events. Egor Tashevsky is in the war, Artyom Goryainov is in the camp, the character of

‘The Black Monkey’ goes mad and etc. In the meantime Prilepin-publicist highlights his positive attitude to life in every possible way that sometimes seems inconceivable (plausive):

I’ve never been in a bad mood, i. e. melancholy [7*];

I’ve never been in a bad mood or suffered from depression [13*];

We’ve been remarkably poor [3*, p.97];

I’m not complaining, I’m boasting [3*, p.113].

Hence, the author’s optimistic life position contradicts dramatic conflicts in characters’

lives.

Characters-protagonists’ comparative analysis of Prilepin’s fiction and authorial ‘I’, presented in publicism, give us the follow results:

Scientific Newsletter of Voronezh State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering

To summarize, it should be noted that the based motives of Zakhar Prilepin’s creation activity are the motives of fatherhood, family, race, motherland and God. The writer’s texts of different styles are differed not only by the proprietary assessment, but also by the interpretation of the main motives. The author’s literary works imply much stronger nuances both in the problem statement and in the way of supposed decisions. It is obvious, among other issues, proceeding from speech means and images. Thus, in Prilepin’s publicism it is found very often the lexical units of the factualiziruyuschy modus, it is also used documentary images of his family’s members. The author himself plays a part of a happy father with many children. In the writer’s literary works characters’ images presented in hard life situations, fatherless children seeking their fathers come to the fore. These characters allow focusing on ‘accursed questions’, which are one of the main components of modern literature. The following questions are central in Prilepin’s literary world: ‘Is God exists?’ ‘What is the true fatherhood?’ ‘How should we bring up our children?’ ‘What can we do for our nation? What is its future?’ At the same time the author’s publicistic image doesn’t allow him to leave these questions without answers. For this reason the writer in his essays and interviews, based on lots of examples and statistics, tells how to bring up children, do the revolution and etc. Some of these questions he is likely to find as time goes, but the main reason for his uncompromising utterances are the necessity to get his messages to huge masses by available, even if not always ideal and clear phrases. The multidimensionality of Zakhar Prilepin’s fiction opposes to the straightforwardness of his publicism, a positive tone of his essays and interviews.

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Analyzed sources

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2*. Prilepin Z. Vos'merka. — Moskva : Astrel', 2012. — 348 [4] s.

3*. Prilepin Z. Letuchie burlaki / Zahar Prilepin. — Moskva : AST : Redakcija Eleny Shubinoj, 2015. — 349 s.

4*. Prilepin Z. Patologii: roman. — Moskva : OOO «Ad Marginem Press», 2009. —

336 s.

5*. Danilkin L. Zahar Prilepin: «Chernaja obez'jana — jeto ne pro negrov» // «Afisha daily» URL: https://daily.afisha.ru/archive/vozduh/archive/zahar-prilepin/ (vremja obrashhenija: 04.02.2016).

6*. Majorov A. Est' veshhi vazhnee, chem ostat'sja v zhivyh // «Telesem'» URL: http://www.telesem.ru/heroes/2012-10-23-06-44-00/7250-zaxar-prilepin-est-veshhi- vazhnee-chem-ostatsya-v-zhivyx (vremja obrashhenija: 04.02.2016).

7*. Ishhanjan R. Zahar Prilepin: Byt', a ne kazat'sja // Oracle Creative URL: http://oracle94.com/zaxar-prilepin-byt-a-ne-kazatsya-2/ (vremja obrashhenija: 08.04.2016).

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8*. Prilepin Z. Chernaja obez'jana : roman / Zahar Prilepin. — Moskva: AST : Astrel', 2011. — 285 s.

9*. Prilepin Z. San'kja: Roman. — Moskva: OOO «Ad Marginem Press», 2009. —

368 s.

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746 s.

11*. Zahar Prilepin: «Svoim detjam govorju: «Dovedu vas do 16 — 17 let, a potom chtob ja vas ne videl bol'she» // Teleprogramma.pro URL: http://teleprogramma.pro/stars/interview/47769/ (vremja obrashhenija: 04.02.2016).

12*. Diskussija v presse: Bankir Aven protiv pisatelja Zahara Prilepina // Oficial'nyj sajt pisatelja URL: http://www.zaharprilepin.ru/ru/pressa/aven-protiv-prilepina.html (vremja obrashhenija: 04.02.2016).

13*. Mysovskih A. Chelovek bez sekretov. Zahar Prilepin o Rjazani, sem'e, rabote i socsetjah // Argumenty i Fakty URL: http://www.rzn.aif.ru/culture/person/chelovek_bez_sekretov_zahar_prilepin_o_ryazani_sem e_rabote_i_socsetyah (vremja obrashhenija: 08.04.2016).

72

METHODS AND DIDACTICS

UDC 801. 3:808. 2 + 802. 0.

Voronezh State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering

Ph.D. (Linguistics), Associate Professor of the Chair of Foreign Languages Lyudmila Vladimirovna Lukina

e-mail: lookyna@gmail.com

L.V. Lukina

THE EXPERIENCE OF CONTRASTIVE DESCRIPTION

OF SEMANTICS IN RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH

The article deals with theoretical and practical problems of contrastive linguistics, as one of the areas of comparative linguistics. On the lexemes material the mechanism of language contrastive description is presented, the goal of which is revealing the national peculiarities of linguistic mentality. The analysis is based on Russian and English lexemes denoting speech events. The research has confirmed that the contrastive method of binary lexemes description allows to reveal quite clearly and authentically both national semantic identity of lexical units, and semantic equivalence in the two languages.

Key words: contrastive linguistic, language correspondences, national semantic identity, semantic equivalence, seme description, lexical grouping, denotational and connotational components, functional features.

At present, comparative analysis of languages is given increasing attention in modern linguistics. And this phenomenon is natural, as in the XXI century; there is a rapid process of peoples’ awareness of their cultural identity, language peculiarity characterizing the national mentality. S. Ter-Minasova compares the language with a mirror that reflects the world around us: «A language - a mirror of the culture, it reflects not only the real world surrounding the person, not just the actual conditions of his life, but also the social consciousness of the people, their mentality, national character and lifestyle, traditions, customs, morals, values, perception of the world» [1, p. 38]. The special role in this process the contrastive linguistics should play that can convincingly show both close similarity and variety in peoples’ language and culture.

Contrastive linguistics as a linguistic direction was allocated from the total volume of comparative linguistic researches in the last quarter of the XX century. The increased interest to contrastive linguistics is explained not only by its involvement in solving theoretical problems of individual languages, but also by the fact that it is directly related to the pragmatics: teaching foreign languages, theory and practice in the area of translation, and it is also significant for compiling bilingual dictionaries.

Currently in the world, according to various estimates, there are from 3 to 8 thousand languages of which 95 official languages are allocated. In the modern society the amount of information in different languages is increasing, the demand for translation and foreign language teaching is growing; the need for effective teaching materials for foreign languages, dictionaries of different types is expanding.

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© Lukina L.V., 2016

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