Abstract
The "mature" prose of V. S. Makanin (1980-1990s) is characterized by a creative desire for an artistic representation of existential problems caused by socio-cultural and historical changes in the modern world, against which the crisis of a person’s spiritual life is acutely revealed [1; 6; 13]. In this regard, the disclosure of the plot-forming meaning of the situation of cognition in its ontological and epistemological aspects is an opportunity to reveal the author's picture of the world, regarding ideas about a person and modern reality in the context of awareness of the absurdity of being. The subject of scientific research is the plot-forming elements of the situation of cognition in V. Makanin's story "Our Way Is Long". The purpose of the work is seen in revealing the plot-forming meaning of the situation of cognition both in the plot (plot-story composition, space-time semantics) and narratological (narrative structure of the text) aspects. The study of the plot-forming situation of cognition against the background and in comparison, with the existentialist works of J.-P. Sartre and A. Camus makes it possible to reveal the existential nature of the artistic conflict of the story that arises at the moment a person discovers absurdity (chaos). The level of awareness of the absurd (epistemological or ontological) determines the hero's choice of a way of self-determination - flight or resistance "without hope of success". Despite the recognition of the absurd as an irrevocable property of being and consciousness in the author's position, the dominant feeling is the feeling of tragic humanism, which is close in its moral and ethical pathos to the philosophy of the absurd by A. Camus. The structural-semiotic approach of Yu. M. Lotman, which allows revealing the key meanings of the narrative logic of eventfulness, the artistic and communicative approach (M. M. Bakhtin, V. I. Tyupa, etc.), as well as the method of philological hermeneutics, which helps to identify the semantic meanings of the eventful elements of a literary narrative are used as research methods.
Keywords
Existentialism, the plot of cognition, absurdity, evil (chaos), J.-P. Sartre, A. Camus.