Abstract
The article is devoted to a comparative analysis of the Danse Macabre plot in Russian and Western European literary traditions. Based on medieval French and German sources, as well as works by G. R. Derzhavin, V. A. Zhukovsky, A. S. Pushkin and M. Yu. Lermontov, the evolution of the macabre plot from a religious-didactic allegory to a Romantic metaphor and philosophical concept is traced. A typology of cultural transfer is introduced, three stages of reception are identified: translation (calquing), adaptation (reinterpretation in a national key) and transformation (creation of an original philosophical concept). It is shown that Lermontov not only completes this evolution, but also makes a qualitative leap, transferring the «dance of death» from the external world to the internal one, turning it into a metaphor for spiritual crisis and creating the concept of the «living dead». Unlike his predecessors, for whom death remains an external force (natural, mystical or carnivalesque), for Lermontov it becomes an internal state, a measure of the authenticity of existence. The results of the study can be used in university courses on the history of Russian literature of the 19th century and in special courses on the work of M. Yu. Lermontov. The novelty of the work lies in a systematic analysis of the transformation of the macabre plot in Russian literature and the introduction of a typology of cultural transfer in relation to the Russian reception of Danse Macabre.
Keywords
Lermontov, Danse Macabre, cultural transfer, typology, comparative studies, «living dead», Romanticism, Derzhavin, Zhukovsky, Pushkin.