Specificity of adventurous in Bulat Okudzhava’s prose (based on the story “The Adventures of Shipov, or Old Vaudeville”)

The purpose of this study is to analyze the transformation of the adventure model in Bulat Okudzhava’s story “The Adventures of Shipov, or Old Vaudeville”. The relevance of the study is grounded in the fact that understanding the adventure plot in Bulat Okudzhava’s prose is  necessary, to begin with, to clarify the main trends and paths of development of the literary process of the 1960-70s and, additionally, to understand the genre specifics of the author’s story “The Adventures of Shipov, or Old Vaudeville”. The study is based on the use of a set of methods: historical and literary, comparative typological, socio-cultural. The adventure canvas and vaudeville plot in “The Adventures of Shipov” allowed the author to suggest that the reader relate this work to a specific literary structure (A. Tolstoy’s story “The Adventures of Nevzorov,  or Ibicus”, I. Ehrenburg’s novel “The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito and His  Disciples” or the novel by the Czech writer J. Hasek “The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik”). This allows the author to address complex socio-cultural issues with greater clarity. The study reveals that adventurousness is associated with a specific formulaic nature, manifested in the extensive use of narrative techniques (adventurous hero, brightness, spectacularity of images, and attention to details, etc.). Furthermore, it reflects the farcical nature of reality. The structural organization of the story is dramatic. The stylistic dominant of Bulat Okudzhava’s  text is the close connection of adventurism with the idea of theatricality, which, in turn,  is achieved by the constant clash of reality and fiction. The creation of prose with an obvious lyrical and philosophical beginning does not prevent the penetration of adventurism into it. The adventurousness in Bulat Okudzhava’s work is the idea of the fate of a “private” person as dependent on history and an unsuccessful attempt to overcome it, and the issue of freedom of creative expression is extremely sharpened. The adventurous scheme is used by the author in order to enhance the parodic sound of the “true incident” in Yasnaya Polyana. Young Count L. N. Tolstoy is persecuted as a result of an absurd report from a gendarme staff officer. The “non-canonical” story is undoubtedly a new stage in the development of the theme of “a breath of freedom” in the author’s work. Prospects for further research may be related to the consideration of the adventurous beginning in the historical prose of Bulat Okudzhava, which is an example of a combination of historicism and adventurism.

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