Archetypical Image of the Old Man in Buryat Literature of the 20th Century

Another feature of the archetypical trait in the heroes is the ambivalence of their strivings: on the one hand, a stoic search for harmony with the world and themselves, and on the other hand, an awareness of the impossibility of achieving this harmony. And this is what constitutes the novel's romantic potential, expressed in continuity, the incompleteness of their individual inner conflict (according to Bakhtin, the novel hero is "either more than his fate or less than his humanity" (Bakhtin, 1975: 479)).

For Angarkhaev, the effect of old man's wisdom inherent in A. Bal'burov's novel "The Singing Arrows" is of no importance; much more important is the impulse of each of the old heroes to remember the past in order to reach the idea of preserving the ancestral memory. Of the three characters in the novel, the most painful conflict with the world and himself is felt by the old man Lombo, and this conflict is portrayed by the author as a transition from the egoism of previous life to the feeling of connection with children, as a denial of the meaninglessness of previous existence (Buiantueva, 2011: 125). The scene of night vigil of Lombo and his children is symbolic, since they make a fire in the courtyard of their inherited house and when, finally, the process of Lombo's agonizing for moral cleansing continues, as he seeks agreement with his conscience and unison with his children, the descendants of the family.

The images of old people in the novel are built into the main conflict - the dramatic state of all the heroes, old and young, their acute loss of harmonious relations with the world around them. The writer tries to portray this conflict in a system of episodes and peripeteias that very often reveal clashing contradictions, especially if the opposition `life / death' comes to the fore, as it is associated with the old man's archetype and adds the novel a universal-philosophical character.

In the collective scene of the Lombo's feast, an unnamed guest appears - a distant relative, who turns out to be the real culprit of a longstanding crime. The perception of this uninvited guest by the host is on the level of collective consciousness: "...the little man suddenly went hog-wide... Chuckling, he was talking about black affairs in the black world. The Khasuurites listened, marvelled at him, feeling gloomy. It was as if there was no field outside the windows, outside the village, no blue sky, no human nobility, no evergreen fir trees, no ringing rivers, no thick herbs and no glorious deeds ..." (Angarkhaev, 1988: 221). The episode is filled with symbolic meaning: the old man - Lombo's moral insight is directly related to the awareness of belonging to the clan/collectivity, to the folk moral norm that in collective consciousness always exists as truth, as the unity of man and society, of man and nature.

The images of three old people embody different value codes: Ayusha - the wisdom, honest Sharalday - the conscience, and Lom- bo - the desire for moral purification. But the overall unifying trait for the heroes is the work of memory. It is Sharalday's memory, on the one hand, that causes his illness, as it will turn out in the finale, is was caused by a keen sense of resentment against his fellow villagers, who suspected him of a lingering crime, which even pushed him towards the idea of suicide. In the finale of the novel, old man Sharalday will find himself in a dramatic moment in his life in the forest on the bank of a river, where he reflects on the meaning of his own life, thinking about life and death. And when all the villagers go after him and find the lost old man, they hear Sharalday's laughter in astonishment and perplexity. And that is the laughter of a happy man who has been freed from painful and bitter regrets. It even seems to the reader that these feelings of a hero, who never ceases to feel the bitterness of a failed life, wane under the influence of the surrounding familiar to him nature. Here one can feel the ambivalent combination of suffering and joy, dramatic and comic, which permeates the image of the White Elder in the plots of legends, in the action of the Buddhist mystery "Tsam" Here the reader experiences almost the same miraculous resolution of unsolvable problems that glues the action in dramas involving a shaman or uligershin.

A novel in the 20^th century connects the poetics of mythology with the social and historical context. This is why Angarkhaev's archetype functions where the deeply subjective contact between his characters and the past is captured. J. Huizinga associated this contact with a special "sense of history": "This undefined contact with the past is an entrance into a certain atmosphere, it is one of the many ways in which a person goes beyond himself, a form of experiencing the truth...". In our view, the image of the old man also becomes this form of experience of truth, because "a sense of history" is "realized...is reduced to moments of spiritual clarity, to sudden spiritual impulses" (Huizinga, 2003: 262-263).

It is this feeling that leads the three old heroes of Angarkhaev to an epiphany as a "moment of truth". One of them, after all the events that happened in his native village, being in his dearly beloved forest, finally voiced the author's main idea, addressing his grandson: "This forest is your forest, mine, and your father's... Whatever thoughts came to one's mind here, under these trees... Civilisations and religions change, and the eternal desire for truth remains forever and ever..." (Angarkhaev, 1988: 326). This outcome of the novel is filled with universal-philosophical meaning, which is "prompted" by the archetypical content of the old man's image, as in other works of Buryat literature in question.

The important trait of any archetype - ambivalence helps to resolve the main conflict in both drama and poem, as well as in a novel. According to M.M. Bakhtin, the real way out of the conflict zone can be seen in its translation into a symbolic, emblematic sphere, when the hero's life in an incredibly tense situation ends in a carnival action, when destructive and simultaneously creative laughter can turn even death into a "buffoonery debunking" (Bakhtin, 1979: 146). In the finale of the An- garkhayev's novel, Sharalday, who has just been ill and has been thinking about suicide, laughs, and this laughter sounds like his release from disharmony in his soul and in the world. This carnival laughter reaches harmony thanks to the immortality of the people's body, the all-conquering people's strength and national health (according to Bakhtin). It is this finale in the novel that creates a purifying catharsis in the soul not only of Sharaldai, Lombo, Ayusha, but also of all the villagers, brought together in one night by a common sense of unity.

As it follows from the works of P.A. Florensky, A.F. Losev, V.V. Ivanov, V.N. Toporov, B.A. Uspensky, Yu.M. Lotman, C. Levi-Stross, mythological consciousness is oriented towards the performance of clearly defined functions: perception of the world in terms of binary oppositions and resolution of contradiction through the function of a progressive mediator. This is how the image of an old man acts as a mediator in a drama, poem and novel. And the novel also accents the most important element of the myth - a complex of initiation events, the essence of which is to qualitatively change the condition of a hero who has successfully passed the test with the help of an initiation rite. This mythologeme becomes the organisational link in the novel because it opens the reader its connotative meaning: a succession of various states results in the total renewal of the old heroes, who would acquire a new consciousness. According to R. Bart, "the myth does not seek to appear as a `cultural product' but as a `natural phenomenon'; the myth does not hide its connotative meanings, it `naturalises' them" (Bart, 1989: 18). The meaning of initiation is "naturalised" in "The Eternal Colour", i.e. this connotation is taken for granted in the finale, or as something natural. This is how the mythological image of the old man is "read"; this is how the reader perceives his archetypical function.

Conclusion

Thus, the images of old people in a Buryat drama, poetry and novels are filled with poetic imagery based on allusions to and parallels with mythological folklore. The original mythological meaning of the archetype is transformed, being subject to new contextual (semantic and compositional) connections that emerge in the works of these genres. Thanks to the oppositions (past / present, life / death) the image archetype of the old man provides not only for the connection of epochs as a "sense of history", but also emphasises, ultimately, the immortality of the folk spirit. Thinking in binary oppositions as a feature of the old man's mythological image makes it possible to see in this binary symbolism the symbolism of eternal rebirth, the cyclic nature of life.

The process of the image of the old man being symbolised in various genres of Buryat literature reveals signs of archetype in this image. These are the craving for a miraculous outcome, ambivalence, binary character, ascent to universal ontological meanings: the old man stands for a kinship, the search for genealogy equals the search for truth, belonging to the kinship generates the essence of human existence, the moment of human life personifies the eternity of patrimonial memory. The image is a symbol of the wisdom of life itself and its harmonious order. Its symbolic content shows the universalism of the very search for truth as a condition of the immortality of the kinship and the folk spirit.

The image of the old man in all the reviewed works of Buryat literature portrays him as a guardian of mythological knowledge, genealogy and tradition, this function is not highlighted clearly, but is always implied. In this case, the myth is used in its basic meaning as the archetypical, the image of the old man emphasises his function of a mediator between two worlds - the sacral and the celestial, divine and profane, worldly and earthly. It can be concluded that the general line in the Buryat literature of the 20^th century follows the idea of continuity of sacral genealogical representations, traditional for the Buryat and Mongolian world.

The materials of the study are of indisputable practical value, as they represent the initial experience of considering this archetypical image in the Buryat literature, and lay emphasis on the need for further detailed study. Subsequently, it is necessary to take into account the fact that the archetype of a wise elder, whose semantic connections are hidden in the depths of subconsciousness, is realised on a contextual level; the traditional archetype as a symbol requires the actualization of not only genre contexts, but also spatial and temporal ones, updating of plot, motives, etc.

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