“Great Martyrs of Unbearable Being”: The Metamorphoses of the Body as a Means of Spatial Representation of the Postmodern Identity (Based on E. Andreev’s “Lom Stories”)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31168/2073-5731.2025.3-4.10Keywords:
Bulgarian literature, concept of personality, postmodernism, postmodern personality, space, corporealityAbstract
In this article, based on the stories “The End of the Red Ball”, “Dove with Blue Eyes”, “The Ruthless Body of Monika”, “Kiro the Tightrope Walker’s Song of Love”, and “The Last Photograph of Photographer Ivaylo”, which are part of the cycle “Lom Stories” (1996) by the renowned Bulgarian writer Emil Andreev (born 1956), the bodily metamorphoses of characters are analyzed to reveal the specifics of spatial representation of the postmodern personality. As a theoretical foundation for defining the features of the postmodern personality and the specifics of discourse in postmodern literature, works by J. Deleuze, F. Guattari, M. Foucault, E. M. Meletinsky, V. A. Podoroga, N. B. Mankovskaya, N. L. Leiderman, M. N. Lipovetsky, and others were used. The article demonstrates that in Andreev’s “Lom Stories”, the “instability” of the postmodern personality in terms of space manifests, among other things, in the semantics and poetics of characters’ bodily metamorphoses (disappearance, disintegration of the body, fusion with an object, movement into another body, including an animal’s body). Using a playful postmodernist principle of modeling artistic reality, parodying folkloric-mythological elements, and blending tragic and comic elements, Andreev creates a special mythologized space where, in the intertwining of reality and fantasy, there exist “great martyrs of unbearable being” – heroes dissatisfied with their lives who feel a sense of “lacking”. Their bodily metamorphoses illustrate the postmodern personality’s detachment from a unified spatial image and its striving for freedom and diffuseness.
Received: 01.08.2025.
Revised: 10.09.2025.
Accepted: 16.09.2025.
Citation
Lunkova N. A. “Great Martyrs of Unbearable Being”: The Metamorphoses of the Body as a Means of Spatial Representation of the Postmodern Identity (Based on E. Andreev’s “Lom Stories”) // Slavic Almanac. 2025. No. 3–4. P. 204–222 (in Russian). DOI: 10.31168/2073-5731.2025.3-4.10
