The novel "Mammoth's tusk. Chronicle of the dead city" by N. Verevochkin: mythotectonics and artistic axiology

The paper is devoted to the mythotectonic analysis of the novel "Mammoth Tusk Chronicle of the Dead City" by the outstanding Soviet-Kazakh writer Nikolai Verevochkin, two-time Russian Prize laureate, finalist of the Yasnaya Polyana Prize. The authors identify the archetype that is basic for the novel (The Home), decipher the key mythologems for the text, and conclude that the characters of Verevochkin's artistic reality live in an inverted world, as indicated by numerous in texts with significant semantic transformation. The storyline of the novel reproduces the archetypal trajectory of the descent of a cultural hero in Hell. Nevertheless, in the inverted world of the novel, it is inextricably linked with the motive of spiritual transformation and moral resurrection of the hero. The article reveals archetypes significant to the art world of Vereochochkin, mythologemes and images that allow the novel to be attributed to the best examples of modern existential prose.