Archetype and Architectonics: The Image of Death in E.M. Remarque's Novel "Three Comrades"

The article is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of the thanatopoetics of E.M. Remarque's novel "Three Comrades" – a system of artistic means of representing death that forms the unique architecture of the work. The subject of the study is the image of death as a structural principle that organizes all levels of the text: chronotope, character system, symbolism, and philosophical subtext. The work examines key categories of thanatopoetics: thanatological motifs (their predicates, actants, and circumstances), the specificity of the artistic space-time of post-war Germany as a territory of "non-life," and parathanatological phenomena – phenomena indirectly related to death (alcohol as an anesthetic, friendship as a ritual of salvation, silence as a linguistic equivalent of trauma). Special attention is given to the connotative meanings of the image of death, which reveal the socio-critical, existential-philosophical, and teleological issues of the novel. The analysis demonstrates that death in Remarque's work ceases to be a singular event and becomes an immanent condition of existence for the "lost generation." The methodological basis of the study is a structural-semantic analysis that relies on A.N. Veselovsky's theoretical propositions about the nature of motifs and R.L. Krasilnikov's concept of parathanatological phenomena. This approach allows for the identification of a stable "mortal code" of the work and tracking its functioning at different levels of the artistic structure. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time, the integral thanatopoetics of the novel "Three Comrades" is the subject of special analysis, understood not as a sum of individual motifs but as a system-forming factor of the artistic world. Previously, Remarque's work was primarily examined within the framework of the "lost generation" concept or through the lens of the biographical method; no special study dedicated to the architecture of thanatological text has been conducted. The work synthesizes the theoretical apparatus of literary thanatology in relation to specific material for the first time, which allows for the identification of the deep structures of Remarque's text. As a result of the analysis, it is argued that the image of death in the novel is a central architectonic element that organizes the chronotope as a spatial-temporal continuum of “post-life,” constituting the psychology of characters as bearers of unprocessed trauma, and determining the philosophical pathos of the work, which consists in the stoic acceptance of the absurd. Remarque's thanatopoetics presents itself as a poetics of "silent, everyday despair," where death, devoid of transcendent meaning, becomes a silent condition of existence, forcing the characters to cherish fragile forms of human connection.