Childhood Image in the Novel “Dawn” by B. K. Zaitsev

The purpose of the article is to consider the specifics of depicting the theme of childhood in the novel “Dawn” by B. K. Zaitsev. In modern literary studies, the theme of childhood in the works of Russian writers who found themselves in exile after the revolutionary events is actively being developed and studied. The relevance of the work is due to the fact that it explores one of the important topics in the literature of the Russian diaspora. The novelty of the research consists in comparing the novel by B. K. Zaitsev with 19th century Russian classical prose about childhood, in clarifying the question of traditions and innovation in solving the theme of childhood by the writer of the Russian diaspora. The paper considers theoretical issues related to the spatial and temporal structure of the novel “Dawn,” the disclosure of the figurative and motivational series, artistic means and techniques. All this is necessary not only to understand the peculiarities of the embodiment of the childhood image in B. K. Zaitsev’s prose, but also to determine the national identity of Russian literature about childhood. In the center of Zaitsev’s novelis the image of a child living in a manor, which is depicted according to Russian literary traditions of the 18th — 19th centuries. Describing the ancestral “nest” with its material content, special semantics, autobiographical basis, recreating the world of a child, B. K. Zaitsev relies on the novel “Childhood” by L. N. Tolstoy. Idyllic time dominates the structure of the novel “Dawn.” Its important components include the motifs of light, aromas, smells, sounds of nature, the synesthesia characteristic of a child’s worldview. The child experiences the fullness of the joy of being akin to being in Eden. The world of childhood, permeated with Divine grace, apart from biographical and historical time, is addressed to the category of Eternity. Childhood is spiritualized and sacralized. Mother and father are organically included in the world of the novel, associated with the idea of the orderliness and stability of being. Family meals together and rituals become events that create an atmosphere of happiness. Children’s worldview is presented through a system of oppositions of “their own”/“someone else’s”space. Childhood is associated with thanatological events. The description of the reading circle becomes mandatory in revealing the inner world of the child hero. The writer’s novel is an example of an image of childhood conditioned by a new era, modernist innovations consisting in changing the relationship between the author and the child.