The fall of the roman empire in Valery Bryusov’s novel-myth The Altar of Victory
Abstract
The article considers the antique motifs in Bryusov’s novel-myth The Altar of Victory (1913). We found that there is a complex multi-level hierarchical system of the different motifs. The division of them into three large groups was carried out on the basis of religious beliefs. There are pagans, heretics and Christians. The struggle between them determines the main conflict of the novel. The protagonist, against his will, is involved in historical collisions of a universal significance. Heretic teachings play the leading role among them, which is explained by the enormous influence of Vladimir Solovyov’s work devoted to this topic. Furthermore, the novel reflected Bryusov’s deep interest in the history of ancient Rome, his activity as a translator of Latin poets and his fascination with mysticism and spiritualism. We deduce that Bryusov’s neomythologism has determined the ways of the embodiment of the ancient myth in The Altar of Victory. The author tried to establish correlates between the fall of the Roman empire and a pre-revolutionary era that preceded the October Revolution in Russia (1917) and the Soviet Union (USSR). It gives us grounds for the genre definition of Bryusov’s work as a neomythological novel.
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