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PHENOMENON OF ELENA KATISHONOK'S OEUVRE

E. Vasiljeva, A. Stankevica, E. Isajeva, I. Dvorecka, V. Gelfande

Abstract

Elena Katishonok is a contemporary author, who is writing in Russian. Elena was born in Riga, graduated from the Faculty of Philology of the Latvian State University. In 1991, she moved to the USA; now she lives in Boston. In the last few years, Elena Katishonok’ oeuvre has become known to a wide range of readers. The novels “Once upon the Time There Lived an Old Man with His Old Woman” (2006), “Counterclockwise” (2009), “When the Person Leaves” (2011), “Light in the Window” (2014) have not only found their readers, but were also noted by critics, as well as were short-listed for prestigious literary awards in Russia. In the centre of the writer’s artistic world, there is the world of Latvia, the world of the homeland. At the same time, the author deliberately refuses documentary narration, creating her own neo-mythological toponyms. Riga is called the City, and the country that became home for an Old Believer family in the Baltic region is called the Ostzeysky region. The space of Latvia, which E. Katishonok recreates in her works, is deliberately mythologized. In her oeuvre, the author conceptually uses myths of both Russian and European culture. She uses them in her own way. The fact that an immigrant writer has managed to say a new artistic word about the space of Latvia is a rather justified trend. For the author’s concept, the look from a distance, which is remote both in spatial and temporal terms, is significant. The phenomenality of Elena Katishonok’s oeuvre is precisely in the specific modelling of the myth, where the author’s narrative combines fantastic (mythological) and stylized documentary (historical) styles.

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