TRADITIONS OF THE FRENCH THEATER OF ABSURD IN VICTOR SOLODCHUK’S PLAY “WHERE WE WERE EIGHT YEARS”

Abstract

The article analyzes Solodchuk’s play «Where We Were Eight Years,» which was included in the electronic version of Anthology-24, published this year. The play is analyzed from the perspective of the French theater of the absurd, through the identification of common features in the play and in the plays written by S. Beckett and Ionesco, namely: a similar worldview, which is influenced by specific historical events, loss of the meaning of life, life without purpose and faith. The kaleidoscopic form of narrative organization, the absurdity and paradox of events, and the grotesque characters whose dialogues are reduced to a limited monologue, they do not understand each other. The form and style of the antidrama are subordinated to the effect of the evidence itself — the grotesque, the farce, brought to the point of excess, which reveals the monotony and meaninglessness of life. The desire to comprehend the universals of existence, the recurring patterns in human life are introduced into the text through the genre of parable, myth, symbol, and metaphor. The word loses its logical and grammatical connections, becomes grotesque, which leads to the loss of its meaning. The absurdist principle is also realized at the level of the figurative system of Solodchuk’s play, where the character appears as a multi-voiced entity. In the texts of the representatives of the theater of the absurd, attention is focused on material objects that replace the Other, so the role of things, objects, scenery increases, and to some extent they replace the object of communication for the characters. In Solodchuk’s play, the object is the Backpack, which is empowered with extraordinary abilities to take away aggression from the outside world. The open ending overcomes, even denies, the technique of ’exhaustiveness’ of dialogue in absurdist texts and appeals to the conceptual creation of the future.