Collision with a Thing as a Collision with Other in G. Ayurzana’s Novel “Their Shadows are Taller Than Our Souls”

Abstract

Article examines the work by G. Ayurzana (b. 1970), one of the most popular and read authors in modern Mongolia. His creative range is very wide: from postmodernism to magical realism, from psychological detective stories to historical novels. In 2021, G. Ayurzana’s new novel “Their Shadows are Taller than Our Souls” (“Тэдний сүүдэр бидний сэтгэлээс урт”) was released. This time the author turned to science fiction genre. In Mongolia, classic science fiction works by J. Verne, A. Tolstoy, A. Azimov, S. Lem, and Strugatsky brothers have been translated and are popular among readers. In modern Mongolian literature this genre begins to develop in the 1940s 20thcentury. Fantastic ones include L. Tudev’s story “Eternal Flame (”Мөнхийн гал”), J. Gal’s novel “The Secret of the Crystal Mirror”(“Болортолийн нууц”), D. Darzha’s novel “Journey to Distant Worlds”(“Алс холын ертөнцөд жуулчилсан нь”). The title of G. Ayurzana’s novel is a quote from the famous hit of the British rock band Led Zeppelin “Stairway to Heaven”, which appeared in the 1970s. This is a deep philosophical text by Robert Plant about the illusory nature of our world, about vain hopes and unrealistic expectations. The bird — a black jackdaw with a red beak — becomes the center of the narrative in the novel “Their Shadows are Taller than Our Souls.” This is due, among other things, to the mythopoetic tradition of the nomads of Central Asia, which endowed birds with special properties. The image of a talking paper bird is present in the famous surgaal teaching of the poet and religious educator of the 19th century D. Ravzha (1803–1856). However, does the main character encounter a bird on the first page of the novel? No, the hero of the novel meets not with a living bird, but with a cybernetic organism created back in 1984 at the dawn of the microprocessor era in one of the scientific laboratories of the Soviet Union. From the moment a microchip is implanted into the brain, the bird becomes a cyborg, a thing, something else. The author directly raises the problem of otherness in the real world. The hero’s encounter with this thing — the encounter with the other — plays a key role in the entire fantasy novel.