The source of tragedy: love problems and the concept of eros in the story of L.D. Zinovieva-Annibal's “Thirty-Three Freaks”

Abstract

The theme of love is reflected in a variety of ways in all the works of L.D. Zinovieva-Annibal. As one of the most representative works of the writer, the story “The Thirty-Three Freaks” is an important and particularly revealing link in proving the process of change in the creative method and worldview of the author. The aim of the study is to show the complex relationship between love and eros, not only in the story “The Thirty-Three Freaks”, but also in the real married life of Vyacheslav Ivanov and L.D. Zinovieva-Annibal. The writer's artistic embodiment of the ideas of her husband, the symbolist poet V. Ivanov, on the creation of a new religion, where Eros is “entrenched” and becomes a bearer of “solidarity”, is traced. V. Ivanov's utopian ideal project of organizing a new social form, although it ultimately failed, originally meant the intention to overcome individualism among the initiates, among the participants of the love action, which proves the influence of V. Solovyov's philosophy on the symbolists and, in particular, on the circle of visitors of “The Tower”. The study uses biographical, intertextual, and comparative-historical methods. The conclusion is made that in the ideal form of society, in which there is no place for individualism and egoism, the concept of inseparability of spirit and body should have prevailed. However, analysis of the novel “The Thirty-Three Freaks” shows that the heroine had not overcome individualism, that the path to comprehending of eros was theoretically declared, but was not realized in practice. Hence the tragic sound of the work and its disastrous finale.