Repetition, Ageing and End of Life in Liudmila Ulitskaia's The Body of the Soul

Abstract:Liudmila Ulitskaia's 2019 volume of stories, The Body of the Soul (O tele dushi), humanizes the end of life and counters harmful mythologies about ageing as well as dying in Russian culture. Ulitskaia, one of the nation's most prominent living authors, was the first woman to receive the Russian Booker Prize. The Body of the Soul repeats scenes and images from her previous fiction to explore how telesnost´ (corporeality) is its own cosmos of meaning. This contradicts assumptions dominating Russian culture over the past century and connects her older characters to the intelligentsia, which struggled to survive in the Soviet era and its aftermath. The Body of the Soul represents how the individual, often apolitical lives of older characters quietly contradict state ideals.