THE CONCEPT OF LIFE AND DEATH IN F. KRYUKOV'S PROSE

Gao Han

This article examines the literary heritage of F. Kryukov and the concept of life and death in his prose. The significance of his stories and stories is difficult to assess only within the framework of the theme of the family and village way of life of the Don Cossacks. The Cossack mentality with its constants, corrections, paradoxes is a constant subject of depiction in Kryukov's prose, but the universals of human existence are focused in it. The content of his works goes far beyond ethnic prose. Plots, characters, landscapes, Cossack customs, dialogues, lyrical inserts are artistic tools through which the writer expressed his understanding of the meanings of life and death. At the same time, unlike the philosophers popular among the Russian creative intelligentsia of the 1900‒1910s, he was not attracted by ideological abstractions, he turned to the recognizable and everyday specifics of an ordinary person.

Keywords:F. Kryukov, Don Cossacks, the concept of life and death, mentality