Eschatological plots in Gaito Gazdanov's novel «The Ghost of Alexander Wolf»

Abstract

The article examines how the work, on philosophical and metaphysical levels, creates a unique “personal eschatology” that transcends the boundaries between life and death and goes beyond the traditional psychological analysis of guilt and trauma. Through an analysis of textual structure and semantics—focusing on symbols such as mirrors, ghosts, cyclical time and on themes of duality and liminal states of consciousness— as well as an intertextual interpretation in the light of religious and existentialist traditions, it is revealed that the eschatological concept in the novel is driven by an “unfinished murder” that plunges the protagonist into an eternal existential crisis. Death loses its finality, becoming a cycle of trials; past and present intertwine, and reality is as illusory as a phantom. Themes of war, dreams, and reflections underscore the duality of existence, and guilt transforms into a metaphysical dialogue with one’s own shadow. Gazdanov recodes traditional eschatology into an individual tragedy connected to the collective experience of émigrés and the traumas of the civil war. For the hero, the “end of the world” becomes a metaphor for moral decay and the hopelessness of redemption, as the boundaries between the real and the illusory are erased. In conclusion, it is noted that the novel—combining elements of existentialism, philosophy, and mysticism—presents a multidimensional portrait of human existence under conditions of perpetual crisis, with the eschatological theme serving as a tool for exploring the inner drama of the individual in the context of death, guilt, and freedom.