Images of Buddhist entities in L. A. Yuzefovich’s novel Campaign to Bar-Khoto

The article deals with the analysis of the images of Buddhist entities and their functions in L. A. Yuzefovich’s novel Campaign to Bar-Khoto as part of a large research concerned with studying the “Buddhist text” of the modern Russian literature. The plot of Campaign to Bar-Khoto is a development of “Solodovnikov’s Notes” from the novel Prince of the Wind: in the new novel the writer focuses on and reinterprets those images and motifs (Buddist ones among them), which he created earlier, and the hero has a biography – including the religious one. The angry defenders of Buddhism (dharmapalas and dakinis) (or dark evil spirits who replaced them) and high light entities (buddhas and bodhisattvas) in this book outline the characters who come into contact with them in a specific way, express the complexities of their feelings (Lina’s tempting and conquering sensuality; Solodovnikov’s creative serenity), and partly determine their appearance (the uncertainty of Zunduy-gelun’s and Tsaganzhapov’s gait). They also act as metaphors to reveal the essence of ambiguous phenomena, such as, for example, the desire for national independence evolving into national pride, or the fascination with war and disgust for it. In addition, the Buddhist entities of Campaign to Bar-Khoto are symbols of a transcendent reality, contact with which is conditioned by the inner essence of the hero and at the same time changes his fate (posthumous possible accession to the wisdom of Prince Damdin; acceptance of the world filled with passions and sufferings by Solodovnikov, who plunges into the past and writes his memoirs). Finally, the high Buddhist entities, demonstrating the conventionality of their form and revealing their agential nature, transform the surrounding space in the novel, becoming part of the interior and landscape, light and radiance, dissolving earthly human contradictions. The article also draws a parallel between Leonid Yuzefovich’s novel and Vsevolod Ivanov’s story The Return of the Buddha in terms of the spiritual changes that occur to the protagonist: Solodovnikov and Professor Safonov, correlating with the high Buddhist image, acquire the ability to an otherworldly, supra-worldly view of reality. 

L. A. Yuzefovich, Buddhism, Buddhist hierarchies, functions of sacral images