Berlin in Existential Reflection (Based on the Novel “The House of Paraffin” by Anahit Sagoyan)

The article is devoted to the consideration of the Berlin’s image shown in the novel “House of Paraffin” by the modern Russian-speaking writer Anahit Sagoyan through the prism of existential reflection. The existential principle, manifested in the novel both at the level of macropoetics (complication of composition) and at the level of micropoetics (motives of emptiness, loneliness, dying, fear; imagery that actualizes this aesthetics), sets a special optics for the perception of Berlin. The representation of urban space is extremely subjectivied (the characters not only think about the city, but also live in it); the urban space is also set by making use of  the techniques of cinema and photography (the hero’s gaze as a camera angle; associative montage; close-up, general plans). An attempt is made to introduce into scientific research the work of a writer who, on the one hand, organically continues the traditions of Russian emigrant writers (V. Nabokov) and appeals to their experience of knowing and describing a foreign city, on the other hand, actualizes a special code for reading the surrounding reality (“Berlin text”). Conclusions are drawn that Berlin in the novel not only becomes one of the main locations of action, but also conveys a special aesthetics and also becomes mythogenic.