SACRALIZATION AND DESACRALIZATION: THE RECENT WORKS OF V.SOROKIN IN A NEW CONCEPT OF LITERATUROCENTRISM
The changes in Vladimir Sorokin’s late works in relation to the crisis of literaturocentrism that occurred in Russia in the 1990s and 2000s are considered in the article. After the collapse of the USSR, literature in Russia lost its aura; in Sorokin’s late works one can observe a general trend of literature desacralization. The study analyses how this phenomenon is regarded and represented in the late Sorokin’s texts; the research considers the undeniable weakening in using the elements of violence, which used to be characteristic for Sorokin’s soviet phase. Furthermore, the article gives an insight in the literary practices through which the author desacralizes literature and language. The study concludes that, in post-soviet texts, Sorokin’s desacralization attempt is nothing but artificial. On the contrary, by using new rhetorical devices, he bestows on language new meanings and qualities, which appear to be more consistent with nowadays literary taste and which meet new Millennium’s literary aesthetics.