THE CONCEPT OF DESTINY IN THE WORKS BY J. CORTÁZAR

Abstract

The author of the study considers the worldview, the attitude and the consciousness that characterize a twentieth-century man in the works by the famous Argentine writer J. Cortázar. The article explores this problem in the context of artistic understanding of human destiny. The author makes a comparative analysis of artistic symbols of human destiny in different periods of the writer’s artistic creation. The study focuses on the mythopoetic character of the concept of destiny in the Cortázar’s works, showing the archetypal nature of Cortázar’s plots. The main attention of the author of the study is focused on the analysis of the Game as the main image of human destiny in the writer’s works. According to the study Cortazar considered man’s encounter with his own destiny as borderline situation. This borderline situation manifests itself in symbols of the Transformation (or Transfer). These images are the Bridge, the Web, the Thread, the Doppelganger, the Labyrinth of the Minotaur. The borderline situation is always the collision of opposites: the Nature and the Culture, the Human and the Animal, the Chance and the Fate. The article would be of help to philologists, philosophers, and all persons who are engaged in cultural studies.