“Orpheus in Hell”: The Transformation of the Myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in Boris Poplavsky’s Novel Home from Heaven
Authors:   Tomsk State University (Tomsk, Russian Federation), Nazarenko Ivan I. 
Published: December 2020

The study aims to interpret Boris Poplavsky’s novel Home from Heaven (1935) through the prism of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to identify the author’s concept of love, art, and the structure of reality. The novel Home from Heaven contains allusions that refer to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The grounds for comparing the myth and the novel plot are seen in the fact that, in his poetic legacy, Poplavsky uses the metaphor of Orpheus in hell to express his own attitude. Poplavsky’s polemic with the ancient myth, with the understanding of the nature of love and the creative genius is revealed and explained by a change in axiology. The principle of allusions to the well-known myth is determined: it is not a manifestation of collisions of the myth in modern times, but a travesty of the mythological plot. In Home from Heaven, Oleg, the modern Orpheus (aspiring writer), does not descend into the realm of the dead for Eurydice, but he himself tries to return to the earthly reality from the “metaphysical hell”, escapes from God with the help of the female love of Eurydice (Tanya and Katya). Poplavsky’s image of the universe is the opposite of the ordered mythological model of the world: “heaven” is the world of culture and the subconscious, which correlates with the lower, infernal space of eternal torment. It is concluded that the modern man sees “hell” (not Hades) both in the metaphysical sphere of the spirit (culture) and in the earthly reality (in the sphere of eros). The correspondence of the modernist aesthetics to the semantics of the plot of the novel is justified: the modern Orpheus, like the ancient one, cannot save love and be saved by love in the “hell” of being. Poplavsky’s inversion of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice clarifies his concept of love. A harmonious love relationship between people, uniting them into one whole, is impossible because people are prisoners of their consciousness and cannot fully open its content to others. Oleg discovers that, in order to achieve harmony, it is necessary to “build” a house on the “earth” and in the “heaven”, combining the physical with the spiritual. The modern Orpheus, having accepted the fate of the writer, fulfills his mission: having discovered the “hell” of culture and of his own consciousness, having plunged into the “hell” of the earthly reality, he does not succumb to the false art of Eurydice and discovers the true Eurydice—the Word. He returns to God within himself, to culture, but he knows about reality and unites the “heaven” and the “earth” in the “home” of his own creativity, thereby overcoming the total “hell”. According to Poplavsky’s concept, however, the modern Orpheus cannot claim the role of a medium, a prophet, and art is unable to reveal the future. Art does not transform reality, does not grant immortality to the creator, and is itself not immortal, but destroyed by time. Therefore, the epistemological (cognition of being and self-knowledge) and communicative (transfer of spiritual experience to representatives of future generations) functions of art remain.