Camp Prose of Kazakh Literature of the 20th Century: Motive Field and Specificity

Abstract

The article reveals the motivic field and specificity of Kazakh camp prose. The purpose of the work is to consider the features of camp prose in Kazakh literature. The authors studied the history of the issue, the literary leitmotif, typological convergences of Russian and Kazakh literatures, and the tragic in the novel. The relevance of the study is caused by the interest of modern science in works of camp prose, which act as a model of society in a certain historical period. The scientific novelty of the study is the insufficiency of studying Kazakh camp prose in modern literature. Based on the material of Zhaik Bekturov’s novel “The Brand,” the authors prove that the image of the camp serves as the semantic center of the work. The camp gives rise to motivic connections that are repeated in the name, characters, portraits, comparisons, vocabulary, and details. The specificity of the work is the characters who have lost their individuality; they form motive connections and a single motive field of the novel. The artistic originality of the work was the perception of the camp through the prism of the national picture of the world and the repetition of the motif, which is necessary to understand the artistic idea of the work. The tragic in the novel takes on a special meaning: movement among contradictions is generated by a change in the layers of the image, where the hero’s internal value orientation remains unchanged. Finally, conclusions are presented, structural-semantic and analytical research methods were applied. 

Keywords:

Kazakhstan, camp, leitmotif, motive connections, emotional reflection, camp space, anti-catharsis