ИСТИНА

The given article offers a comparative analysis of the two novels: one of them is “Letter Writer” written by M. Shishkin and the other is “Aviator” by E. Vodolazkin; the analysis aims to reveal the conceptual and semantic significance of word in the realm of fiction created by these authors. The notion of word is analysed on the different levels of poetics such as genre, motifs, characters, time and space, as well as the level of the Christian mythologemes used by these authors in their works. Characters of the novels exchange letters and write in journals; they reminiscence about their childhood, first love thus literally restoring events of the past, ‘resurrect’ their emotions, sensations, smells and sounds. In “Aviator” by Vodolazkin it is the language that makes it possible for the protagonist to enter the realm of meanings which are hidden from his sight and which embrace philosophy and the sphere of concepts. While Shishkin recreates an epistolary plot in his novel “Letter Writer”, he also breaks its chronology and disregards causality with the aim of bringing out the irresistible power of the word. Having analysed the phenomenon of the word in the novels by Shishkin and Vodolazkin, we have discovered that philosophical and esthetic ideas propagated by the authors correlate with those of Gustav Shpet about the language as an organ of the internal existence, as well as Vygotsky’s idea of interrelation between language and thought development, and Likhchov’s works on the sphere of concepts in the Russian language. We come to the conclusion that both Shishkin and Vodolazkin see word as a conceptual category which plays the leading role in their novels. Word and the objective laws of the memory create the narrative thus performing communicative and therapeutic functions, connecting space and time. Under these circumstance word acquires ontological function in these novels. With the help of the word characters not only express their feelings and thoughts but they also look for answers to existential questions, they restore their pasts and create their new reality.