Palimpsests of the Sacred in Wladzimir Karatkevich’ Historical Prose

Abstract

In the article there is showed an attempt to represent  functioning of the category sacrum in historical prose of Volodymyr Karatkevych. In these works of Byelorussian writer mostly the original base appears through the topic, artistic world of Karatkevich is build upon it- The Bible and life illuminating of religious man, filtered by prism of rationalism. Sacrum begins to obtain the signs of profanum and vice versa. This double structure acquire the signs of homogeneity, becomes similar to line of Mebius. Historic prose of Voldymyr Karatkevich bears in itself powerful fund of sacred energy. In his works are showed rational and irrational ingredients of the sacred (in understanding of Rudolf Otto), which find expression and artistic realization in different dimensions of fiction - from lexical-semantic to graphic-symbolical