Essay writing

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, a peculiar phenomenon of cross-cultural synthesis emerged in modern literatures: the work of writers of the postcolonial wave of Afro-Asian immigration to the West. These authors create their works in the language of the country they have chosen as their permanent home. Their artistic creativity is a new phenomenon in world culture and is an obvious example of the integration processes taking place in the modern world. They are both East and West, but at the same time they do not fully relate to either of them. One of the most prominent representatives of this literature is the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Sir Vidyadhar Suryaprasad Naipaul (b. 1932), whose prose in the most complete form expresses the specifics of the cultural phenomenon under consideration.

Literature created by writers of the postcolonial wave of Afro-Asian immigration flourished and made a powerful statement in the 80-90s of the XX century. The collapse of the world system of colonialism and the subsequent mass exodus of the "third world" population to the countries of Western Europe and North America created the prerequisites for the emergence of this peculiar cross-cultural phenomenon. Immigrant writers of Eastern origin are still a small but very active component of the global artistic process. Currently, there are four main centers of this cultural symbiosis: three in Western Europe (Great Britain, France, and Germany) and one in the United States of America.

These writers, as a rule, come from immigrant families, i.e. they belong not to the first, but to the second or third generation of immigrants from the East. A characteristic feature of prose writers can be considered that they began to create their works and print them in the West, whose culture is the environment that largely feeds their work. The cultural, ethno-racial, and social "spread" of immigrant writers is quite wide. These are very different writers, each of whom creates his own artistic world, referring to different techniques, methods and traditions. But they are united by one circumstance, which, although it does not completely determine the poetics of their creativity, nevertheless affects it : the formation of their personality (primarily creative) was simultaneously influenced by the very distant cultures of two civilizational complexes, symbolically defined as "East"and " West".

Writers of the 1980s - 1990s generation, who were educated at prestigious Western universities and formed in its social, cultural, and everyday environment, think and perceive the world as people imbued with Western values. By

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at the same time, they preserve the socio-cultural traditions of their fathers and grandfathers laid down from childhood, which determine the originality and uniqueness of the ethnic group to which they belong. And as a result, these writers are carriers of a mentality in which a relatively consistent ratio of value scales, norms of behavior and their own ethnic group, and the Western society that has adopted them, is maintained.

These writers are equally free to navigate both Western and Eastern discourses, easily moving from one cultural system to another. But the possession of the cultural heritage of the East and the West in equal measure did not just strengthen the artistic potential of these prose writers. The possession, relatively speaking, of Western and Eastern models of thinking and artistic implementation of reality gives writers the opportunity to create a new way of knowing and evaluating both themselves and the world around them, which is not typical for either the West or the so-called third world. They have a special angle of vision-from the inside and from the outside at the same time.

Such a view is often more objective and fresh than a view only from the outside or only from the inside. And it is no accident that books by authors whose artistic worlds do not fit into one national tradition, into one system of cultural coordinates, are now widely read in the world. Having offered their own special view, their own worldview, these writers told the reader about something qualitatively new in their world, and in it itself, and became a necessary link in world culture, without which self-knowledge would be given to the West and the East with great difficulties and would probably have a slightly different result.

The originality of these writers lies not in the fact that they belong to more than one culture at a time, but in the fact that their inherent hypostases are neither subordinate nor secondary to each other. The Western element is just as important as the cultural layer associated with the Eastern heritage. They are both East and West, but at the same time they do not fully relate to either of them. Here is what Salman Rushdie, perhaps the most famous representative of this literature, said on this occasion:: "We are Hindus who have swum across black waters1 ; we are Muslims who eat pork..." [Rushdie, 1992, p.15].

The artistic work of these authors is a new phenomenon in world culture. They do not lend themselves to unambiguous "classification" based on national, territorial, or linguistic characteristics. These immigrant writers of Eastern origin are the embodiment of a new reality in which the national model is increasingly giving way to a global world space, transculturation processes, and more flexible hierarchies. And all attempts to characterize these writers as a phenomenon that clearly belongs only to one particular context-Western or Eastern - contain an element of simplification and do not always provide a reliable basis for a comprehensive objective assessment. In the study of their multicultural creativity, it is necessary to use a more flexible approach that would help avoid the alternative simplification of "either East or West".

Among the English-language writers who have settled in the UK, the most famous are six prose writers: Kazuo Ishiguro, Hanif Kureishi, Timothy Mo, Vidya S. Naipaul, Ben Okri and the aforementioned Salman Rushdie.

The personality of Vidyadhar Suryaprasad Naipaul and his work are of particular interest2 . First, V. S. Naipaul is recognized as one of the brightest and most talented prose writers of modern English-language prose. His prose is famous as:

1 A devout Hindu should never have crossed the sea and left India. For violating this prohibition, a severe penalty was imposed-excommunication from one's caste. Only heavy cleansing sacrifices could preserve a Hindu's caste after a sea voyage.

2 For more information, see the author's article on V. S. Naipol in our journal [Kolesnikova, 2002, pp. 145-152].

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both with an artistic level and with a focus on the most essential thing in the axiological search of a modern person - finding oneself. Secondly, he is considered the patriarch of immigrant writers who, after the collapse of the British Empire, came to the United Kingdom from all over the world. Third, in terms of the diversity of cultural components of their genealogy, an ethnic Indian born in colonial Trinidad 3 and living in the UK for more than 50 years is superior to the writers mentioned above.

V. S. Naipaul's prose is frankly autobiographical. He has been writing books since he was almost 20, and almost every biographical fact becomes a literary fact for him. He was born on a small island in the Atlantic Ocean in a family of immigrants from India, who remained faithful to national traditions and Hinduism. The parents of the future writer belonged to the Brahmana varna, i.e. they belonged to the highest stratum in the Hindu social hierarchy. Vidyadhar spent his childhood in the home of his maternal grandmother. The whole order of life in this patriarchal house and the nature of relations between its inhabitants were inherent in the features of the traditional Indian way of life and social life. Vidyadhar, who grew up in an orthodox Brahmin family, was, by his own admission, "born an unbeliever" (Naipaul, 1964, p.36). Many years later, V. S. Naipaul will tell about his need for faith and the impossibility of finding it through the mouth of Salim, the hero of the novel "Bend of the River": "I did not have the religious feeling that my family members had. The uncertainty I felt was the result of my lack of real faith... This was payback for my materialistic attitude, for the compromise position that I chose between being completely immersed in life and floating above earthly concerns "[Naipaul, 1980, p. 16].

V. S. Naipaul did not enjoy participating in the religious rites of his household and stubbornly rejected any attempts to attract him to participate in religious rituals. The family was comfortable with this behavior of Vidyadhar, since the nature of the Indian cultural tradition allows for such an intellectual position: "My uncle often told me that this denial of my faith is part of the Hindu tradition "[Naipaul, 1964, p. 32]. V. K. Lamshukov drew attention to this fundamental feature of the Indian cultural tradition in the article "The principle of "mobile perspective"", devoted to the peculiarities of the "Hindu" consciousness of ancient writers of India. According to the researcher, in diverse and multicultural India, over the millennia of cooperation between tribes and peoples, a unique integration mechanism of culture has developed - the principle or law of "mobile perspective", which allowed for the simultaneous recognition and coordination of seemingly mutually exclusive trends, consistent coexistence of various ideals and values. This integration mechanism, which grows "directly from the nature of Hindu mythological thinking, from the essence of polytheistic religion with its characteristic genotheism and monolatry, when recognition and belief in one god allowed for the existence and effectiveness of other gods" [Lamshukov, 1989, p.245], is manifested in all spheres of Indian culture.

In the life of the Indian community that settled in Trinidad, the same mobile scale of value orientations operated, which, according to V. K. Lamshukov, distinguishes the Indian cultural tradition from other civilizations and provides Indian society with a special elasticity and stability. Of course, Trinidadian Indians live very differently. But deep psychological attitudes, constants of Indian culture that ensure the non-alternative coexistence of different lifestyles.-

3 Trinidad is the largest of the seven islands located in the West Indies. This vast archipelago (its second name is the Antilles) stretches in a strongly curved arc between South and North America, separating the Atlantic Ocean from the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.

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However, the changes in our current positions and forms of life-creating have not changed that much. And this is confirmed by the attitude of Indian immigrants to the world that existed outside the walls of their home: "The house in which we lived was special, but no more special than the rest... We ate certain foods, performed certain rituals, and had certain prohibitions. We were prepared for other people to have the same experience. We didn't want to share their characteristics with them; we didn't expect them to share ours with us. They were what they are, we were what we were. No one taught us this... " [Naipaul, 1964, pp. 30-31].

According to V. S. Naipaul, perceiving Hinduism only as a link with the cultural tradition of his ancestral homeland, he inherited the philosophical attitude to the world inherent in his grandfathers, their principle of world perception. After all, what is learned in childhood remains in a person, even if he does not realize it, because it is in childhood that a person especially firmly learns behavioral norms and cultural stereotypes. In addition, according to indologists, neither a strong European influence nor a broad and versatile Western education "can defeat an Indian's commitment to caste", which forms the physical and mental makeup of the individual (Kutsenkov, 1983, p. 79). The position of a caste, or, in the language of sociologists, its status, is the result of karma, i.e. it is acquired by the fact of birth and is a constant value. Therefore, "even if a brahmana did not fulfill the religious duties stipulated for his varna, he already belonged to the highest varna by birth and will adhere to its values" [Bongard-Levin, 1985, p. 664]. V. S. Naipaul is no exception. An episode described by the novelist in his book "The Zone of Darkness" can serve as confirmation: "Once in practical classes at school, we conducted an experiment with siphons, which, now I don't remember how it ended. At one stage of the experiment, the beaker and pipe were passed from boy to boy so that each of us could blow into the pipe and see the result. I missed my turn and was sure that no one was paying attention. But one Indian boy sitting behind me, an ordinary boy from Port of Spain 4 who was considered a bully in the class, whispered in approval: "The real brahman." I was surprised that an ordinary Port-of-Spain boy understood what had happened, and at the same time flattered by the unexpected tenderness in his voice... And along with this feeling, a new, hitherto unknown tenderness for this boy appeared in me... " [Naipaul, 1964, p. 34-35].

V. S. Naipaul's belonging to the high-born caste requires disinterest and maintaining distance in relations with other people. Therefore, the alleged snobbery of which the writer is accused by West Indian compatriots, and the aristocratic indifference of the English gentleman, noted by many Western researchers (and not only them), is nothing more than the traditional behavior of a brahmin and, therefore, has deep roots. It seems that under the influence of the position of the brahmana, who traditionally maintains a cold and alienated distance between himself and the world, the creative manner of the writer developed, as if "separated" from the world he draws, reserving the right to criticize and comment. In confirmation of this, we can quote the words of the Supreme Court. In the preface to a collection of short stories by his journalist father, V. S. Naipaul writes: "When I read these stories again many years later, I finally saw (and for a long time this eluded me) the point of view from which they were written . It was a brahmana position, born, perhaps, simultaneously of caste origin and of the spiritual world.

4 Port of Spain is the capital city on the island of Trinidad.

5 Seeprasad Naipaul (1907 - 1953) published his only collection of short stories, Gurudeva and Other Indian Stories, at the age of 36.

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the reverence of any Indian for knowledge and his love of the word, which was awakened in his father by the education he was able to receive in an English primary school and traditional Hindu religious training "(Naipaul, 1976). These words can be fully attributed to the writer himself, who inherited from his father not only a passion for literature, but also a special angle of vision - that sober impartiality of observation, which, as if without any participation of the author, unexpectedly revealed in everyday life what was ridiculous, absurd and inhumane.

In essence, the position of V. S. Naipaul remains everywhere and always the position of an observer, a witness, an eyewitness of events. He is a"spy" writer who does not justify or accuse anyone. This is his credo: "Let the reader look closely at those about whom I write, let him generalize for himself, and what kind of generalization will turn out depends on him" [Naipaul, 2002, p. 5]. This position is most clearly manifested in the novel "Bend of the River", which takes place in a small town on the banks of a large African river. The location of the action is not explicitly named. It doesn't matter. What happens in the bend of the river could have happened in any other place in the era of shackles thrown off and the intoxication of freedom. In a country that has only recently gained independence, the usual process of "liberation" from the remnants of the past is underway: physical violence, confiscation of property, deportation of ethnic minorities, corruption, hatred and general panic. The story is told in the name of Salim, a Muslim of Indian origin who came from a neighboring country to become the owner of a small shop in the town. Watching the nonsense of anarchy grow around him, this outsider doesn't really understand the meaning of what is happening, but this makes the impression of an eyewitness's account of events twice as strong.

Only at first glance it may seem that the main target of this work is colonialism, against which the stock of Naipol rage is inexhaustible. But the writer's even greater fears are caused by the fact that colonial dependence is replaced not by democracy and freedom, but by barbarism and chaos. V. S. Naipaul writes truthfully and bitterly, without counting on anyone to like and please. His only goal is to tell the truth, which is why "he may often be merciless to the people he talks about and to the society in which they live" (Iordansky, 1984, p.6). If V. S. Naipaul is perceived in this way, then it is legitimate to dismiss most of the accusations of critics of the "third world", who were simply not ready to accept the works of a writer who speaks with equal acuteness about Trinidad, Africa or India, as well as about Europe, the United States or the West in general. But first of all, the writer is interested in life in the former colonies and semi-colonies - in those hundred-plus countries where more than half of modern humanity lives. A great connoisseur and ruthless critic of the postcolonial era, W. S. Naipaul knows all the troubles of the "third world" - he is from there.

In the novel "Not Real", anatomizing the political and social nature of one small British colony, the writer gives a very harsh assessment not only of Trinidadian society, but also of the Caribbean world as a whole, and most importantly, of the states that are called "underdeveloped countries". Therefore, the real Trinidad disappeared from the pages of the novel, and instead the fictional island of Isabella became the setting, reminiscent of many former colonies, as evidenced by the phrase that sounds like a refrain in the novel.: "This has happened in twenty countries." The political life of such states as Isabella seems unreal to V. S. Naipaul, because the national politicians who came to power, having mastered the ideas of Western democracy quite well and armed with the necessary set of demagogic cliches, were only able to raise a new flag and put local swindlers instead of foreign ones: "...they were afraid that the world of wealth that had opened up to them as if by a wave of their hand

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with a magic wand, he could disappear at any moment. Therefore, each of them was in a hurry to turn this fake power into reality..."[Naipaul, 1983, p. 205].

V. S. Naipaul was one of the first people who saw and was able to show how great were the difficulties of the countries that embarked on the path of independence, what a heavy burden of the past hung over them. The mercilessly sober and sharp artist has filled his books with such traumatic truths about the person and society of this postcolonial space and time that sometimes the excessive emotionality of critics ' reactions to it and, accordingly, their assessments and sentences becomes understandable and understandable.

V. S. Naipaul belongs to the third generation of Indian immigrants (the generation of grandchildren), who were already born in Trinidad and were strongly influenced by this bizarre world, whose culture is a complex symbiosis of European, Asian, African and Caribbean elements brought from different cultural sources to a young developing civilization. To become visible in such a colorful society, it was necessary to behave in an unusual, extravagant, eccentric way, which Trinidadians were happy to do. Therefore, Trinidadian society, in which traditional, class, regional, or religious landmarks were not particularly important, consisted of bright, unique individuals. At the same time, the inhabitants of a tiny colony located somewhere on the outskirts of the British Empire experienced an inferiority complex. This was largely due to a purposeful pro-British education, which made Trinidadians "little Englishmen", who were most important to feel that they were subjects of the British Empire.

In the novel "Not Real" V. S. Naipaul tells about those who, trying to give meaning to their lives, borrow samples of a different socio-cultural environment, begin to follow someone else's taste. Imitating someone else's system of values, they get used to living a fake, secondary, fake life. The inhabitants of the small island of Isabella are" fake " imitators. They lead not a real, but an imaginary life and are therefore doomed, as the writer believes, to wretchedly vegetate in this surrogate world. The musty atmosphere of such a closed world somewhere on the outskirts of the ecumene is reminiscent of life in a remote province, in which, according to V. S. Naipaul, one can only be born and die without knowing the real life.

V. S. Naipaul was cramped in Trinidad. The ambitious young man dreamed of Great Britain, whose appeal was partly due to the fact that it was presented to him as an alternative to life in a family with its isolation and multiplicity. The ties of dependence on the family, which became almost unbearable for the young man, gave rise to "a taste for a different kind of life, secluded and at least not so crowded, where there would be space for himself alone" [Naipaul, 1964, p.31]. Thus, the clear division of the world into an "enlightened center" and a "clogged passive periphery", which forever determined the coordinate system of V. S. Naipaul, as well as his unrestrained individualism, went to the future writer from Trinidad. He has forever refused to be a representative of anything-nationality, race, faith - and with cold-blooded fearlessness exposes the suffocating claims of any collective community, defending the right of a person to be himself.

Although the formation of V. S. Naipaul's character took place in close contact with the culture of this unique historical, political, ethno-national, spiritual and confessional diversity of the region, the most powerful influence on him was the English literature, through which he perceived the ideals of Western culture. Already at school, the interests and preferences of the future writer were determined. His favorite subject was literature. This passion was followed by a love of the language (in addition to English, he studied Spanish and French).: "The pleasure I got from learning a language was as great as the pleasure I got from learning a language.-

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the swarm came from reading books" [Naipaul, 1984, p. 26]. According to him, the time spent with the French-English dictionary gave him much more knowledge than reading the works of English or French writers. And this careful, loving attitude of V. S. Naipaul to the word, his attitude to language, then passed into his prose, behind the elegant simplicity of which there was always an intense, painful, but victorious struggle with the word. As a result, he developed his own language and unique style, combining seriousness with humor, logical clarity with paradox, simplicity and piercing frankness.

On the cover of one of his textbooks, Vidyadhar wrote a promise: to leave this godforsaken place forever and become a writer. The father, who himself dreamed of a career as a writer, but never managed to jump "above the reporter of a local newspaper" [Tsvetkov, 2002, p. 247], supported his son in every possible way in his desire. The first half of his dream was realized with a scholarship awarded to a talented student by the Government of Trinidad. This scholarship gave the right to study at any university in the UK. To continue studying English language and literature, V. S. Naipaul chose Oxford (Department of English Philology), from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts. The four years spent at the university were a very difficult period for the young man. He was completely alone, and besides, England, which Vidyadhar considered if not native, then well known, was a stranger to him. He could not even imagine how big the gap was that separated the center of the British Empire from its outskirts: "In warm countries, all life is spent on the street. The windows are open, the doors are open. People sit on verandas and in cafes. You know everything about your neighbor's business, and he knows everything about yours. ..In England, everything happens behind closed doors" [Naipaul, 1984, p. 14].

Thus, connected by birth, upbringing, and education to three different worlds, V. S. Naipaul felt like a guest, a foreigner, and an outsider in each of them. Being born in Trinidad made it impossible for W. S. Naipaul to consider himself fully Indian. At the same time, the island did not become his homeland, and could not become it because of his upbringing, "poisoned" by India. V. S. Naipaul felt a sense of double alienation from both Trinidad and the Indian community. Moreover, when he arrived in the UK, this alienation only increased. Raised on European literature and embracing the principles of Western culture, Vidyadhar Naipaul felt like nothing more than an Anglicized foreigner who was constantly aware of the weight of his own "otherness." To Inder, Salim's friend and alter ego in The Bend of the River, V. S. Naipaul gave the feeling of inferiority and discomfort that he experienced in the UK: "I could hardly look at this world. I didn't understand how it worked and what I could do in it" [Naipaul, 1980, p.144]. In a country that has long been considered the best shelter for immigrants, V. S. Naipaul always felt that he was not accepted as "one of his own" and was held at arm's length with perfect correctness, because the well-known tolerance of the native inhabitants of the British Isles for foreigners is combined with their belief that a foreigner will always remain a foreigner: "To be a native of the colony means to be a little funny and not like everything, especially in the eyes of metropolitan residents. All immigrants and their descendants are residents of the colony in one sense or another, and between a native of the colony and ...there is always mutual distrust between metropolitan natives" [Naipaul, 1984, p. 32].

In search of a land where he would be "at home", where he could feel "at home", Vidyadhar went to India. But everything in the land of his ancestors seemed alien to him: space-huge, unmeasurable; and time-deeper antiquity, longer day; and people subject to some of their own, unknown to him conventions. But most importantly, V. S. Naipaul himself felt like an outsider, having felt the isolation and isolation characteristic of Indian society: "In India, there is no place for outsiders who do not belong to the ka-

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some caste" [Naipaul, 1977, p. 171]. Although in his ancestral homeland, Vidyadhar realized that there was a strong Indian "foundation" under the Anglotrinidadian "layer", which helped him " survive the stresses of a long stay in England, remain true to himself, and learn to enjoy work and his name... I came to terms with the fact that every person is an island "[Naipaul, 1964, p. 45], he felt infinitely far from this country. The trip to India not only did not save the writer from the painful state of being unrooted on earth, but also finally made him a "cultural orphan". V. S. Naipaul was left with only a fictional space of literature, and he returned to the UK. He had nowhere else to run, and London was "the best place to write books..." [Naipaul, 1984, p. 16].

The complex imperial-colonial configuration (a cultural trio of two such different colonies as Trinidad and India, and the metropolis - Great Britain), which formed the writer, caused the problematic nature of his self-identification. And writing for V. S. Naipaul became a kind of study of his own past. He returned to it again and again in order to understand his extraordinarily simple and at the same time extremely confusing origin, which, according to him, became a source of creativity and inspiration. The list of his works includes novels, essays, travelogues, novellas and short stories [for more information, see: Kolesnikova, 2003]. But, in fact, he is the author of fifteen works of fiction-all his life he creates one text: about an Indian immigrant from a former English colony, who cannot identify with any of the cultures of the countries of his residence.

The theme of outcastness, the inability to fit into any system (cultural, social, everyday) dominates in the prose of V. S. Naipaul. It is taken to the extreme in the short story "One of Many" from the book "In the Free State", for which the writer received the highest British literary prize - the Booker Prize. This story deserves special attention. The theme of a clash with a foreign tradition is resolved in it not on the characteristic collision of semitones for V. S. Naipaul: when a native of unfree, semi - colonial Trinidad turns out to be a London resident, but on East-West contrasts.

The main character of the story is a "real" Indian by origin, place of birth, and upbringing, and the place of action is the United States of America-the personification of the so-called Western world. This story is the artless monologue of an Indian who remains in the West, but understands his life from a single point of view: the view of a man who has suffered a catastrophic defeat. Santosh could not give up his identity and did not want to accept the American model of the world. Being unable to split or completely dissolve in someone else's life-culture, he chooses the only possible way of existence for himself - alienation: "I have closed my mind and my heart to the English language, I don't read newspapers, listen to the radio or watch TV... I don't want to understand or learn anything else... I was once part of the whole... Then I looked at myself in the mirror and decided to become a free man. The only thing that freedom has brought me is the realization that I have a face and a body that I will have to feed and clothe for a certain number of years. Then - the end... "[Naipaul, 1978, p. 58]. At Santosh, as V. S. claims. Naipaul, there is no other option but to exist alone, lost in a strange and incomprehensible world.

And here it is impossible not to mention the title of the book. The phrase "in a free state" means "in a free state". But there is a scientific term "a free state", which describes the state of a molecule that is free from any attractive forces. This second meaning reveals the hidden, hidden meaning of the title, because it seems that this is the state in which not only Santosh is in, but also the characters of the entire book, which consists of two short stories and one novella framed by a Prologue.-

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gom and epilogue. Although the themes of all its components are diverse: in one, an Indian servant moves from Bombay to Washington, in another, two brothers move from Trinidad to London, in a third, two Europeans travel to an African country - the book gives the impression of a subtle and complex whole, because its semantic center is an idea dear to V. S. Naipaul. freedom and free choice. And putting the title of the novel of the same name on the cover involuntarily makes it see the key idea of the whole book. All her characters, torn from their natural environment, their habitual way of life, without attachments, free from everything but themselves, are in a kind of limbo: they have nowhere to go back to, because they have outgrown their past, and they do not want to go forward, because their future is alien to them. But in this situation there is no place for life, only emptiness, fatigue and a sense of meaninglessness of being-a direct result of the feeling of alienness of the world where they have no points of support.

In the genes of V. S. Naipaul's characters, even the most seemingly prosperous, there is a virus of eternal trouble. All of them, desperately lonely, sorrowfully failed, somehow try to fit in with the reality around them, and none of them can do it. "Uprooted" from the cultural environment that they might consider native, Naipol's heroes, like their creator, live with the awareness of their own homelessness and suffer from adversity: both the world is alien to them and they are alien to the world. For this, the writer is often called a "pessimist". However, for all the desperation of the existence described by V. S. Naipaul, his books plunge into an atmosphere of genuine courage and humor, largely due to the mockingly restrained tone inherent in his narrative, which softens the writer's story about loneliness, fears and complexes of modern man.

Artistic works that originated in the depths of Western literature, but were created by immigrant writers of Afro-Asian origin, raise a natural question about the correlation of the texts of these authors with a particular human community, since this principle "one way or another, explicitly or implicitly underlies almost all ways to distinguish "one literature"" [Serebryany, 1987, p. 247]. It is rather difficult to determine the place of V. S. Naipaul in the context of modern literature. Some researchers call him a Trinidadian writer, others - an Indian. Still others believe that he is a British novelist.

V. S. Naipaul can be considered a "Brit". He writes in English, as a prose writer developed in Great Britain, lives most of his life in this country, and by all external signs, his prose is a model of English and wider Western literature. V. S. Naipaul can be called a "Trinidadian" not only and not so much because Trinidad is his birthplace, and many of his works are based on the fact that he was born in his books are "filled" with material related to the problems of this region. Most importantly, the writer, who grew up on the border of the former empire - "in a remote province by the sea "(according to I. Brodsky), has always retained the slightly suspicious look of the "border guard", registering in a grotesque, extremely alienated form what surrounds him in the East, in the West Indies, and in the West. At the same time, V. S. Naipaul belongs to the family of Brahmins, who determined not only his life, but also his creative position. He is the bearer of the Hindu cultural tradition, of course, a tradition transformed by time, far removed from the classical, "pure" tradition, but palpably present in the consciousness, worldview and creativity of the third-generation Indian immigrant. The center of the writer's universe in constructing an artistic model of the world is the Indian immigrant, his fate in a foreign land, his worldview. And by recreating the life of Indian immigrants with their inherent behavior and worldview, V. S. Naipaul gives an "Indian" interpretation of the world.

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Any "label" attached to V. S. Naipaul - a Trinidadian novelist living in London, an English genius of Indian origin, or an Indian writer born in Trinidad - does not in any way exhaust him as a writer and only testifies to the ambiguity inherent in both his work and his human destiny, which has left its mark the subtle complexity of his nature. There are three distinct cultural components in V. S. Naipaul's work, but it is not worth seriously thinking about which of them prevails. The uniqueness of this artist and person lies precisely in the trinity of its components. Far-flung cultures like Trinidad, India, and the United Kingdom don't just touch in W. S. Naipaul, they co-exist in each other. Closely intertwined, they form a highly organic unity, in which it is sometimes impossible to separate what is given by birth or acquired by upbringing and education. To understand the riddle, the mystery of Naipol's work, we need to focus not on the nature of its components, but on the texture of their interweaving.

V. S. Naipaul is a writer of "world" and belongs to the global cultural tradition. Armed with the tools of Western literature, the novelist recounts his experience of living without any ground under his feet, without social or national support, in perfect English. And the acute modernity of the 73-year-old author stems from the description of a very special property of life-uncertainty, a sharp sense of which is in the air at the turn of the XX and XXI centuries. Now the whole world lives like this: hanging in the air, with the feeling of flying into the abyss, into the void. And people became interested in reading how to live without soil, holding on to nothing. Looking into the fates of his characters, V. S. Naipaul found a recipe for existence in our unstable and unsettled world. The modern world is depressing with its unsettled state, frightening with instability. You can't find a foothold in it. You need to look for the Firmament in yourself. The "ground" is only inside, and, according to W. S. Naipaul, it is formed in failures. Only by recognizing their failures and learning to live in the flow of failures can a person find the courage to accept reality for what it is, without collapsing, closing down, or submitting to it.

list of literature

Bongard-Levin G. M., Ilyin G. F. India in ancient Times, Moscow, 1985.

Iordansky V. V plennu u svoego proshego (Predislovie) [In Thrall to his Past (Foreword)]. Miguel Street, Moscow, 1984.

Kolesnikova N. V. In search of India: V. S. Naipol's unsentimental journey. 2002. N 6.

Kolesnikova N. V. India in the works of V. S. Naipol (Fiction and travel prose). Avtoref. kand. dis. M. (2003.

Kutsenkov A. A. Evolution of the Indian caste. Moscow, 1983.

Lamshukov V. K. The principle of "mobile perspective" / / Literature of India, Moscow, 1989.

Naipol V. S. Neurosis of new converts. Inostrannaya literatura [Foreign Literature]. 2002. N 1.

Serebryany S. D. To the analysis of the concept of "Indian literature" / / Literature and Culture of ancient and medieval India, Moscow, 1987.

Tsvetkov A. Stockholm syndrome//Foreign literature. 2002. N 5.

Naipaul V.S. An Area of Darkness. L., 1964.

Naipaul V.S. My Father// Onlooker. 1976. 1 - 14 November.

Naipaul V.S. India: A Wounded Civilization. L., 1977.

Naipaul V.S. In a Free State. Aylesbury, 1978.

Naipaul V.S. A Bend in the River. N.Y., 1980.

Naipaul V.S. The Mimic Men. Reading, 1983.

Naipaul V.S. The Overcrowded Barracoon. N.Y., 1984.

Rushdie S. Imaginary Homelands. Essays and Critics 1981 - 1991. L., 1992.

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