TRANSFORMATION OF EXISTENTIAL PHILOSOPHY IN FOREIGN LITERATURE OF THE END OF THE 20TH CENTURY (ON THE MATERIALS OF THE WORKS OF R. BACH AND P. COELHO)

Abstract

The article deals with the issue of transformation of existential philosophical issues in foreign literature of the late 20th century, on the example of the works of R. Bach (“Jonathan Livingston Seagull”, “Illusions”) and P. Coelho (“The Alchemist”, “Veronika Decides to Die”) in particular.
The specifics of the study of this problem in domestic and foreign literary criticism are analysed and the relevance and prospects of further research in this field are clarified since arising at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries existential issues continue to actively pulsate in foreign literature of the turn of 20th–21st centuries, serving as one of the unifying factors of the literature of modernism and postmodernism.
Existentialists closely ask the question of how and in what sphere a person can find confidence, that is, to find his true purpose (being) and its meaning. This is the most important issue of humanity in all periods of its existence, but attention to it is increasing in transitional moments, moments of change, when the anxiety for the future, tomorrow is growing. It is in this transitional period of the turn of the twentieth and nineteenth centuries that R. Bach and P. Coelho wrote their works, intensifying this issue with them.
In the works of R. Bach and P. Coelho the existential problems are pronounced, namely: the search for the truth of existence through the prism of their own existence, freedom of choice, responsibility for their choice, the existence of God, “borderline situation”, death and more. In each of them they are revealed in their own way. Both writers emphasize the importance of knowing one’s “Self”: R. Bach – through the constant pursuit of perfection, P. Coelho – through the realization of dreams, both ways, in their opinion, in fact, are “the way to yourself”.
The difference between the views of both writers from the views of existentialists of the early 20th century mainly consists of a life-affirming, optimistic conception of man’s place in the world and how he perceives this world. R. Bach and P. Coelho insist that life can be what we want it to be.