Старость и молодость как параллельные мотивы в романе Михаила Осоргина "Сивцев вражек"

The article deals with two fairy-tale motives – “youth” and “old age” in Mikhail Osor-gin’s novel A Quiet Street (Sivtzev Vrazhek, 1928). Owing to the author’s outlook and artistic strategy they do not stand in the opposition to one another, but rather depict parallel vectors of human life, its presentation the context of space (micro and macro space) as well as in the context of a philosophically meaningful historical time correlated with eternity. The author’s aim is supported by the novel’s structure – a freely arranged series of short stories. The article exposes the problem of the writer’s comprehension of human life within different time and spatial plans. The time layer covers daily, annual and eternal / universal time. The spatial dimension of the artistic world takes into account the Infinite Universe, the solar system, the Earth, Russia, Moscow and the corner house in Sivtzev Vrazhek, which is the main center of the novel structure.