FROM SUICIDE OF REVOLUTIONARYTO SYMBOLIC COMMUNICATION WITH THE WORLD OF THE DEAD (DEATH IN THE MODERN CHUVASH IDENTITY)
The author analyses the central images of death or vilĕm in modern Chuvash intellectual discourse. It is presumed that modern Chuvash intellectual situation began to form after 1917, and the poet Şeşpĕl Mišši became the founding father of modern Chuvash identity and reformer of Chuvash language. Şeşpĕl Mišši was one of the intellectual leaders of Chuvash nationalism, but the general political situation and the uncertainty of post-revolution Russia actualised numerous images of death in his texts. Şeşpĕl Mišši combined motives of death with ideas of future Chuvash world, world of Chuvash language, world of Chuvash labour illuminated by rays of Chuvash sun. Early suicide of the author inspired Chuvash intellectuals to mythologise his image. Chuvash writers of the Soviet period continued to invent and imagine the death as one of the central elements in Chuvash intellectual discourse. Boris Cheendykov, the modern Chuvash author, is one of writers who continue traditions, proposed by Şeşpĕl Mišši. Boris Cheendykov, combining problem of death and existence, actualised the problems of identity and its development in the post-national world. The images of death and motifs of symbolic communication between the world of the living and the world of the dead continue to be among the central problems in modern Chuvash intellectual discourse.