Contemporary morality play, or "Four people and two angels", a comedy play by Victor Shenderovich

Współczesny moralitet, czyli komedia: "Četyre čeloveka, dva angela" Wiktora Szenderowicza

The subject of the article is the analysis of “A four people and two angels’, the play by Russian satirist Victor Shenderovich (2001). The main conclusion of this analysis is that this play refers to psychomachia as one of the oldest literary motifs. However, the difference between classical realisation of psychomachic motif and its realisation in Shenderovich's play might be noticed: while the classical psychomachics reveals through seriousness and sublimity, A four people and two angels is an example of the realisation of this motif in a comedy convention. It becames possible mainly due to the way of creation by the author mysterious figures of angel Stroncylov and sinner Ivan Pashkin. References to the literary works of Lev Tolstoy, Nikolai Erdman or Mikhail Bulgakov provide additional justification for the claim that play written by Russian satirist raises existential problems, but the way it does is definitely too far from classical literary depictions of the motif of struggle for the human soul.