Mirrored Fates: Linguo-Stylistic Construction of Tanabai’s Identity Through Gul’sary in “Farewell, Gul’sary!”

Present article examines the linguo-stylistic expression of the protagonist Tanabai’s personal identity in Chingiz Aitmatov’s *Farewell, Gul’sary!* based on its English translation by John French. The object of the study is the literary text of the translation, and the subject is the linguistic representation of Tanabai’s personal identity through the parallelism of his fate with that of his horse, Gul’sary. The aim of the study is to identify and analyze the lexical and figurative-metaphorical means by which the protagonist’s personal identity is expressed indirectly through the image of the horse. The methodological basis of the study is a linguistic and stylistic analysis, mainly at the lexical and stylistic levels, incorporating elements of interpretive and contextual analysis. Particular attention is paid to such techniques as symbolic metaphorization. The study found that the image of Gul’sary functions as a linguistically shaped alter ego of Tanabai: changes in the description of the horse’s movement, strength, submission, and aging simultaneously reflect the transformation of the hero’s personal identity. Gul’sary’s death is interpreted as a symbolic death of Tanabai’s true identity. The obtained results confirm that linguo-stylistic analysis of literary translation allows us to identify the underlying mechanisms of identity representation.