Through the comparative analysis of Fedor Sologub's short story "Hoop" and Viktor Pelevin's texts "Shed no. XII" and The Helmet of Horror, the author of the article discusses the reception of motifs (myths) traditional for Romanticism and symbolism, in contemporary postmodernist fiction. The characters of both Sologub and Pelevin strive to define their "self", yet the symbolist hero attempts to close himself up in the introspection, while the postmodernist character tries to open up in the situation of total "communality". Sologub's hero finds the self-realization through the transfer between realia and realiora, while Pelevin's characters are locked in the hyperreality of simulacra where self-identification becomes impossible.