Article

Name: Metaphor of a Train in the Context of Film Poetics of Russian Literature of the 20th – 21st Centuries

Authors: Natalia A. Muratova, Galina A. Zhilicheva

Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

Abstract:

Based on the screenplays by A. Platonov, Vs. Ivanov, A. Mindadze, F. Gorenstein and A. Konchalovsky, this article reviews the stages of formation of the train movement metaphor. In the 1920s and 1930s, the artistic depiction of trains was influenced by the ideological cliché of the “locomotive of the revolution”. However, the unique poetics of A. Platonov and Vs. Ivanov represent the train in an original way: as an animated being, a centauric body. In the screenplays of the 2nd half of the 20th century, trains can be likened to a person, consciousness, a work of art, actualizing its metaphysical and metapoetic essence. In contemporary literature, the train is associated with the image of the processes of consciousness and the unconscious, the movement of the train is likened to the movement of discourse. Based on the novels by V. Pelevin, E. Vodolazkin, D. Danilov, this article analyzes the functions of these metaphors. The train remains a sign that manifests the essence of film poetics (the movement of frames), but instead of an object of the referential-eventful intrigue, it becomes a part of the intrigue of interpretation, or, in other words actualizes the processes of perception and understanding of the individual and the world.

Keywords: metaphor, train movement, intermediality, screenplay, contemporary novel

Bibliography:

A General Rhetoric. Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981, 288 p. (Russ. ed.: Obshchaya ritorika. Moscow, Progress Publ., 1986, 392 p.)

Deblasio A. The filmmaker’s philosopher. Merab Mamardashvili and Russian cinema. Edinburgh, Edinburgh Uni. Press, 2019, 203 p. (Russ. ed.: Filosof dlya kinorezhissera. Merab Mamardashvili i rossiyskiy kinematograf. St. Petersburg: Academic Studies Press, BiblioRossica Publ., 2020, 272 p.)

Goncharenko A. A. Grekh literaturshchiny: vzaimodeystvie kino i literatury v perekhode ot modernizma k sotsrealizmu v 1920–1930-kh gg. [The sin of striving for literary effects: interaction between cinema and fiction in the transition from Modernism to Socialist Realism in the 1920s–1930s.]. Historical and socio-educational thought, 2016, vol. 8, no. 5, pp. 150–155. (in Russ.)

Martyanova I. A. Kinematografichnost' literaturnogo teksta (na materiale sovremennoy russkoy prozy) [Cinematographic quality of a literary text (based on contemporary Russian prose)]. Bulletin of the Chelyabinsk State Pedagogical University, 2017, no. 1, pp. 136–141. (in Russ.)

Muratova N. A., Zhilicheva G. A. Diskursivnye praktiki kul'ury. Literatura i kino v aspektakh teoreticheskoy i istoricheskoy poetiki [Discursive practices of culture. Literature and cinema in aspects of theoretical and historical poetics]. Novosibirsk, NSPU Press, 2022, 182 p. (in Russ.)

Muratova N. A., Zhilicheva G. A. Semiotika poezda v russkoy literature: intermedial'nyy i metapoeticheskiy aspekty [Train semiotics in Russian literature: intermedial and metapoetic aspects]. Bulletin of the Kemerovo State University, 2022, vol. 24, no. 1 (89), pp. 50–59. (in Russ.)

Savitskiy S. A. “Zheleznaya doroga” kak metafora v sovetskoy kul'ture 1920–1930-kh gg. [“Railway” as a metaphor in Soviet culture of the 1920s–1930s]. RSUH Bulletin, 2011, no. 17, pp. 38–46. (in Russ.)