Article

Name: Dream in Prose by Gaito Gazdanov as an Anarrative Strategy

Authors: E. E. Ivanov

Irkutsk State University, Irkutsk, Russian Federation

In the section The Plot in the System of Cultural Universals: Bunin, East and West of the Russian Emigration

Abstract: The article discusses sleep as an anarrative author’s strategy. The special role of this motif in the writer’s metaromaniac cycle is indicated by its presence in strong positions of the text (“Evening at Claire’s”, “The Ghost of Alexander Wolf”, “Awakening”) and the generalization of the theme of sleep in works with stories about the Civil War and post-war emigration (“The Prisoner”, “Return of the Buddha”). Anarrative elements that undermine the evidence of events are described as a system of opposing the current state of affairs of eternity. In this connection, in the first novel by G. Gazdanov, an incomplete “love triangle” is analyzed – the absence of Claire’s husband as a motivated witness to the reliability of the narrative, “errors” in the sequence of events, as well as a number of strange, mysterious words and expressions. Anarrativity allows us to separate the world of becoming a narrator and the metaphysical world of the author-creator. As a result of the structural-typological analysis, a distinction is made between the concepts of “pre-incarnation” and “rebirth” in the writer's thesaurus. The first forms a narrative model of “catching” in the world of illusions, and it is connected with the outlook of the heroes who have lost their native soil and are trying to overcome de- pendence on external circumstances. Second, “rebirth” refers to the “outside” position of the author-creator, which is attributed to the penetration of anarrative elements in novels with traces of experience of participation in war. In later texts, anarrativity flows into narration, and the author’s voice does not create dissonance in the discourse of G. Gazdanov’s dominant themes: “contemplation”, “randomness of the nonrandom”, the neighborhood of “life” and “death”, each of which intersects with the idea of a dream existence. Being a universal, sleep (a state akin to hypnosis) turns out to be the ultimate form of contingency, a fatal trap of the loss of selfhood, on the one hand, on the other, as a dream, it can be a mode of creative transformation of the world. As an alternative to this opposition, there is a mode of existence beyond the extremes of the thoughtless (mainly, these are the images of officers in “Evening at Claire’s” and “The Prisoner”) or intellectually exalted (narrators in post-war novels) ways of life, demonstrated in the active manifestation of altruism and compassion of the “average Frenchman” Pierre (“Awakening”).

Keywords: plot action, author, narrator, anarrative, other

Bibliography:

Arutyunova N. Yazyk i mir cheloveka. Moscow, Yazyki russkoy kul’tury, 1999, 896 p. (in Russ.)

Baines J. Nauka lyubvi. 2000. 288 p. (in Russ.) URL: https://vdkuznetsov. wordpress.com/2016/04/18/oneyricheskiy prizrak/ (accessed 08.07.2020).

Bakhtin M. Chelovek v mire slova. Moscow, ROU Press, 1995, 140 p. (in Russ.)

Frumkin K. Pozitsiya nablyudatelya: otstranennoe sozertsanie i ego kul’turnye funktsii. Kiev, Nika-Tsentr Publ., 2003, 224 p. (in Russ.)

Ivanov E. Metamotiv nasil’stvennoy smerti v proze Gayto Gazdanova. Vestnik Udmurtskogo universiteta. Seriya: Istoriya i filologiya, 2020, vol. 30, no. 2, p. 311–319. (in Russ.)

Ivanov Е. Public Lectures on the Novel of G. Gazdanov “An Evening with Claire”. In: 18 th PC SF Professional Culture of the Specialist of the Future. 2018. DOI 10.15405/ epsbs.2018.12.02.191

Jandl I. Textimmanente Wahrnehmung bei Gajto Gazdanov: Wahrnehmung bei Gajto Gazdanov: Sinne und Emotionen als motivische und strukturelle Schnittstelle zwischen Subjekt und Weltbild. Berlin [etc.], Peter Lang GmbH, 2019, 566 S.

Lurie V. Vvedenie v kriticheskuyu agiografiyu. St. Petersburg, Axioma Publ., 2009, 238 p. (in Russ.)

Nöth W. Tekst kak prostranstvo. (in Russ.) URL: https://pandia.ru/text/78/463/ 89823.php (accessed 08.07.2020).

Plekhanova I. Literaturnyy geroy kak “prototip” lichnosti pisatelya: usloviya “uznavaniya” i khudozhestvennye sledstviya identifikatsii. Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Filologiya, 2015, no. 1, p. 139–158. (in Russ.)

Proskurina E. Tezaurus smerti v proze G. Gazdanova. In: Slovar’-ukazatel’ syuzhetov i motivov russkoy literatury. Novosibirsk, Geo Publ., 2018, iss. 4, pt. 2, p. 114–150. (in Russ.)

Rudnev V. Mekhanizmy zhizni. Belgrad, Filologicheskiy fakul’tet Publ., 2018, p. 48–50. (in Russ.)

Tyupa V. Avtor i narrator v istorii russkoy literatury. Critique and Semiotics, 2020, no. 1, p. 22–39. (in Russ.)

Tyupa V. Krizis identichnosti kak narratologicheskaya problema. Narratorium, 2017, no. 1 (10). URL: http://narratorium.rggu.ru/article.html?id=2637243 (accessed 28.01.2020). (in Russ.)

Ukhtomskiy A. Dominanta. Stat’i raznykh let. 1887–1939. St. Petersburg, Piter Publ., 2002, 448 p. (in Russ.)

Yurieva O. Otrazhenie etnotipologii F. M. Dostoevskogo v tvorchestve I. A. Bunina. Vestnik Buryatskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 2018, no. 2-1, p. 17–27. (in Russ.)