Article

Name: “Childhood” by L.N. Tolstoy in Marina Stepnova’s Novel “The Garden”

Authors: Ksenia V. Abramova

Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section The Plot, Motive, Genre

Abstract:

Our article is devoted to the analysis of Marina Stepnova’s novel “The Garden” from the point of view of the intertextual embodiment of the theme of childhood in it. Marina Stepnova’s text is structured in such a way that it suggests reading it precisely from the point of view of intertext: the author weaves recognizable quotes from various works into the narrative, which are considered as allusions referring to the works of classical Russian and foreign literature. We consider Stepnova’s novel as a reflection in it of L. N. Tolstoy’s novel “Childhood”, which is present not in the form of an explicit citation or direct reference, like many other works, but as a “third text”, interpreters. This allows to follow the implementation of some motifs characteristic of the embodiment of children’s themes in Russian literature, for example, The Garden of Eden motif, the motif of the estate and others. In addition, this approach allows us to compare individual fragments of the story of the 19th century and the novel of the 21st century, trace the coinciding elements in these episodes and come to the conclusion that the fantastic garden of the Boryatinskys in the novel seems to “grow” out of the history of the formation of Nikolen’ka Irtenev. Separately, we dwell on the theme of muteness, silence, the ability and impossibility of expressing oneself in words, which occupies a significant place in the work under consideration. Marina Stepnova’s novel “The Garden” becomes a kind of parody of a parenting novel, it contains many themes and motives characteristic of the Bildungsroman genre, but they are all distorted, pastishized. At the same time, the novel lacks an important element characteristic of this genre – a description of the manifestation of the children’s consciousness of the main character, the theme of children’s perception is realized through the people around her, other heroes of Marina Stepnova’s novel, since numerous appeals to the topic of childhood are associated with them. As a result, we come to the conclusion that the image of the main character turns into a force that controls all other heroes, reflects and replaces the figure of the author.

Keywords: theme of childhood, novel of education, parody, intertextuality, L. N. Tolstoy, “third text”, interpretant, Bildungsroman, Marina Stepnova

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