Article

Name: On the narrative effect of the authenticity of memoirs of Elizaveta Vodovozova

Authors: Tatyana I. Pecherskaya

Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Study of literature

Abstract: The paper is devoted to studying the memoir text in a narrative aspect. The ways of creating an illusion of authenticity, which are based on personal testimonies, are analyzed. The object of the analysis is a fragment of the memoirs of E. N. Vodovozova «At the dawn of life» (Na zare zhizni) written at the beginning of the 20th century, the chapter «Among the Petersburg youth of the sixties». The memoirs are generally considered as a fictionalized text, on the one hand having the status of an «entertaining novel» in the reader’s perception, and on the other hand, being a documentary source. The author’s meta-description of the text, reflected in the subtitle «from personal experiences», allows us to view memories as an «ego-text» (Jacques Presser), that is, the text where the author is both the one who writes and the one who acts in the text. Thus, the narrative component of the text plays the first role. The study aims at identifying the ways of creating the «effect of reality», analyzing additional sources that the memoirist could use, and determining their function in the structural and semantic plans. A hypothesis suggests that when writing this chapter, Vodovozova could have used the articles of two critics of the leading journals of the sixties («Sovremennik» and «Russkoe slovo») – M. A. Antonovich’s article «The Asmodeus of our time» (1862) and the articles of D. I. Pisarev «Bazarov», «Unresolved issue» / «Realists» (1862, 1864). The texts of these articles served for describing the dispute over Ivan Turgenev’s novel «Fathers and sons» (1862), in which young people of the democratic circle, ardently expressed their disagreement with the depiction of the nihilist Bazarov as a representative of the whole generation. The paper shows the «parallel places» of the dispute and fragments of articles. A conclusion is made that it is legitimate to consider the text of the articles as a means of creating a method for simulating a live conversation of participants. It is noted that Pisarev used the kind of temporary compression formed by combining different concepts of Bazarov in articles, published at different times. All this suggests that the strategy for constructing the text, in this case, was focused on the reproduction of only the most vivid and radical positions. However, it did not reflect in general the dynamics of perception of Bazarov in the first half of the sixties but revealed the mechanism for the formation of public opinion directly formed by the battle of the journal leaders of the most authoritative journals. The results of observations allow us to consider the «ego-text» as a compilation of materials of different degrees of likelihood.

Keywords: memoir literature, documentary character, narrative, literary criticism, nihilism, E. Vodovozova, M. Antonovich, D. Pisarev

Bibliography:

Antonovich M. Asmodey nashego vremeni [Asmodey of our time]. Sovremennik. 1862, no. 3.

Vodovozova E. N. Na zare zhizni. Memuarnye ocherki i portrety: V 2 t. [At the dawn of life. Memoir essays and portraits: in 2 vols]. Intr. art., prep. of the text and comm. by E. S. Vilenskaya. Moscow, Khudozh. Lit., 1987, vol. 1, 511 p., vol. 2, 527 p. (Literaturnye memuary [Literary memoirs]).