Article

Name: Event retardation as the basis of the absurd discours (a case study of the works of D. Danilov)

Authors: Galina A. Zhilicheva, Pavel E. Zhilichev

Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation; Independent Researcher, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Study of literature

Abstract:

This paper discusses the function of retardation in the works of D. Danilov. In modern literature, retardation, the oldest method of slowing down the intrigue, changes its meaning, marking the discursive strategy of the absurd and indicting the “annihilation” of the event in the metamodernist reality. In the novels “Horizontal Position,” “Description of the City,” and “To Sit and Watch,” retardation problematizes the possibility of isolating events from the flow of life and transforming them into the narrative intrigue. Retardation allows emphasizing the “latent” nature of a narrative without a story. The story of the event experience is replaced by an ekphrasis, the fixation of repetitive actions or unchanging states. Being exhausted, the retarding series leads to a meta-description of text generation. The plays “What Were You Doing Last Night?”, “Seryozha is Very Stupid” use the series of retardations to prevent a dramatic intrigue, emphasizing the semantic polyvalence of events, exposing the basic structures of the dramatic action, and forming the metaplot of “menace.” The novel “Sasha, Hello!” demonstrates a more traditional function of retardation, that of delaying a cumulative catastrophe. However, serial repetitions acquire, not without the help of an intermedial context, such a scale as to blur the boundaries of the event, presenting it as an opportunity or a frame rather than a final change in the situation. Therefore, the catastrophe passes from the field of reference into the field of communication, with the final uncertainty provoking the interpretive activity of the addressee.

Keywords: retardation, seriality, discourse of the absurd, narrative, intrigue, comedy of menace, D. Danilov

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