PUSHKIN AS A MODERNIST: ELEMENTS OF A FREE INDIRECT DISCOURSE IN THE TRADITIONAL NARRATIVE OF “THE QUEEN OF SPADES”


2022. № 1 (31), 161-170

The National Research N. I. Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod

Abstract:

The paper studies “narrative shifts” in the narrative structure of the A. S. Pushkin’s story “The Queen of Spades” in the context of the concepts of “linguistics of narrative” and “poetics of personalism”. The paper shows that the originality of the narration in the A. S. Pushkin’s story is in inclusion of elements of free indirect discourse as a narrative form inherent in modernism in the form of traditional third-person narration. The author pays attention to “narrative shifts” of two types: diff erent types of unmotivated mutual transition of the omniscient Narrator and the pragmatically motivated Storyteller within one fragment of the narration; diff erent types of unmotivated mutual transition of the subject sphere of the Narrator and the hero within the same fragment of the narration. Conscious deviations from the norms of the traditional classical narration in “The Queen of Spades” are associated with displacements and replacements of the subject position (“point of view”) of a Narrator and a hero, with “playing” on the alternation of diff erent types of a Narrator / a Storyteller, with the specifi city of the interpretation of the primary egocentric elements of the narration (parentheses, pronouns and pronominal adverbs, metatext insertions, etc.) and so on. Emphasis is placed on the fact that A. S. Pushkin ironically defamiliarizes the image of the traditional omniscient Narrator of the contemporary literature in his story, i. e. makes him the object of a specifi c author’s intention, and not just the subject of narration. The author comes to the conclusion about the complex narrative organization of Pushkin’s work, which already contains prototypes of Dostoevsky’s future polyphonism, Chekhov’s polypersonal narration, and further modernist games with fl oating points of view in the narrative forms of Russian and foreign literature of the 20th century.