THE PICTORIAL PALETTE OF PROSE BY TURGENEV AND DOSTOEVSKY

The paper discusses the color epithets used in the texts of I. S. Turgenev and F. M. Dostoevsky, the authors’ preferences and strategies in relation to color designations. For the analysis, we used the materials of the RNC, which allow us to make not only qualitative, but also quantitative comparison. The authors’ preferences show that some color names have not yet been established as abstract colors in the language of the second half of the XIX century. There are much more color epithets in Turgenev’ texts than in Dostoevsky’s texts. In the color palette of both authors, WHITE, BLACK and RED are the most frequent, which corresponds in general to the psychology of color perception by contrast and the order of appearance of color tokens in the languages of the world. However, in Turgenev’s palette WHITE prevails, in Dostoevsky — RED and BLACK. Turgenev is also attentive to GRAY and its shades. The authors diff er in the strategies of using color adjectives. Dostoevsky chooses simple color epithets describing appearance of a character in order to convey his emotional state. Turgenev seeks to convey complex shades; at the same time, in portraits of characters, color epithets can show the attitude of the author or narrator to the hero. In general, color for Dostoevsky is one of the means of description, while for Turgenev it is both a means and an object of narration.