Being a cross-cutting character of the cycle. Cyclic text construction in short epic prose

-- [ Page 2 ] --

At the end of the 20th century, the prose cycle became an object of study in foreign literary criticism. Unfortunately, domestic researchers do not pay due attention to these works, which led to the appearance of the third paragraph in the dissertation research - « Study of the prose cycle in foreign literary criticism". What we call a “cycle of stories” does not currently have a single name in American literary criticism. “Linked stories”, “short story cycles”, “novels-in-stories”, “story sequence”, “composite novel” ), “short story composite” - all these concepts denote a form of fiction “in the gray zone between a collection of stories and a novel”15. “Story cycle” in American literary criticism is the name prose genre. You can trace the history of the formation of the concept of “story cycle” in English literary criticism: in the 1980s. The term "story cycle" has been used since the 1990s. new genre designations appear - “sequence of stories” and “composite novel”, and even later - “combination of stories”. But to date, foreign literary scholars have not developed a single genre definition, and the proposed classifications of cycles did not line up into a single system.

The final part of the first chapter proposes a typology of story cycles from the point of view of a diachronic approach. The presented typology is based on the criterion of “openness/closedness”16 of the internal structure of cycles. Cycles are located on the axis of internal structure: from cycles with a rigid connection between elements to cycles with minimal “fastening” of parts. On this axis, in order of increasing internal “consolidation” of elements, we distinguish the following types of cyclic text constructions:

Collection cycles (“ Dark alleys"I. Bunin, "The Jungle" by Y. Buida, "People of Our Tsar" by L. Ulitskaya);

Cycles with a frame that do not have an internal rigid formal structure (“Belkin’s Tales” by A. Pushkin, “The Prussian Bride” by Y. Buida);

Structured cycles (“Russian Nights” by V. Odoevsky, “Blue Book” by M. Zoshchenko);

Cycles-novels (“Notes of a Young Doctor” by M. Bulgakov, “Sin” by Z. Prilepin).

These types of cyclic text formations are analyzed in the second chapter of the dissertation research - “Types of cyclic text construction of short epic prose”, consisting of six paragraphs.

The object of study in the first paragraph was the most “closed” type of cycle from the point of view of internal structure - “ Structured cycle". This type of cyclic text construction was the first in history original literature(“The Ocean of Tales” by Somadeva, “The Decameron” by G. Boccaccio, “The Canterbury Tales” by G. Chaucer), but it was formed in ancient Indian literature: “Panchatantra”, “Shukasaptati”. A feature of a structured cycle is the presence of a framing story that connects all the stories into a single whole. Framing is not just a compositional element, its importance is emphasized by S.N. Broitman: “...the event of the narration itself, internally connected with the meaningful situation of the redemption frame, begins to acquire independent meaning”17. The framing creates the structure of these cycles, since it is in it that the author initially prescribes the number of stories, the way they are grouped, and their sequence, the narrators are introduced and the storytelling situation is characterized. A structured cycle allowed the author to connect together texts that might not even have common motifs, “cross-cutting” characters or other cycle-forming connections. The framing and initially intended structure made it possible to insert texts not only of different genres, but also of different types of literature within the framework of the work.

G. Boccaccio in “The Decameron” complicates the model of the first prose cycles. His work opens not with a directly framing story, but with an introduction - an appeal “to lovely ladies.” This text element is not directly related to the content of the cycle; it is a frame text element.

The study of a cycle at different stages of its existence allows us to distinguish between the concepts of “framing” and “frame,” as can be seen from the analysis of structured cycles. The frame is an independent text, a relatively autonomous short story that interacts with other elements of the cycle. Insert stories can influence the framing plot by introducing new characters, changing the lives and views of the heroes. At the same time, the framing builds the composition of the cycle, and as F. Ingram noted, “... the cycle is then completed when the framing is filled”18. The frame has nothing to do directly with the content and composition of the text. The frame is most often represented by the initial and final elements (introduction/preface, epilogue/afterword); it does not organize the cycle and does not become part of its internal structure.

“The Decameron” by G. Boccaccio and “The Canterbury Tales” by D. Chaucer became “invariant” cycles of the Renaissance. They led to the appearance of other works: books by Franco Sacchetti, Sir Giovanni, “Novellino” (“One Hundred Ancient Novels”) by Tommaso Masuccio, “Heptameron” by Margherita of Navarre, cynical short stories by Matteo Bandello, Agnolo Firenzuola, “Pentameron” by Giambattista Basile, “ Pleasant nights" Straparolas. The next stage in the development of the structured cycle was the era of romanticism, which is represented by the cycles “Conversations of German Refugees” by I.V. Goethe, Serapion's Brothers E.T.A. Hoffman, “Florentine Nights” by G. Heine, in Russian literature – “Russian Nights” by V.F. Odoevsky.

In the 20th century, the structured cycle became a rare type of text formation, and framing underwent significant changes. M. Zoshchenko in the “Blue Book” cycle removes the situation of storytelling and fictitious narrators from the frame. S. Dovlatov breaks the canons of framing even more in the cycles “Zone” and “Compromise”. The form of a structured cycle is also found in foreign literature of the 20th century. For example, Milorad Pavic's book " Paper theater"(2007) is also a structured cycle of stories, framed by an introduction from the author and “bio-bibliographical” information about the fictional authors. There is no rigid, predetermined sequence of episodes in the cycle. The stories are not thematically related to each other. common motives do not unite fictional stories, and the fates of their “fictional” authors.

The structured cycle turned out to be a productive form of the genre, but not widespread. However, the writers could not abandon the iconic element of the cycle - the frame - otherwise the cycle of stories would be perceived as a collection of texts that are autonomous in relation to each other.

Further development of the cycle followed the path of abolishing the rigid internal structure of the text. There are two main changes:
1) the cycle ceases to be divided into large sections (nights, days, stories of individual characters); 2) the frame ceases to be an element connecting all the stories, is not included in the internal structure of the text, and accordingly, is narrowed down to a frame (initial and final, or only the initial element).

"Cycle with frame» becomes the object of study in the second paragraph of the second chapter. Based on the system of characters in the text, two types of cycles with a frame are distinguished: a) cycles with “end-to-end characters”;
b) cycles without “cross-cutting characters”.

Classic examples of cycles with a frame in Russian literature have already been sufficiently studied by literary scholars. This is “Tales of the late Ivan Petrovich Belkin” by A.S. Pushkin, “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka” and “Mirgorod” by N.V. Gogol, “Motley Tales” by V.F. Odoevsky, “Provincial Sketches” by M.E. Saltykova-Shchedrin, “Notes of an Unknown” N.S. Leskova, “Sentimental Stories” by M.M. Zoshchenko, “Notes of the Innocent” by A. Averchenko. Among modern authors one can name M. Weller (the cycles “Legends of Arbat” and “Legends of Nevsky Prospekt”), L. Ulitskaya (“People of Our Tsar”), Y. Buyda (“The Prussian Bride”).

Cycles with a frame are an open structure that allows authors to vary the number of texts, the methods of their connection, and the sequence of arrangement of elements. The openness of such a cycle makes it possible for writers to create multi-level cycles, combining the stories of the cycle into microcycles (cycles by M. Weller, “Our Tsar’s People” by L. Ulitskaya). Various elements can act as a frame. The most common is the use of forewords and afterwords by authors, which do not directly relate to the content of the stories in the cycle. They either introduce the image of a fictitious narrator, or explain the principle of cyclization, or present the story of the creation of the cycle.

Independent stories can also be used as a frame, as, for example, in the cycle of Y. Buida “The Prussian Bride”. The stories, published separately by Yu. Buida since 1991, were collected in 1998 into the book “The Prussian Bride.” The first and last stories of “The Prussian Bride” are the frame of the cycle, which is primarily indicated by the subtitles: “The Prussian Bride (instead of a preface)”, “Buida (instead of an afterword)”. The stories of the frame not only unite all the episodes of the cycle, but also actualize the figure of the narrator. “The Prussian Bride” as a cycle is formed by a metaphorical title, a single narrator, and the presence of “cross-cutting” characters, each of whom is a central character in the “title story”19 (most often with an anthroponym title) and a secondary character in at least one more story. Thus, the connection between the stories in the cycle is closer, the “nomadic” characters create a special, multi-level plot. The character's story is not limited to one fragment; it is “completed” with other stories. The character is revealed from story to story, sometimes his entire biography is built up. The cycle becomes an inextricable interweaving of plots.

At the same time, The Prussian Bride remained an “open” structure, without a “rigid” temporal sequence of episodes. It was this feature that allowed Yuri Buida to supplement the book with new stories in 2011, expanding it almost twice, and publishing it under the title “All Those Passing”20. Moreover, the title of the new cycle is the title of the story of the same name, which was part of “The Prussian Bride”, and compositionally located in the very center of the book (24th story out of 47). This is not just an expanded re-release of The Prussian Bride, it is new text, new cycle. The author retains the frame of the cycle, but the number of included stories doubles, becoming 72.

On the one hand, cyclization is becoming a very common phenomenon: more and more texts are united according to some principle: thematic, motivic, etc. Collections and cycles become formally indistinguishable: both texts function and are perceived by readers as a whole. On the other hand, there are more and more such cycles that unite stories in which the narration is told in the first person. Accordingly, all stories are characterized by a common protagonist, “I.” Even if the stories are not located in plot sequence, they create a single plot with one hero. The trends we noted in the development of the prose cycle began to develop simultaneously and continue to coexist. Both of these directions are discussed in paragraphs "Collection cycle" And "Cycle-novel".

In the third paragraph « Collection cycle" combinations of stories are analyzed that are not formally different from any other collections of texts; them, in the terminology of L.E. Lyapina and V.I. Tyups can be called an “ensemble”. Such a cycle has no frame, and its genre is determined only by the author’s designation. The first collection cycle in Russian literature is “Notes of a Hunter” by I.S. Turgenev. Combining the essays into a cycle, I.S. Turgenev does not create a frame - a formal “brace” of the text. The main cycle-forming connection is the image of the narrator-hunter and the motif of the “path”. The framing function is taken over by the title, represented by a phrase “of a substantive type, where the defining word, referring to each of the passages that make up the cycle, unites them within a common concept”21. Proposed by I.S. Turgenev's cycle form without a frame turned out to be popular. It is the interest in “Notes of a Hunter” that Forest Ingram calls one of the reasons for the flourishing of the cycle genre in the 20th century22.

In the variety of collection cycles, two varieties can be distinguished: a collection cycle without “cross-cutting characters” and a collection cycle with “through-through characters”. Naturally, this is only one of the levels of typology of these cycles, but for us it is the main one.

In the fourth paragraph - « Collection cycles with “cross-cutting” characters" – the object of study becomes cycles with “end-to-end” characters, the structure of which is open in to a lesser extent, since a formal connection is formed between the texts within the cycle: the stories are held together by common characters. Of course, there are “through” characters in both a structured cycle and a cycle with a frame, but in the previously described forms of the cycle they were not the main “brace” of the text.

Collection cycles with cross-cutting characters became most popular at the end of the 20th century. This type of cycle includes “The Jungle” by Y. Buida, works by L. Ulitskaya (“Girls”, “Poor Relatives” and the cycles that make up “Our Tsar’s People”), “Razgulyaevka” by A. Gelasimov. We consider the features of these cycles using the example of the work of Yuri Buida and Lyudmila Ulitskaya.

“The Jungle” by Yu. Buida, published in 2010, is characterized by the same features as “The Prussian Bride”, but in “The Jungle” there is no frame highlighted by the author. The title of the series “Jungle” is a metaphorical title, creating a myth about small villages outside the Moscow Ring Road, gradually becoming part of Moscow. Jungle is both the unofficial name of the village of Second Typography (“a village behind the ring road, part of Moscow and officially called Second Typography, where mostly old people, disabled people and alcoholics lived”23), and single image several neighboring villages at once: Chudov, Kandaurovo, Novostroika, Koltsevaya and Hospital. These villages and main characters are listed in the story "Law of the Jungle". All the characters (except for the district police officer Semyon Semenovich Dyshlo and Doctor Zherekh) are called by nicknames: Stop, Crocodile Gena, Klims, Pink Po, Jester Newton, etc. The plots of the stories do not build a chronological sequence of events, and there is no single principle for the appearance of this or that character in the subsequent segment. The characters are connected either by kinship or by place of residence/work.

Lyudmila Ulitskaya has the same principle of the appearance of “cross-cutting characters”. A more complex structure is represented by L. Ulitskaya’s cycle “Our Tsar’s People”. This book consists of several cycles, created separately: the cycle of the same name “Our Tsar’s People”, “The Secret of Blood”, “They Lived Long...”, “Road Angel”. Separately, the cycles are collection cycles without “cross-cutting characters.” The cycles are also not formally connected to each other. The cycle-forming element is the general epigraph, the author’s introduction and the text called “The Last” - a kind of cycle within a cycle - short thoughts/anecdotes. Moreover, connecting the cycles into a single context, Ulitskaya defines the genre of the work as “novel”. Although L. Ulitskaya’s attempt to bring the cycle to one of genre forms epics have already been encountered before: the cycle “Through Line” is called by the author a “story”.

This tendency is to present the cycle as a genre category large shape– novels (less often stories) are becoming increasingly common in literature. William Faulkner also called his cycle a “novel.” We are talking about the book “Come Down, Moses.” This is a cycle of seven stories united by the image of the McCaslin family. Collecting stories into a cycle, Faulkner tried to build a structure reminiscent of a family chronicle, and even compiled an approximate family tree McCaslinov. Therefore, many heroes of previously written stories received new biographies and names connecting them with the family. According to the author's plan, the structure of "Come Down, Moses" was supposed to repeat the one that Faulkner had already used in the novel "The Undefeated." However, the writer was unable to combine already written unrelated stories into a novel. When the series was first published in 1942, the subtitle “and other stories” was added, but in subsequent editions, at Faulkner’s insistence, it was removed, which consolidated the composition and sequence of stories in the cycle.

The works given as examples are cycles of stories with “end-to-end” characters; it is not difficult to distinguish these types of cyclic text structures. The situation is different with cycles, in which a single “end-to-end” character appears - the narrator, and the plots of individual stories are built into a single plot. We will classify such cycles as « Cycle novel» , to which the fifth paragraph of the dissertation is devoted.

In a cycle-novel, the “through” image of the narrator turns into the main character of the work. The plots of individual stories turn out to be parts of the narrator's storyline, which makes it possible to build a single plot of the cycle. This feature is a differentiating feature of the cycle-novel. The first of the novel cycles in Russian literature was Mikhail Bulgakov’s series “Notes of a Young Doctor.”

The cycles of stories by I.G. are structured in the same way. Ehrenburg “Thirteen Pipes”, “Cavalry” by I. Babel, “Stories of Nazar Ilyich Mr. Sinebryukhov” by M. Zoshchenko, “Kolyma Stories” by V. Shalamov, “Through Line” by L. Ulitskaya, “Sin” by Z. Prilepin, “Mishaherizade” M. Weller. In foreign literature, examples of a cycle-novel can be considered “Cinnamon Shops” and “Sanatorium under Clepsydra” Polish writer B. Schultz.

The reader is introduced to the events taking place in “Bezhin Meadow” by the hunter, who is a cross-cutting character in the cycle. What is the term for such a character?

Read the fragment of the work below and complete tasks 1–9.

I was mistaken in mistaking the people sitting around those lights for the herd workers. These were simply peasant children from neighboring villages who guarded the herd. In the hot summer, our horses are driven out to feed in the field at night: during the day, flies and gadflies would not give them rest. Drive out before evening and drive to morning dawn herd is a big holiday for peasant boys. Sitting without hats and in old sheepskin coats on the most lively nags, they rush with a cheerful whoop and scream, dangling their arms and legs, jumping high, laughing loudly. Light dust rises in a yellow column and rushes along the road; A friendly stomp can be heard far away, the horses run with their ears pricked up; in front of everyone, with his tail raised and constantly changing his legs, gallops some red-haired cosmach, with a burdock in his tangled mane.

I told the boys that I was lost and sat down with them. They asked me where I was from, remained silent, and stood aside. We talked a little. I lay down under a gnawed bush and began to look around. The picture was wonderful: near the lights, a round reddish reflection trembled and seemed to freeze, resting against the darkness; the flame, flaring up, occasionally threw quick reflections beyond the line of that circle; a thin tongue of light will lick the bare branches of the vine and disappear at once; Sharp, long shadows, rushing in for a moment, in turn reached the very lights: darkness fought with light. Sometimes, when the flame burned weaker and the circle of light narrowed, a horse’s head, bay, with a winding groove, or all white, would suddenly stick out from the approaching darkness, looking at us attentively and stupidly, nimbly chewing long grass, and, lowering itself again, immediately disappeared. You could only hear her continue to chew and snort. From an illuminated place it is difficult to see what is happening in the darkness, and therefore everything up close seemed covered with an almost black curtain; but further towards the horizon, hills and forests were vaguely visible in long spots. The dark, clear sky stood solemnly and immensely high above us with all its mysterious splendor. My chest felt sweetly ashamed, inhaling that special, languid and fresh smell - the smell of a Russian summer night. Almost no noise was heard all around... Only occasionally in the nearby river would splash with sudden sonority big fish and the coastal reeds would rustle faintly, barely shaken by the oncoming wave... Only the lights crackled quietly.

The boys sat around them; Sitting right there were the two dogs who so wanted to eat me. For a long time they could not come to terms with my presence and, drowsily squinting and squinting at the fire, occasionally growled with an extraordinary sense of self-esteem; At first they growled, and then squealed slightly, as if regretting the impossibility of fulfilling their desire. There were five boys: Fedya, Pavlusha, Ilyusha, Kostya and Vanya.

(I. S. Turgenev. « Bezhin meadow»)

Explanation.

The narrator is a certain person (for example, a character), on whose behalf the narration is conducted in an artistic work, in particular in a literary work. In literature, the narrator observes and describes what the author has imagined. Sometimes the narrator is clearly outlined, sometimes anonymous, sometimes almost invisible.

They usually talk about the narrator in the general case, and about the storyteller - when the narrator is a direct participant in the events he describes.

Answer: narrator.

Answer: narrator|narrator|hero-narrator

Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

Students, graduate students, young scientists who use the knowledge base in their studies and work will be very grateful to you.

Posted on http://allbest.ru

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF RUSSIA

federal state budgetary educational institution of higher education

"Samara State Social and Pedagogical University"

Examination on the discipline

Test

discipline: History of Russian literature

Cyclization in prose

Performed:

6th year student, s/o

Aleeva E.V.

Samara, 2016

Cyclization in prose

Cycle (from Greek - circle) means, as applied to literature, a series of works related general plot and the composition of the characters. The cycle, in one form or another, belongs to both ancient and medieval literature. It is also found in new literature, and in Russian folk literature.

The concept of a cycle has not only the value of a guiding idea in research on the origin of such poems as the Illiad, Odyssey - among the Greeks, the Song of Roland - in the West, etc., but also has a general theoretical value - in the study of those visual features, which are determined by the presence of a cyclic connection.

The first meaning of this concept, referring to stories literary genres, is only indirectly involved, like any historical material, in theories artistic word. In its second meaning, the cycle is one of the central theoretical and literary concepts.

First of all, it is necessary to distinguish between the types of cycle into those where cyclization is the result of the subsequent development of already partly given material, and those where cyclization is the implementation of the main compositional plan. The first kind of cyclization is more characteristic of ancient and medieval poetry, the second kind - for works of modern literature.

An example of the first type of cycle is Greek cyclic poetry, consisting of many poems belonging to different authors, which describe the exploits greek gods and heroes. Thus, Proclus’s anthology conveys to us the content of some of them.

The Theogony and Titanomachy tell about the marriage of Uranus to Gaia (Heaven on Earth), the birth of giants and Cyclopes, and the battle between them and the gods, ending with the victory of Zeus. The poems are interconnected by their characters and complement each other in their plot. The same plot and personal connection between the content of the poems is also found among the Germanic and Romanesque peoples.

These are the poems of the Carolingian cycle, novels Round Table, tales of the Nibelungs, such is the vast satirical epic Middle Ages "Romance of the Fox". Russian folk epic gives in its epics examples of similar cyclization - around beloved heroes - Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich, around central figure epic creativity of Vladimir Krasnoe Solnyshko.

Such cyclization is partly the result of a natural process, partly the result of conscious alterations on the part of the performers. Favorable conditions for cyclization were literary life itself, a way of disseminating poetry with the help of performers - singers and storytellers, mostly traveling.

This feature entailed:

1) the concentration of extensive narrative material in one person, which gave rise to an involuntary desire to unite all heterogeneous material with a common plot or personal connection,

2) the desire to adapt the narrative to the interests of different localities, as a result of which the material was confined not to local, regional heroes, but to national heroes. In the Russian epic epic, the cyclization of epics could also be facilitated by the presence of so-called “common passages (see article on epics), the transfer of which from one epic to another could be accompanied by the transfer of entire episodes adjacent to them. literature cyclization prose

The subsequent growth of cyclical material around favorite characters is explained by the desire to associate a new narrative with an already known person in order to thereby evoke more attention and more sympathy. Thanks to the presence of extensive cycles, their favorite heroes acquire a sort of semi-real existence, becoming old acquaintances, even if a given individual episode is perceived for the first time.

The artistic effect of such appeals to the past literary experience of the listener or reader finds an analogy in lyric poetry, where the poet often names acquaintances literary heroes, thereby causing in the “memory of the heart” a wave of aesthetic emotions associated with the named name. (See this in the article under the word “name”).

New literature provides examples of the cycle both in the field of artistic prose and in the field of poetry, in the field of scientific and literary criticism. However, only when applied to artistic prose does this concept have some clarity; when applied to other areas, it is often indiscriminately used instead of the words “collection of articles,” “book of poetry,” etc.

A clearly expressed cyclic structure is given by E. Zola in his series “Rugon-Macars”, and in our days by Romain Rolland in “Jean Christophe”. The cyclization of material both here and there contributed to a more dissected fulfillment of the author’s main task: for Zola, it facilitated the resolution of the central question of heredity - as applied to individuals; connected by ties of kinship, for Romain Rolland helped to illuminate individual stages in the history of the creative personality of Jean Christophe.

In addition, the cyclical construction again contributed - both here and there - to a more coherent arrangement of plot material, too extensive for one plot center.

Cyclization is the combination of several independent works into a special integral unity. Cycles can be found in literature at all stages of its development (in antiquity - cyclic poems, in the Renaissance - “The Canterbury Tales”, 1380s, G. Chaucer, “The Decameron”, 1350-53, G. Boccaccio; during romanticism - “Jewish Melodies”, 1815, J. Byron). Yandex.Direct Training "How to write a bestseller?" New Year's sale of group participation. From the author of two bestselling books. artcoach.biz Ad hidden. The first Russian cyclical formations were folklore cycles (epics). The cycles “Imitations of the Koran”, 1824 (lyrical), “Belkin’s Tales”, 1830 (epic) and “Little Tragedies”, 1830 (dramatic), were created by A.S. Pushkin. The development of cyclization is indicated by the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, especially in the works of symbolist poets (“Poems about the Beautiful Lady,” 1901-02, A.A. Blok); in the 20th century, the role of cycles in poetry remains (A.A. Akhmatova. Requiem. 1935-40; I.A. Brodsky. Part of speech, 1975-76), prose (A.N. Tolstoy. Walking through torment, 1922-41 ), dramaturgy (M.F. Shatrov’s cycle about Lenin: “The Sixth of July,” post. 1964; “The Thirtieth of August. Bolsheviks,” 1968; “Blue Horses on Red Grass,” 1978).

According to the degree of author's participation, cycles are divided into author's and non-author's: the first includes cycles, the composition and sequence of works in which is determined by the author, the second - cycles collected together by editors (“Evening Lights”, 1883-91, A.A. Feta, compiled with the participation of Vs.S. Solovyov) or researchers (“Denisevsky cycle” F.I. Tyutchev)

Separate cycles of poems can form a cycle poem - i.e. a series of poetic works published in a certain sequence and combined lyrical hero(whose image can evolve throughout the poem cycle), motive, theme, image.

A cycle poem is characterized by the presence of a title that unites all parts (the parts may have separate headings, between which a certain relationship can be traced), repeated from text to text artistic techniques and vocabulary (“point words” in A. A. Blok’s cycles), as well as lines or parts of lines; metrical generality or a certain logic in the change in metric from work to work, a general epigraph, a short preface, numbering of poems. Poems included in a cycle poem retain their independence and can be published separately.

Author's adaptations of the cycle poem are possible, incl. inclusion and exclusion of individual parts. The emergence of the cycle poem in Russian literature dates back to the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries: the subtitle “poems” was given to K.D. Balmont’s poetic cycles “Dead Ships” (1895), “Airy White” (1898). These facts were comprehended by domestic literary criticism only in the 1960s (L.K. Dolgopolov)

In the 20th century, the prose cycle underwent significant changes. Its development occurs in two opposite directions. In both cases, the cycle loses its formal method of connecting stories - framing, and later the frame. all stories are characterized by a common protagonist, "I". Even if the stories are not arranged in a plot sequence, they create a single plot with a single character. The trends we noted in the development of the prose cycle began to develop simultaneously and continue to coexist. Both of these directions are discussed in the paragraphs “Cycle-collection” and “Cycle-novel”.

Cycle-collection” analyzes such combinations of stories that do not formally differ from any other collections of texts; them, in the terminology of L.E. Lyapina and V.I. Tyups can be called an “ensemble”. Such a cycle has no frame, and its genre is determined only by the author’s designation. The first collection cycle in Russian literature is “Notes of a Hunter” by I.S. Turgenev. Combining the essays into a cycle, I.S. Turgenev does not create a frame - a formal “brace” of the text.

The main cycle-forming connection is the image of the narrator-hunter and the motif of the “path”. The framing function is taken over by the title, represented by the phrase “of a substantive type, where the defining word, referring to each of the passages that make up the cycle, unites them within a common concept.” Proposed by I.S. Turgenev's cycle form without a frame turned out to be popular. It is the interest in “Notes of a Hunter” that Forest Ingram calls one of the reasons for the flourishing of the cycle genre in the 20th century.

Collection cycles with “end-to-end” characters” - the structure of which is less open, since a formal connection is formed between the texts within the cycle: the stories are held together by common characters. Of course, there are “through” characters in both a structured cycle and a cycle with a frame, but in the previously described forms of the cycle they were not the main “brace” of the text.

These villages and main characters are listed in the story "Law of the Jungle". All the characters (except for the district police officer Semyon Semenovich Dyshlo and Doctor Zherekh) are called by nicknames: Stop, Crocodile Gena, Klims, Pink Po, Jester Newton, etc. The plots of the stories do not build a chronological sequence of events, and there is no single principle for the appearance of this or that character in the subsequent segment. The characters are connected either by kinship or by place of residence/work.

Lyudmila Ulitskaya has the same principle of the appearance of “cross-cutting characters”. A more complex structure is represented by L. Ulitskaya’s cycle “Our Tsar’s People”. This book consists of several cycles, created separately: the cycle of the same name “Our Tsar’s People”, “The Secret of Blood”, “They Lived Long...”, “Road Angel”. Separately, the cycles are collection cycles without “cross-cutting characters.” The cycles are also not formally connected to each other. The cycle-forming element is the general epigraph, the author’s introduction and the text called “The Last” - a kind of cycle within a cycle - short thoughts/anecdotes. Moreover, connecting the cycles into a single context, Ulitskaya defines the genre of the work as “novel”. Although L. Ulitskaya’s attempt to bring the cycle to one of the genre forms of epic has already been encountered before: the cycle “Through Line” is called by the author a “story”.

This tendency - to present the cycle as a genre category of a large form - a novel (less often a story) is becoming more and more widespread in literature. William Faulkner also called his cycle a “novel.” We are talking about the book “Come Down, Moses.” This is a cycle of seven stories united by the image of the McCaslin family. Collecting stories into a cycle, Faulkner tried to build a structure reminiscent of a family chronicle, and even compiled an approximate family tree of the McCaslins.

Therefore, many heroes of previously written stories received new biographies and names connecting them with the family. According to the author's plan, the structure of "Come Down, Moses" was supposed to repeat the one that Faulkner had already used in the novel "The Undefeated."

However, the writer was unable to combine already written unrelated stories into a novel. When the series was first published in 1942, the subtitle “and other stories” was added, but in subsequent editions, at Faulkner’s insistence, it was removed, which consolidated the composition and sequence of stories in the cycle.

The cycles of stories by I.G. are structured in the same way. Ehrenburg “Thirteen Pipes”, “Cavalry” by I. Babel, “Stories of Nazar Ilyich Mr. Sinebryukhov” by M. Zoshchenko, “Kolyma Stories” by V. Shalamov, “Through Line” by L. Ulitskaya, “Sin” by Z. Prilepin, “Mishaherizade” M. Weller. In foreign literature, an example of a cycle-novel can be considered “Cinnamon Shops” and “Sanatorium under Klepsydra” by the Polish writer B. Schulz.

The appearance of a novel character (a single hero) in a cycle becomes evidence of the novelization of the genre. MM. Bakhtin notes that this kind of novelization cannot be explained only by the influence of the novel; changes in reality itself also have a direct influence. In our opinion, we can differentiate between a cycle and a novel using the category of fragment. A fragment is not equal to fragmentation as a method of text construction. “In a fragmented text type, the cause-and-effect relationships between text units are broken.

The disruption of connections occurs due to a change in the logical sequence of text units (Cortazar “Hopscotch”) or due to the fact that in these text units the elements connecting them with adjacent units are omitted (Andrei Bely “The Baptized Chinese”).”

In the classical or fragmented type of narration, elements (units) of the text are not independent works, they are fragments of the text as a whole. “The fragment, being an independent work, retains traditional markers of integrity, while demonstrating isolation into a certain, usually non-existent context, which is realized in the formal weakening of the boundaries of the test.” A cycle of stories is characterized by the fact that it consists of independent, complete texts that have a beginning, middle and end. The elements of the cycle cannot be fragments; they are characterized by “completeness and exhaustion of the plot.” Without pretending to create a complete picture of the relationship between the cycle and the novel, we identify a circle of texts that are a cycle in structure, and we justify this selection.

One of the first cycles, which was initially perceived by researchers as a novel, is the cycle of short stories by Polish prose writer Bruno Schulz “Cinnamon Shops” (“Sklepy cynamonowe”). The short stories included in the cycle were written by the author during 1930-1934. and were individually published in journals. The cycle opens with a short story entitled “August”.

The title sets a time reference, a starting point for the narrative. August is the time of “white from the heat, stunning summer days", it's a fertile time. The novella consists of three parts: in the first part, the time of August is depicted using past tense verbs; August is presented here as part of the year, as an element of cyclical time, constantly repeating. The second part of the story depicts the events of a specific August; syntactically this element is formalized using verbs in the present tense.

The third part combines past time, constantly repeating, with concrete time: on this August, supposedly no different from Augusts of other years, the narrator meets his cousin Emil. The events of most subsequent short stories are arranged in the same time sequence: against the background of familiar, repeating events, an original, unique, isolated event develops.

The time element “August” also appears in the last novella of the cycle, the novella “Night of the Big Season.” This is also a time of fertility, but this is already “dissolute and belated fertility”, this is “a freak month, a half-withered shoot and more fictitious than actually existing.”

Thus, the time of the cycle begins in August and ends in August, but in a month prolonged, as if in the thirteenth, fictitious month: “What we will talk about here happened in the thirteenth month, a supernumerary and seemingly unreal month.” Considering that the three short stories have the same title - “Treatise on Mannequins” - they can be considered as a cycle within a cycle.

The first subtitle “Second Genesis” makes it possible to perceive these three short stories as a single text, the second and third subtitles - “Continuation” and “Conclusion” - indicate the integrity of this trilogy. The time of the “Cinnamon Shops” turns out to be cyclical, and, accordingly, mythological. The entire cycle is a story about one year in the life of Joseph's family, about a year that stretches for another - a fictitious month. This is “the novel of the year, this is a huge crumbling calendar book,” a book crumbling into separate short stories. Thus, the cross-cutting motif of time and the number of chapters become another cycle-forming element of the text.

In Russian literature, novel cycles with a single central character appeared in the second half of the 20th century. One of the first examples of this cycle is Varlam Shalamov’s “Kolyma Tales” cycle, on which the author began working in 1954. A variety of the novel cycle can be called “Through Line” by L. Ulitskaya, “Sin” by Zakhar Prilepin.

Despite the fact that the prose cycle is being novelized in the 20th century, it continues to retain its genre features, and sometimes enters into inter-genre relationships. The connection between the cycle and the novel in the work of one author became the object of analysis in the sixth paragraph - “Inter-genre interactions between the cycle and the novel.”

The cycle can be completely transformed into a novel by the author. This connection between the cycle and the novel is characteristic of Andrei Bitov’s work. The stories, first published separately and sometimes combined into cycles, were then transformed by the author into novels: this is how “Pushkin House” and “Flying Monks” were created.

After the creation of a single text of the novel, the cycle and the stories were no longer published separately, because they ceased to exist as independent works; they turned out to be only “sketches” of the novel. But in modern literature There are examples when both a cycle of stories and a novel coexist in the work of the same writer, remaining independent texts. A variant of such cross-genre unity is represented by the work of Yuri Trifonov, namely the cycle “Under the Sun” and the novel “Quenching Thirst”.

The cycle “Under the Sun” (1959) is a collection cycle without “through” characters. The themes of the stories are different, and the main cycle-forming connections are the place of action (the desert of Turkmenistan), the time of action ( post-war period, construction of the Karkum Canal) and the type of characters. All the characters in the cycle can be divided into two groups: the indigenous population of the desert and visitors (builders, scientists, journalists).

In 1963, Trifonov’s novel “Quenching Thirst” was published. The novel is characterized by the same chronotope, the same problematic (the contrast between past and present time, the confrontation between the city and the desert), and the same types of characters as the cycle. The novel thus becomes a continuation of part of the stories in the cycle. The stories and the questions posed in them are gathered around a single “core” - the construction of the canal. Not all images and characters are repeated in the novel, so the cycle continues to exist as an independent work. Accordingly, Trifonov’s cycle “Under the Sun,” which appeared earlier, determined both the problems and types of characters in the novel “Quenching Thirst.” Both genres ultimately represent an artistic unity, complementary but independent texts.

The movement from cycle to novel also characterizes the work of Yuri Buida. After the publication of the Jungle series in 2010, the author began work on the novel Blue Blood, published in 2011. The action of the stories in the cycle is concentrated in several towns and cities near Moscow, which are united by the name “jungle”. In the novel, the setting is the city of Chudov, also part of the “jungle”. Chudov's background, presented in the novel, was briefly described in the cycle. Both texts have the same chronotope (events take place in the 1990s-2000s), the same “cross-cutting” characters who “transferred” into the novel with their own characteristics, reproduced verbatim (Doctor Zherekh, Baba Zha, Pan Paratov).

main character novel - Ida Zmoiro - does not appear as a character in the cycle, but her story, in fact, is another plot of the Jungle. However, this type of hero is so different from the characters in the cycle that it could only fit into a novel. Thus, Yuri Buida’s novel does not develop a cycle, as in the work of Yu. Trifonov, but, on the contrary, turns out to be part of it. The cycle and the novel form not just a unity, but rather a synthesis in which the novel can be considered as an element of the cycle, which does not contradict the characteristics of the cycle as a super-genre formation.

A different principle of forming a multi-genre combination is found in the work of the writer Andrei Gelasimov. Over the years of work on the novel “The Steppe Gods,” the author’s original plan changed, many plot lines were removed from the novel, and only the story of the friendship of the boy Petka with the prisoner of war Hirotaro remained in the novel. But along with the novel, the “Razgulyaevka” cycle was published, which consists of stories that are “backstories” of the characters removed from the novel. “Razgulyaevka” is a prequel to the novel, revealing the “dark places” of the plot. The stories in the cycle not only provide background to the actions of the novel.

Three of the four stories form a minicycle, the main character of which is Mitka Mikhailov, Petka’s father. In the novel, Mitka turns out to be a mysterious and even mythical figure: no one wanted to tell Petka anything about him, and most No one knew the events of Mitka’s life. The cycle thus introduces its own storyline, which ends precisely in the novel: the “Epilogue” briefly describes the last years and death of Mitka.

“Steppe Gods” and “Razgulyaevka” represent a version of artistic unity in which the texts complement each other, and in such a way that one cannot be fully revealed without the other. “Steppe Gods” without “Razgulyaevka” leaves many “dark places”, questions, the answers to which can only be found in the cycle. “Razgulyaevka” without “Steppe Gods” can be considered as a microcycle about Mitka Mikhailov, but the image of Petka that appears in strong positions the cycle will then remain without semantic content, again a “dark spot”.

Literature

1. Literary Encyclopedia - V.M. Fritsche., 1929-1939. SIE - A.P. Gorkina., SLT-M. Petrovsky

2. Lyapina, L. The problem of the integrity of the lyrical cycle / L. Lyapina // Integrity work of art and problems of its analysis in school and university study of literature. - Donetsk: 1977.

3. Lyapina, L. Cyclization in Russian XIX literature century. - St. Petersburg: 1999.

4. Starygina, N.N. The problem of the cycle in the prose of L. Ulitskaya. Author's abstract. Diss. ...cand. Philol. Sci. - L.: 1985.

5. Fomenko, I.V. Poetics of the lyrical cycle. Author's abstract. Diss. ...cand. Philol. Sci. - M.: 1990.

6. Darwin, M.N. Artistic cyclization of lyrical works. - Kemerovo: 1997.

7. Starygina N.N. The problem of the cycle in the prose of N.S. Leskova. Author's abstract. Dis...cand. Phil. Sci. - L.: 1985.

8. Sapogov, V.A. About some structural features of the lyrical cycle of A. Blok/V.A. Sapogov // Language and style of a work of art. - M.: 1966

Posted on Allbest.ru

Being a cross-cutting character of the cycle. Cyclic text construction in short epic prose

Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

Similar documents