Discourse structure of narration in Sasha Sokolov’s novel “Palisandria”

The discourse structure of narration in Sasha Sokolov’s novel “Palisandria” includes four interacting levels: the primary narration on behalf of the protagonist, the discourse of the Soviet (Kremlin) world, deployed in the diegetic dimension of the novel, the post Soviet discourse as a narrative strategy of deconstructing the Soviet in the novel, mentally accepted and poetically constructed by the author; the speech of an abstract narrator objectifying the narration. The analysis of the protagonist’s narrative speech leads to the problematic of functioning of the Soviet discourse in the novel. Both phenomena are located in the space of the novel’s diegesis as images of discourses. The Soviet discourse subordinates the speech of the primary narrator. In turn, the narrator’s speech defamiliarizes and primitivizes and ultimately makes meaningless the Soviet discourse in the novel. Along with the position of the primary narrator, associated with Palisandr, the speech of the abstract narrator can be traced in the narrative. With the submission of the abstract narrator, responding to the direct authorial intentions of meaning experience, the problem of memory and oblivion is posed in the novel. This problem arises not only as a manifestation of Dalberg’s personal complex, but also as a latent complex of Soviet mythography, and it turns out to be unresolved on both levels: the hero flees from time and eternity into the vanity of elevation and power, but he is overtaken by a banal death. At the same time, Soviet eternity suffers a failure already in the prologue (and prophetic for the entire novel) scene of Beria’s suicide. The final tragic nature of the novel is the result of the narrative strategy of the post Soviet discourse, in the sphere of which not only the diegesis, but also the text of the novel itself and, ultimately, its author are initially located.