To the problem of artistic time and linguistic means of its verbalisation: taxis transformations in fantasy narrative

The article is devoted to the analysis of taxis relations between verb forms in Russian translations of R. Zelyazny’s novel “Creatures of Light and Darkness”. This text is an experimental fantasy work and characterized by a specific compositional structure that contributes to the strengthening of the feeling of unreality of what is happening. One of the supernatural techniques used in the novel is the so-called “temporal fugue”, which allows traveling through time. Describing the functioning of such a technique is a difficult task: on the one hand, it is necessary to present the events as occurring at the same moment, because that is what they are to an outside observer, and on the other hand, the actions seem to unfold backwards into the past. Such reflection of the unnatural course of events, possible only in a fantastic world, implies a non-standard use of compositional and syntactic possibilities of personal and non-personal forms of verbs realizing taxis relations of predicates. The comparison of three Russian translations of the novel with the English original allows studying the peculiarities of grammatical transformations of the forms of the verb when describing the unnatural course of time (from the future to the past). In addition, it allows to analyze various translation strategies and identify the variant that is closest to the original in pragmatic terms, as well as to study the possibilities of representing taxis relations when conveying non-standard compositional-temporal situations.