Metanarrative and metafictional models in the structure of A. Bely's novel “Petersburg”

The article deals with metanarrative and metafictional models of narration in the novel “Petersburg” by A. Bely, analyzes the nature of multilevel semantic structures in his prose. The strategy chosen by the author reflects the complex self-reflection of the narrative, demonstrates to the reader new possibilities of modernist prose, in which the unusualness and attractiveness of the text is achieved by “embedding” into additional narrative planes, where characters turn into formulas, stereoscopic figures, geometric lines. At the same time, the narrative does not lose integrity, the thread of the narration remains in the narrator’s hands, forcing the reader to reflect not only on the plot, but on the nature of fiction and the possibilities of verbalizing the meaning. The novel has been criticized of its complex structure, that Bely himself called a “brain game”, but the study of writing models that make this game possible and significant remains an issue, turning the novel into an eventful phenomenon for the literature of modernism, comparable to the work of J. Joyce and F. Kafka. From historical narratology point of view, describing of the key metanarrative and metafictional features of the novel will allow us to trace the further development of these techniques in the works of later authors, supplementing and clarifying the idea of the literary process of inheritance of certain writing methods.