Narrative structure of E.G. Vodolazkin's novel “Brisbane”

The article examines the organization of the narrative structure of E.G. Vodolazkin’s novel “Brisbane”. The text is analyzed as a complex-organized nonlinear narrative, constructed on the basis of the “abstraction principle” (the term of D.S. Likhachev), which is relevant for medieval literature. Following the conception of the scholar, we see the realization of this principle in the tendency to perceive the concrete and momentary as “derivatives” of generalized and eternal. There are fragments (phrases, situations, microplots) in the novel which are a kind of “eidetic” units, concen trating in themselves a “program”, according to which the plot will develop. The level of presentation of the narration is also built according to the same “abstraction principle”. The reader sees what is happening not only through Gleb’s eyes, events are given not only in his outlook - the protagonist’s point of view is “corrected”” by the auctorial narrator’s point of view generalizing the vision of character. The article considers the text-modeling force of the main idea of the novel - the possibility of reading the life text as musical. So the law of construction of a musical work (polyphony) becomes the main principle of a text about a musician. The concept of time overcoming is realized through the correlation of actual and counterfactual plots. The first tells about the present and the past, the second - about the future, which is treated as illusory, not deserving that hopes that are placed on it. In general, the novel is characterized by a presence of “anti-novel” elements, one of which is “abstraction principle”.