Poetological functions of authorial modality in the artistic practice of Franz Fuhmann and Bernhard Schlink

The paper for the first time analyzes the poetological functions of authorial modality through the example of the works of Franz Fühmann and Bernhard Schlink in a comparative aspect. The relevance of the paper is confirmed by its multidisciplinary focus and the problem of the communicative space of a literary text. The aim of the study is to discover the main tendencies of authorial modality and its functioning in style formation based on a comparative analysis of the works of Fühmann and Schlink. The comparative and typological perspective proves that the originality of authorial modality expression and its evolution in the creative practice of writers is determined by the strongly pronounced personal background and individual experience of authors. Specifically, the withdrawal from the biased binarity of a fairy tale in favour of the myth’s polysemy and the diffusion of canonical genres in Fühmann’s works opened new stylistic possibilities for the ways of expressing authorial modality, while the choice of artistic devices, as well as the authorial modality of Schlink’s works were predefined by the axiological principles and priorities of Protestantism which had formed Schlink’s personality in his childhood and then found a certain legal basis in his mentality as a lawyer. It explains the difference in the attitude to the phenomenon of the Word between Fühmann who doubted its effectiveness and appealed to the emotional universality of dance at the end of his career and Schlink whose novels are marked by the use of artistic and photographic ekphrasis, which is widening his narrative technics. Despite all the differences in the origins of spiritual experience and life peripeteia, the intermedial discourse which finds its expression in the mature creative practice of Fühmann and Schlink becomes a way of comprehending “eternal” questions of existence.