The plot of turning into a novel as a form of meta-literary reflection (on depicting “aesthetic love” in literature)

This article analyses a special type of plot known as the plot of the turning into a novel in accordance with the metaphor of creative activity as the turning of human existence into the aesthetic plane developed by M.M. Bakhtin in his work “Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity”. The plot of turning into a novel is characterised as a special form of meta-literary reflection. It is centred on the depiction of the events of interaction between the author and their characters in the space of a single chronotope. The central event within the plot of the turning is the event of the Other's transformation into a literary character. In Bakhtin's concept, the “completion of the hero” by the transgredient author is described as an expression of “aesthetic love”. The article raises the question of the possibility of literature's mastering the event of turning as an event of “the gift of love” if the boundary between the world of creation and the world being created is removed within the framework of this plot and the position of transgredience becomes unrealisable. The author refers to six narrative works of Russian and foreign literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as one film text. In most of the texts with the plot of the turning, the author's activity is depicted as violent and destructive for the hero. The article considers the fantastic realisation of the plot of the turning in N.D. Akhsharumov's story “The Art Model” (1866), the psychological one in I.A. Goncharov's novel “The Precipice” (1869), the satirical one in K. Vaginov's novels “Goat Song” (1927) and “Labour and Days of Svistonov” (1929), the realistic one in the play by the Spanish playwright J.A. Mayorga “The Boy in the Last Row “(2006) and its adaptation by French director F. Ozon in the film “In the House” (2012), and, finally, a social-fantastic one in A. Zhitinsky's novel “The Lost House, or Conversations with My Lord” (1987). The realisation of the motif of “aesthetic love” is revealed only in the latter, where the author consciously refuses a transgredient position in the name of unity with the hero, in accordance with the idea of all-unity, developed within the framework of Russian religious phi losophy. The article outlines the prospects in the study of narrative forms of reflection on the interaction between the author and the hero.