Methods of rhetorical reajustments of the narrative strategy (a case study of K. Vaginov's and B. Pasternak's novels)

This article is devoted to the typology of indexes of narrator’s ‘presence’ and the ways of positing the narratee. The fragments of Vaginov’s and Pasternak’s novels are analysed within the narratological approach to a narrative text. Aesthetics functions of the linguistic categories (deictic words and grammatical tenses) are investigated. The hypothesis that formal elements of the narrative are determined by the basic characteristics of the text sense - the narrative strategy - is being proved. The latter is defined as a communicative model of a narrative discourse, positing of a subject, object and narratee. In K. Vaginov’s prose works the narrative strategy of provoking is actualised, and metalepses (overcrossings of the borders between the characters’ world and the narrator’s reality) have a ludic nature. In “The Goat Song” one of the most important compositional principle is the shifting between the third-person narrative fragments and the ‘author’s intrusions’ written in first person. Thus, time change points out both splitting of the narrative instances and closedness of the ‘nether world’ i.e. literature. The creators compete with each other: the expicit narrator is deep inside the characters’ world, the protagonist of the novel (Unknown Poet) claims that he is the one who has created the author. In B. Pasternak’s “Doctor Zhivago” communication is being methaphorised as a revelation. The narrator makes way for the poet, the narration is ended with lyrical poems which reinterpretate the information from the story. At the finale of the prosaic part of the novel a bond between Zhivago’s book and the author’s one, the story time and reader’s one are emphasised by multiple use of the deixis eto (it) and, moreover, by literal transformation of Zhivago’s notebook of poems ( tetrad’ ) into the book ( knizhka ).