Poetics of Duality in Olga Grushin’s Novel “The Line”

Abstract

Abstract.In the present paper, the author researches the peculiarities of poetics of И?duality’ in Olga Grushin's novel The Line. The significance of the study lies in the need to form a holistic view of the development of modern Russian literature in emigration. The author of the research has analysed the poetics of И?duality’ as a defining component of Olga Grushin's prose. In the course of the study, it is determined that the category of И?duality’ in modern literature of emigration is carried out in the value-based, image-thematic and stylistic aspects of the text. The dominant image of И?a line’ in the novel forms a dual reality, which is reflected in the structure and, consequently, in the composition of the novel and its characters' portraits.

The purpose of The research purpose is to analyse poetics of duality in Olga Grushin’s novel The Line in the context of literary and socio-cultural discourses, genre models and characters used by the author.

Research results. Olga Grushin is a successful and established author of modern Russian-American prose. The peculiarity of Olga Grushin's novel The Line is in the paradoxical combination of the emphasized everyday life and the uniqueness of Soviet times. The trivial and unusual details, inscribed in the novel, show no precise historical address—it could be Stalin's 30s or the И?thaw’ period or the times of И?Brezhnev stagnation’.

 On the one hand, the novel brings out the structural and semantic meaning of И?a line’ as a phenomenon of Soviet time and space. On the other hand, the author defines the essence of И?a line’ as a conflict, collision, confrontation of external and internal, a marker of duality of the characters, who seem to be И?falling apart’. It is И?in the discipline of a line’ that the heroes experience their existential crisis, try to reconcile with themselves, to find their И?real-selves’ in a quasi-reality. This model of being is most represented in the discourse of the main character—Anna. Olga Grushin doesn’t follow the traditional instructions for creating a character’s portrait and tries to talk about a wide range of psychological experiences in the depiction of the main character’s transitional states—her dreams, hallucinations and visions that creates a parallel world and emphasizes the И?duality’ of the character. The framework, within which a complex portrait of the character’s image is built, shows the dissociation of a personality. The heroine И?stands in a line’, and from that moment, she and her Doppelgänger begin to exist in a parallel reality. The work is united by the general principle of cyclic calendar construction of parts (Winter. Spring. Summer. Autumn. December. Christmas. New Year), which emphasizes the dualism of life and becomes a way of asserting new truths, their renewal and to some extent defamiliarisation. И?Duality’ as a phenomenon of artistic consciousness is related to the extent, to which the И?heroes of a line’ feel the borderline of their existence in an ambivalent world, a world of concentric changes, manifested at all levels of the textual structure of the novel—in the poetics of the text, characterology, and finally, worldview.