Linguistic Methods of Intergenerational Dialogue Construction in the Prose of E. Vodolazkin

Abstract

This article considers one of the leading writer’s settings, the artistic construction of intergenerational dialogue, with reference to E. Vodolazkin’s novels Solovyov and Larionov, Laurus, Aviator, and Brisbane. This dialogue includes both the characters of fiction texts, representatives of different generations (contemporaries in general, young people, generations of the Soviet and pre-Soviet period, and even much older times of Russia’s existence), and their readers. The first stage of the study examines the specific narrative strategies that can be attributed to E. Vodolazkin’s idiostyle and which carry out intertemporal communication. It focuses on the hesitant narrator, i.e., although non-diegetic, but not quite “reliable” omniscient author; the echoing of the ego narrative of two or three leading characters; situations when the narrator’s speech part merges with the consciousness of the main character, who, in turn, by virtue of the storyline, penetrates the spiritual world of his direct or conditional ancestor. The second stage of the study analyses the linguistic strategies proper for neutralising generational conflicts, which support the above narrative strategies. Such speech techniques include a variety of ways of approximating and crossing linguistic and communicative boundaries: contact repetition in the dialogue, symbolism of the character’s name, the use of bilingualism (characters easily master languages, and the reader does not need footnotes), the introduction of the figure of the translator (an assistant in overcoming language barriers), the interpretation of agnonyms (obsolete and religious vocabulary, archaic forms), the use of anachronisms of various kinds (literary and cultural allusions, hidden quotations from texts unfamiliar to characters of the described era).