Post-Soviet history in the “mirror” of literature: Experience in narrative analysis

Abstract

Narrative analysis of literary works enables to interpret present-day narrative texts in all their multi-level depth making use of the tools accumulated in science -especially if those texts concern current and topical political events, which are usually spoken about in the language of media discourse. Change in the state (inner and outer) and presence of a narrator having his/her personal viewpoint and, consequently, the specific language of his/her message are signs of a narrative structure. The subject for consideration in this article based on Zakhkhok by Vladimir Medvedev and To Live On by Narine Abgaryan is key levels of the narrative text organization needed for such analysis. The texts chosen for the research are similar in subject matter (military conflicts in the post-Soviet space caused by the collapse of the USSR) and in the author’s strategy - to include characters’ personal destinies into the social history of the country and further to try and conceive them as part of the cultural code of the nation. The peculiarity of the author’s view is the awareness of war not as a completed event but as a still lasting state, which permeates, deforms and destroys people’s destinies as well as destinies of whole nations. In Medvedev’s novel those are mainly voices of young men, immediate participants of the turbulence, that are heard; in Abgaryan’s book those are voices of Armenian women, mothers, wives, and widows. Medvedev’s style is tougher and more dynamic, collision unfolding before our eyes. In Abgaryan’s story the plot is not that important: all key events were in the past, and characters are just recalling them. The code of the narrative discourse specified by the narrator’s type determines the stylistics of the text, the nature of action, the interpretation of events: they rapidly change one another by means of the efforts of the narrators who were placed in the centre of military and domestic conflicts in Medvedev’s novel. Abgaryan’s characters are slow and quiet, their long and difficult life gives them hard-won wisdom to accept reality as it is in its bitter completeness. Personal dramas of the characters are involved in the overall tragedy of the whole nation which goes beyond a specific era; this enables the author to reveal the ethno-cultural determinants of the narrative identity. Common grief can be overcome by means of love, work, patience and the cultural capital which manifests itself in people’s mentality and way of life and makes it possible for them to survive and gain a new cultural identity. Collective tragedy (social history), which opens to a reader through the characters’ destinies (personal narrative), becomes part of epic history (meta-narrative). This author’s strategy gives the stories told a timeless scale and ontological depth. The author declares no conflicts of interests.