UDC

821.161.1(092)

Authors

Oleg V. Sergeev
Moscow Region State University;
ul. Fridrikha Engel’sa 21, korp. 1, 105005, Moscow, Russian Federation;
e-mail: parragon@bk.ru

Abstract

This article dwells on fictional space dramatization in Aleksei Remizov’s novel The Clock. The paper aimed to study dramatization in the context of the structuralist literary theory. Structuralism is used as a method to achieve this goal, i.e. it allows us to define dreams as a phenomenon of artistic imagery and as a structural element of the text, enabling one to study some new literary problems. The dream is both a psychological phenomenon and a kind of text. The focus of attention is on Aleksei Remizov as a developing creative individuality. His novel The Clock was chosen as a landmark work of the early period of Remizov’s artistic biography. The facts from Remizov’s life intensify the problem of dramatization, which is both a literary category and the writer’s spiritual quality. Consequently, dramatization is associated with such traits as tendency to fantasize and the ability to portray the elusive moments of a person’s life in a game-changing historical period. The theoretical aspect of the interaction between the closed world of provincial life and the rhythm of time is shown through the character’s numerous perceptual distortions. These anomalies are considered in the spatial forms of the dreams of the protagonist Kostya Klochkov, such as dream toponymy and devisualization. The theoretical aspect is manifested in the interaction between background artistic processes: imagination and visualization in the text. The first level is the hermetic world of provincial life in the backwoods of Russia. The second level is time as a metaphysical period, space in time. There are many characters in the novel, and even incidental ones are portrayed as dreamers with fascinating dreamy mentality. Internal and external suppression of personality is presented as a manifestation of the universal law of time and its tyranny over the individual destinies of the characters, whose existential problems are substituted by domestic troubles and mutual alienation.

Keywords

Aleksei Remizov, The Clock, structuralism, fictional space, dramatization, fictional dreams

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