The narrative of translocation as a way to construe the protagonist's horizon of consciousness (The novel “Boarding House” by S. Zhadan)

Abstract

The topicality and novelty of the proposed article is accounted for by the need to involve into the space of Ukrainian literary studies those methodologies that are extremely rarely used due to various circumstances and that remain on the margins of scientific interests, though having powerful potential opportunities to address new approaches to studying poetics and interpretation of artistic texts. The subject of the research in the proposed article is the moving semantic horizon of protagonist’s consciousness in S. Zhadan’s novel “Boarding School”, which expresses the potential possibilities of construing his identity. Using the methods of phenomenological and existential analysis of the structures of the living world and shifts in the horizons of consciousness developed by E. Husserl and A. Bergson, the author of the article proves that they 1) are naturally in line with the specificity of the writer’s artistic thinking aimed at the analysis of the characters in their search of the purpose of existence and 2) this search of explication of the inner world and shifts of consciousness of the protagonist Pasha is carried out within the narrative of shifting horizons of “protoimpression” which, according to Husserl, in each case is the interaction of three integral components manifested in the experience of “now”, which inevitably fits into the horizon of “once” (retentional — past-related) and “then” (protential — future-related) modifications. It is proved that the artistic narrative of the novel is designed to capture the thickening of the horizons of consciousness and memory of the protagonist, whose experience appears in different modes: perception / rejection, imagination, dream, memory, various visualization techniques, etc. Emphasis is placed on the methods of transferring “shifts” of the protagonist’s consciousness related to the film narrative, the process of image-experience, where profound expansion of memory gains special importance, the formation of subjective impressions: associative saturation of details, attraction to cinematic visualisation, change focalization, “subjective camera effect”, the use of frame switching techniques, etc. Prospects for further studies are associated with the further involvement of the methodology of phenomenological and existential analysis and knowledge of the application of film narration techniques for the analysis of the plot and composition skills of the writer.