NARRATIVIZATION OF TRAUMATIC EVENTS IN AESTHETIC DISCOURSE (BASED ON THE MATERIAL OF Z. PRILEPIN'S NOVEL "PATHOLOGIES")

Full Text

This study fits into the paradigm of trauma studies, or trauma analytics, "which is one of the interdisciplinary ways of nominalization, talking about events that are obviously painful and often closed from transparent manifestation and articulation" [1, p. 59]. The scientific problem solved in the framework of the study based on the material of Z. Prilepin's novel "Pathology" is the problem of representing traumatic experience in the absence of the so—called "discourse of trauma" per se. Thus, a special discursive space of individual and collective trauma becomes the object of research.

In the course of studying the representation of trauma, namely, the features of verbalization, articulation and manifestation of a traumatic event (since understanding and living through trauma is complicated by the lack of appropriate "tools" of speech, memory distortion, protective mechanisms of the psyche, etc.), we have identified the following ways and tools for representing traumatic experience in Zakhar Prilepin's novel "Pathologies".

To convey a traumatic experience that cannot be comprehended, integrated into the picture of the world, and given a language, the main character, Egor Tashevsky, turns to a safe and familiar experience: "His cheek is shot through, and a jar of jam is broken on his chest – a thick black liquid and glass from the windshield stuck to this mess" [2, p. 25].  Moreover, as a rule, the "safe" through which the terrible is thought is safe from childhood.

If we pay attention to the perception of physicality, it should be noted that the hero's consciousness tends to look for different conceptual schemes to describe the attributes of the living and the attributes of the dead: "Astakhov approaches the corpse point-blank, sits down next to what was the head, looks at it" [2, p. 37]. It is noteworthy that "what was a head" is so named not only because the physical appearance of the mutilated head does not look like a head at all, but also because only the living have this part of the body.  What was a part of the living (the head) can no longer be described in the same words. Sometimes in trauma studies catastrophe it is said that the living has components, and the dead has only integrity – he is a corpse.

Two tendencies of pronouncing trauma are clearly revealed:  

tabooing – consciousness cannot articulate the terrible at all, refuses to pronounce the traumatic experience ("After the funeral, I came home, put tea on boil, took up sweeping the floor. Then he threw a broom and, under the rattle of a rusty kettle, wrote on the wall "God damn a purulent ghoul": I remembered how to spell the letter "b"" [p. 15]);
verbigeration is, on the contrary, the repeated automatic repetition of the same words ("I understand that he is dead, he is dead, dead" [2, p. 91]; "Do-moi, do-moi, do-moi...". [2, p. 61]; "one person seems to be... yes, one. "One, one, one, one..." [2, p. 61]).

These two trends are also found in trauma studies based on audio recordings of real victims of traumatic events. In aesthetic discourse, Prilepin uses these narrative strategies to create a narrative text. 

The following feature is read through the use of an enallage: "I see Stepa Chertkov, with a deformed, dead head" [2, p. 102]. The definition of "dead" does not refer to a person as a whole, but to a part of him – to the head. Consciousness tends to transfer frightening and undesirable properties from the entire object to a separate attribute of this object, because transferring a property to the entire object will make this property constitutive, defining.

Metonymic thinking works similarly: "My whole gut is trembling and aching, my puny soul is ready to come to naught, become dust..." [2, p. 125] – the soul is perceived as if separated from Tashevsky's "I". The fighter is alienated from fear, transfers it to his "puny soul".

It is necessary to turn to how the understanding of the ongoing military events is generally constructed, what categories the hero thinks in.

The hero frames himself as an object, not a subject of action: "I look at the dirty, chipped walls with surprise - where did I get to, huh? I would be sitting at home now, no one drove me" [2, p. 10]; "Why did I come here anyway?... Okay, good… Nothing has happened yet..." [2, p. 11]. It is worth paying attention to the word "skidded" – a personal verb in an impersonal meaning. At the language level, this is a stage in which the hero tries to find the authority responsible for his current experience, but at the same time he mentions that no one "drove" him. Tashevsky tries to rationalize his experience – to think in terms of purpose, causality (causality).

Another way of ordering is to objectify the subjective: "And what are we running from? It was possible to crawl after all. Where are we in a hurry? He clicks, and right in the head. Or not me?..." [2, pp. 22-23]. In this fragment, there is an attempt to rationalize events: the hero thinks in terms of goals ("where to", "why"), causality is manifested for the design of events that are little amenable to rationalization. The hero tries to sort out what is happening "on the shelves" (and this happening strenuously resists rationalization – it does not fit into logical schemes of determination and causation).

However, when interpretation is impossible (the event cannot be inscribed into the picture of a normal, symbolic structure), it is replaced by the statement: "Today we took the lives of eight people" [2, p. 27]. It is impossible to build hierarchies, cause-and-effect relationships, you can only name phenomena, but not comprehend, not interpret. The "old" symbolic structures and ideas about the normal are no longer possible.

What is interesting is how the understanding and structure of the everyday (past norm) changes when there is a new experience. The hero, who is in a situation of trauma, is forced to somehow think about his daily life in the context of this traumatic event.

Two multidirectional processes take place in the structures of everyday life:

1) normalization, routine and awareness of the abnormal: trauma tries to integrate into the structures of everyday life, fit into the symbolic structure and picture of the subject's world. The abnormal needs to be somehow inscribed into the structure of the world and the structure of thinking, to find "cognitive cells" for it: "Today we took the lives of eight people. Let's go to bed, Sanya" [2, p. 27]. In this fragment, within the framework of one, in fact, the statements of the hero, thoughts about killing people and the need to go to sleep are formed. Their juxtaposition gives these phenomena themselves the status of ordinary ones. A traumatic event (murder) is embedded in the structure of everyday life. It is worth paying attention to the fact that the mention of the traumatic (abnormal) is in the nature of a statement (if the experience cannot be comprehended, it should at least be nominalized).

There are more complex constructions in the novel: "Breakfast was prepared by a fighter named Bad Boy, appointed by the cook. Pasta with stew, just like people. Compote" [2, p. 12]. Tashevsky identifies himself as a person in a situation of trauma, so the usual, routine rituals that create the feeling that everything is fine (and the rest of the time everything around feels like chaos and destruction) are snatched away by consciousness as alien. The emphasis is placed on any "norm": "everything is like people." Even when the trauma is not spoken, it exists as a kind of negative trauma: Tashevsky compares his way of life with the way of "normal" people; from this it is clear that the situation is abnormal. It clearly shows the hero's acceptance of the "new norm" and its comparison with the old (truly normal) one. Military conditions fit into the norm, are recognized as part of it.

2) comprehension and verbalization of the impossibility of the "former normal": due to trauma, what was previously done automatically and non-reflexively becomes impossible. Normal (real normal) becomes impossible after the abnormal experience: "in the morning, to my surprise, we woke up, washed our faces with guffaws and, <...> sitting on the beds, began to eat" [2, p. 12]. Routine actions, previously perceived as the norm, do not fit into the new picture of life (the hero is surprised that in such an environment, when all landmarks have been erased, there is still a way of life: awakenings, washing and breakfasts). The normal, everyday kind of doesn't fit into the trauma situation. 

This is especially vividly illustrated by the following fragment: "I took a book, but I did not understand anything in it. "How can you write any books when a living person can be killed like this? Me. And what's the point of reading them. Stupidity. Paper"" [2, pp. 57-58]. The old normal is already unthinkable: trauma overrides everything else, and everyday life cannot exist unchanged.

In this regard, the "military everyday" is of particular interest – that which is connected with military life.

In the novel, the process of cleaning weapons occupies an important place: "I clean a machine gun, I like to clean a machine gun. There is no more peaceful occupation" [2, p. 37]. The fact that the process of cleaning weapons is soothing and informative is also evidenced by the factographic description of Tashevsky's actions. He fixes his attention on mechanical, automated, simple and understandable actions: "I disconnect the horn, pull the shutter <...> Remove the receiver cover, carefully put it on the table" [2, p. 37]. In this way, he seems to assert his control: at least the weapon is subject to him, it is completely at the mercy of Egor, reliable and predictable. The objectification of weapons and their decontextualization are taking place. Consciousness perceives a weapon not as a murder weapon, but as a set of cogs, bolts, that is, as some physical object. At the same time, consciousness distances itself from the design of the meaning and purpose of this object. This is confirmed by the following fragment: "I lovingly lay out the accessories of the pencil case: a wipe, a brush, a screwdriver and a gouge" [2, p. 37]. Tashevsky abstracts from the use of the automaton and concentrates his attention on its objectivity. The parts of the mechanism are touching, since when disassembled, the machine gun is no longer perceived as a weapon, a murder weapon, it is rather the details of the designer.

 

About the authors

Dinara Parvizovna Mamedova

Самарский национальный исследовательский университет имени академика С. П. Королёва

Author for correspondence.
Email: mamedinara02@gmail.com
Russian Federation

Ekaterina Andreevna Nechaeva

Email: nechaeva.ea.2@ssau.ru

Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor

Russian Federation

References

Supplementary files