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Periphery without centre: system of narrators in the novel “Sketches of Russian Life in the Caucasus” // Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin. 2023. Issue 3 (227). P. 136-144

Sketches of Russian Life in the Caucasus was published in London in 1853, and soon after was proven to have plagiarised Mikhail Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time. Though following the original almost to the letter, the novel is conceptually different, nor does it justify its presumably ethnographic title, being didactic in its core. Like the original, it centres around three marginal narrators. This article aims at defining their role within the new pragmatics of the text. The article examines the novel Sketches of Russian Life in the Caucasus, by a Russe, Many Years Resident among the Various Mountain Tribes, as well as A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov, which it is based on. The methods used include the comparative, culture-historical, and hermeneutic ones. Following the wandering officer of the original, the nameless narrator of the novel’s first part remains the former, yet ceases to be the latter. As a result, not only does he retain his marginal status as a traveller, but also moves further away from the narrating officers. His outsider’s view of the characters, particularly Zadonskoi (Pechorin), thus, at first glance appears to be the most objective; in fact, however, it is subject to the European cultural context. Sorokin (Maxim Maximytch) largely retains the original features. However, his rejecting the local population is more evident, so is his religious vigour. Though he, the nameless narrator, and Zadonskoi are in some ways akin, the focus lies on their differences, mainly in age and worldview. As a result, Sorokin’s image is less marginal, with his role as a moral compass for both the protagonist and the reader emphasised. Finally, Zadonskoi himself remains a multi-marginal figure, yet unlike Pechorin has the potential for social integration. Though both Sorokin and the nameless narrator see him as strange and eccentric, in his own papers he unwittingly discovers a human in himself. The marginal status of the narrators, particularly the main character, obscures their national background allowing the focus of the narrative to shift towards universal problems, which are of paramount importance in the novel.

Keywords: Sketches of Russian Life in the Caucasus, A Hero of Our Time, Lermontov, the system of narrators, marginal narrator

PAST AND FUTURE IN HOME LIFE IN RUSSIA: CHICHIKOV AND THE LANDOWNERS // Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin. 2024. Issue 1 (231). P. 114-122

Home Life in Russia (1854) is a distorted translation of Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls, aiming mainly at forming a negative image of Russia and its people. The original key idea of spiritual rebirth is replaced by that of Russia’s moral inferiority to Britain, shifting the focus to the present, originally subordinate to the past and future. The article examines how the original temporal imagery transforms in the novel. Home Life in Russia and Dead Souls are examined using comparative, cultural-historical and hermeneutical methods. The now specified present moves from the 1830s to the 1840s, helping to accentuate everyday problems as opposed to the existential ones. The characters originally serving as anthropological models (Krivonos) become (ethno)social types. They are said to reliably demonstrate the current state of Russian society, depicted as barbaric, backward, and morally decayed while also full of ambition, enterprise, and the urge to acquire. In general, each of the characters strongly resembles the original one, but the most significant indications of their potential spiritual rebirth, both implicit (the landowners) and explicit (Tchichikoff), disappear from the text. This notably reduces mentions of the characters’ future and past, allowing them to escape the dead(ly) present. These changes occur both in the plot and narrative. Tchichikoff and Plyushkin, connected both in the original by the prospect of their spiritual rebirth and in Home Life in Russia by the finality of their fall, transform the most noticeably. Transforming or omitting the depictions of the characters’ past and future, the author reduces them to the image they have in the present. Each of them becomes a static, complete picture in the newly created gallery of morals.

Keywords: Gogol, Dead Souls, image of the future, free translation