СОБЫТИЕ ГЛОБАЛЬНОЙ КАТАСТРОФЫ В «РАБОТЕ НОЧИ» ТОМАСА ГЛАВИНИЧА: К ПОЭТИКЕ РОМАНА БЕЗ ГЕРОЕВ

Abstract

The study of the poetics of the novel without heroes seems to be very productive on the material of the post-apocalyptic novel by contemporary Austrian writer Thomas Glavinich “Night work” (2006). The paper proposes a study of the literary text in ideological terms, as well as from the point of view of thematic approach to the specifics of the artistic world of the novel, which is completely deserted, devoid of protagonists and excludes interpersonal communication. The only character in the novel turns out to be completely disconnected from any social communication, and his attempts to overcome his absolute loneliness give rise to another person, his “double”, Sleeping. However this image, generated by the “work of the night”, comes out to be inaccessible for dialogue. The use of comparative analysis of texts in this paper helped to draw necessary conclusions and to describe the narrative techniques in the “Night work”. The comparison of Thomas Glavinich’s novel with several other novels, especially written by such Austrian writers as Marlene Haushofer (“The Wall”, 1963) and Herbert Rosendorfer (“Grand Solo for Anton”, 1976) emphasizes the “lack of hero” in “Night work”, where the only protagonist turns into a phantom figure which is involved by the author in a test game. In the struggle with himself, with his fears and inability to be back to the field of communication, Jonas passes away, dissolving into the text of the book, the author of which also disappears from the fictitious world he has created. The artistic world created by the Austrian writer is saturated with objects and signs of the “real” world, however, due to the unreal narrative assumption – the causeless and traceless disappearance of the humanity that inhabited it – it acquires the features of a phantasmal world in which objects are deprived of relation with social realm. The novel without heroes by T. Glavinich in its value-ethical perspective is interpreted as a warning book, a book which “saves someone’s life” from desperate loneliness, from transformation of human habitation space into a post-apocalyptic world without people.