БЕГЛЫЕ ОБРАЗЫ (ВИЗУАЛЬНАЯ КУЛЬТУРА В РОМАНЕ МИШЕЛЯ ТУРНЬЕ "ЗОЛОТАЯ КАПЛЯ")

Abstract

In the work of the French writer Michel Tournier, the novel The Golden Drop (1985) stands out for the massive presence within its plot of various visual images – photographs, drawings, mannequins, etc.; the hero, a young Algerian immigrant in France, develops in relation to those images. Their interaction can be described ideologically in the sense of postcolonial theory or through the opposition of the “symbolic” Islamic culture and the “figurative” European one; however, the author of the novel outlines his own, original concept of a visual image associated with the personality of the subject, but escaping his control due to its serial multiplicity. In this specific aspect, Tournier practically works out the problem of the intradiegetic image – a visual image included in a narrative plot. Encountering visual objects, some of which depict himself, the hero of Tournier’s novel remains unchanged, does not undergo any “education”, does not acquire, as a result of his adventures, either an ideal image or an ideal sign-symbol. Arriving from afar, he still does not recognize himself as a participant in European history, indicated in the novel by allusions to the student revolution of 1968