Abstract
The paper examines retrospection as a type of fictional time movement, the functions of which are to overcome the irreversibility of physical time (1), to symbolize a return to the past (2), to idealize the conservation of personal and / or collective past (3), to block development (4), and to make a significant contrast to the past and not yet experienced existential time (5). I analyze the meanings and forms of retrospection in the poetics of the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard (1931–1989) on the example of his early poetry and some prosaic works. The retrospective movement is considered as a physical and imaginary movement in space and time of the character, as a motive for resurrection of the past (including the “lost paradise” of culture), as well as, in particular, resurrection / search for the dead father (Telemachy). The study uses comparative, biographical, and mythopoetic methods. As a result, it turns out that Bernhard’s retrospection is not just one of the methods of reconstructing the past, but it is a “constructive device” (Yu. Tynyanov). At the formal level, retrospection is expressed in the technique of repetition: plot (return to space and time of the past), stylistic (repetition of lexemes, grammatical constructions, syntactic parallelism), rhythmic. The plot of the search for the father, in turn, opens and closes the work of Bernhard: his last novel (“Auslöschung. Ein Zerfall”, 1986) returns to the themes of lyrics, to the study of Herkunftskomplex, and to the test of religious and family ideas.
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More From: Practices & Interpretations: A Journal of Philology, Teaching and Cultural Studies
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