Человек вопрошающий в романе Михаила Шишкина «Письмовник»

Abstract

The image of a person who is in a cognitive search and expresses himself in questions and questioning, often finds himself in the center of the writer’s attention. However, a system of theoretical principles for analyzing the phenomenon of questioning has not yet been developed in literary studies. Some works of this kind focus on linguistic or philosophical research. The object of study in this article is Mikhail Shishkin’s novel “Letter Book”, which allows us to demonstrate the methodological principles of revealing the image of the asking man. Based on I.I. Plekhanova’s monograph “Questions and Questioning in lyrical reflection”, we transfer the main methodological stages to the prose text: 1) we distinguish the question as a modality of utterance and questioning as a spiritual intention, 2) we define the functions of questions and questioning, 3) we characterize subject-subject connections in the process of questioning communication. In the novel, questions are actualized in the cognitive function of unsolvable questions, and the search and assertion of meaning is realized differently depending on the subject-subject relations, which are presented in the “Letter Book” not in a realistically deterministic form. The positions of the communicants (the questioner and the responder) are constantly changing or combining. As a result, the “questioning process” goes beyond the framework of a communicative strategy and transforms into a reflexive search for oneself. The step-by-step analysis gives grounds to speak about a special kind of anthropocentric model of the world in M. Shishkin’s novel, when the central significant element turns out to be a “little man” who, through questioning, does not reveal the secrets of being for the sake of epistemological completeness of existence, but seeks a close and understandable way of comprehending non-existence, thereby overcoming the eternal fear of death.