안드레이 비토프의 『푸쉬킨 연구소』와 부조리 문학

Abstract

Andrei Georgievich Bitov (Андрей Георгиевич Битов, 1937-) is one of the most prominent Russian-Soviet Postmodernist authors. Pushkin House (Пушкинский дом, 1964-1971), his most representative work, is comprised of roughly three parts. At the end of each part Bitov inserts a chapter entitled “Version and Variant” to present possible versions of a different plot. This unique structure and the freely intervening voice of the author make Pushkin House a creatively subversive work that questions numerous literary conventions.BR In Part III, the hero Lyova is killed in a duel and then resurrected. The author does not give any scientific or even reasonable explanation; Lyova simply comes back to life on his own and returns to his everyday life at the Pushkin Institute. This research is an attempt to understand such illogical plot from the viewpoint of the absurd. The absurd in Pushkin House is fundamentally different from the absurd in Western absurdist theater or even from the absurdist literature from the Modernist era in the Russian literary tradition. The absurd in literature is an attempt to show the existential meaninglessness of life through literary works. The abusrd in Pushkin House, on the other hand, is an intended effect in order to question the conventional reading of literature as a reflection or an imitation of life. Through the absurd, Pushkin House urges the reader to shift her focus from her own external reality to the fictional reality inside the story and to re-consider reality as a pale reflection of the fictional world.