Categories of things and words in the works of M. P. Shishkin (based on the material of the novels "The Taking of Ishmael" and "Venus' Hair")

Abstract

The author puts forward the position that the nature of M. P. Shishkin's creativity is determined by the interaction of two trends: the preservation of a perceptually perceived thing in a word (the word in this case becomes an instrument for fixing a visible image of the world) and the use of a linguistic sign referring to a thing to create verbal and artistic constructions with immanent aesthetic significance. The writer's worldview position assumes that the ethical task of art (in the light of the research topic - the task of preserving the experience of perceiving the world) stand́t above the aesthetic (i.e. the task of creating an expressive art form). The author of the article proves that the poetics of Shishkin's novels is largely characterized by an "attitude to expression" (according to R. O. Jacobson), in which artistic discourse cannot be limited to the task of preserving a thing in a word. The analysis of the means of expressiveness and rhetorical techniques of the novels "The Taking of Ishmael" and "Venus's Hair" confirms the author's idea that the speech of Shishkin's heroes, fixing the results of perceptual interaction with the surrounding world, often turns into poetic speech, the "content" of which becomes the art form itself. Shishkin's creativity, therefore, exists only at the intersection of the two trends mentioned above. The removal of the "thing - word" opposition (with the value predominance of the former) is possible only in the context of a conversation about the novel "The Letter Writer", which the author of the article considers as an artistic text created entirely in accordance with the task of preserving the individual experience of living.