“DISGRACE” BY J.M. COETZEE AS A POSTMODERN VARIATION OF THE NOVEL ABOUT A MUSICIAN

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the genre specificity of the novel “Disgrace” (1999) by the South African writer J.M. Coetzee. The study begins with a literature review that examines works analysing “Disgrace” to identify gaps in the understanding of genre specificity, as well as unexplored aspects of the novel’s poetics. A review of existing works has shown that previous studies have mainly focused on the socio-political and postcolonial discourses, while the poetics of the novel, namely the main elements of the novel’s content structure, the specificity of which is crucial for the genre identification of the work, have been neglected by scholars. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate the main elements of the content structure of the novel (the conflict, the chronotope, the protagonist’s image, the motif, as well as the plot-compositional structure of the novel), which will allow us to determine the genre of J.M. Coetzee’s novel “Disgrace”. In our opinion, the systemic-complex approach we have chosen is the best suited for this research. The specifics of the protagonist’s construction (according to M. Bakhtin), as well as the motif of creativity, which is a red thread that runs through the entire narrative of the novel, prompted us to consider J.M. Coetzee’s novel in the context of the novel about an artist. The theoretical and methodological basis of this study is the developments of M. Bakhtin, R. Seret, and N. Bochkareva on the theory of the genre of the novel about an artist, as well as the works of such literary critics as P-E. Leuschner, P. Scher, W. Wolf, A. Medvedev on the novel about a musician and the theory of intermediality. Thus, as a result of our analysis, we have come to several key conclusions that identify “Disgrace” as a novel about an artist. According to the tendencies of the contemporary literary process (postmodern play, propensity for pastiche genres and forms), which is characterised by the existence of various genre modifications, the postmodern novel about an artist is a plastic formation capable of absorbing features of different novel types and genre forms, while all elements of the content structure of the novel about an artist, although modified under the influence of postmodern discourse, still retain their genre basis. J.M. Coetzee’s novel has a three-part plot and compositional structure: the artist’s life story, his creations, and reflections on art, which corresponds to the structure of the novel about an artist. All the elements of the novel’s content structure (the conflict, the chronotope, the image of the artist protagonist, the leitmotif) are considered separately, and their analysis and specificity also prove that “Disgrace” is as invariant to a novel about an artist as to a novel about a musician. We consider the novel about a musician to be one of the variations of the novel about an artist, which is based on the type of artistic activity of the protagonist-creator as music, that manifests its presence at different levels of the text. Music permeates the novel at all levels of poetics, from the plot and theme to the change in narrative tone and musical quotations, which is evidence of the novel’s diverse intermediality. Music in the novel becomes the only possible mediator of communication, as its universal language makes it accessible to people of different origins and social backgrounds, and gives the protagonist the opportunity to be heard. Thus, in the novel three forms of space (the space of the hero, his work, and culture as such) and time were distinguished, which is typical for a novel about an artist: external time (where the hero’s “body” is located); internal time – the hero’s psychological time, which is reflected in the depiction of the creative process and David’s reflections on both his work and his life; eternal time – time that has absorbed the entire space of culture, which is reflected in the hero’s work. Significantly, David’s work in the novel acts as a kind of springboard in which all three forms of time and space merge: David’s opera reflects both his internal evolution and external cultural and historical changes (the choice of the African banjo as an accompaniment instead of the piano). This conception of time reflects the nature of the conflict in the novel about an artist: in order to be reborn in culture, one must die in life. This insoluble contradiction is reflected in the external conflict between the artist and the world: faced with the realities of the new regime, which David does not accept and into which he does not fit, the hero turns to creativity, which can give him a “second life”. David’s transformation from his initial desire to write an opera about Lord Byron to his deep involvement in the process of composing the music itself reflects the motif of creation that is central to the novel about an artist and maintains the novel’s integrity. The very image of the hero-artist in the novel (which corresponds to the aesthetics of postmodernism) is deconstructed: the artist loses his sacred significance and acquires the features of a modern man – powerless, uncertain, entangled in the chaos of life, and allusions and reminiscences of not only literary but also cultural fields add to the comicality to the image of the artist. In conclusion, this study offers a fresh perspective on the novel “Disgrace”, the analysis of which proves that it belongs to the subgenre – the novel about an artist, and moreover to such its invariant as the novel about a musician. Our research also contributes to the further study of the transformation of traditional forms of contemporary literature and its interaction with various art forms at the turn of the 20th –21st centuries and invites both further research into the intersection of literature and music and the novel about a musician in postmodern English-language literary discourse.