Everyday Reality in the Story Games at Twilight by Yu. V. Trifonov

Abstract

The article analyses the poetics of everyday reality in the story by Yu. V. Trifonov Games at Twilight (1970). The author considers the dichotomies underlying the literary reality of the story. The opposition “game — reality” becomes a constitutive one. Its substantial-semantic component is revealed through other oppositions: “me-at that time — me-now”, “preliminary results — final statements”, “temporal — eternal”, “sense — knowledge”. The description of the above-mentioned dichotomies helps define the features of the text structure: the first parts of the opposition focused on what is happening “here and now” are placed at the beginning and the main body of the text and are only realised with the second parts placed at the end. This approach allows the author to determine the characteristics of everyday life, which in turn contributes to the delimitation of everyday life from other realities present in the text. The definition by M. Heidegger, who understood reality as “being through presence”, enables the author to conclude that parts of the text, or reality — create an interdependent system that the author refers to as “poly-reality”. Poly-reality is a hierarchical literary model based on the principle of coexistence of multiple realities in the text, in which “supreme” reality is everyday life that captures events occurring “here and now”. The interaction of everyday life with other realities reveals its features such as openness and mobility, which helps to conclude about the possibility of its evolutionary development that unfolds in the texts that follow.