Reformed Narration: Pure Thought and Structuring Brackets in Vladimir Makanin's Andegraund, ili Geroj nasego vremeni

Abstract

The article analyses Vladimir Makanin's novel Andegraund ili Geroj nasego vremeni (1998), focusing on its author-hero relation and narrative characteristics. The hero, Petrovic, to whom the author leaves the stage, neither writes nor tells his story, rather, his words reach the reader as if directly from his mind, and the text appears as a kind of structured stream-of-consciousness. A comparison of Makanin's hero to that of Dostoevskij reveals that while the latter, according to Michail Bachtin, aimed to present his hero as pure voice, Makanin apparently aims to present his Petrovic as pure thought. Furthermore, it is argued that a central role in the structuring of this mental text is played by an overwhelming amount of brackets. The article suggests a categorisation of the different types of parenthetic remarks in the novel according to their function in the textual, would-be narrative construct, and concludes that Makanin's use of brackets in Andegraund, the most extensive use in his oeuvre so far, is crucial to the extreme processuality of the novel's text and its paradoxical, solipsistic addressivity.