The singer and denouncer of high society: the linguo-poetics of V. A. Sollogub’s novella "Noble Society" (to the 210th anniversary of the birth)

Abstract

The study aims to analyse the novella "Noble Society" by V. A. Sollogub as the most typical example of the writer’s search for new realistic forms of the linguo-poetic depiction of the aristocratic circle life. Drawing on the Romanticism traditions, the writer develops his own original approach to the artistic exploration of the subject which was already extensively covered in Russian literature of the first quarter of the 19th century. Sollogub offers a kind of alternative to Lermontov’s vision of the beau monde (in content, form, and the author’s position). Without abandoning the experience of a critical and even satirical investigation of the subject, the writer tries to be objective. Using various linguistic and stylistic means, he shows the complexity of the characters, institutions, and customs of the privileged circles of the Russian aristocracy, to which he himself belonged. The article uses linguo-poetic and stylistic analysis of the text in conjunction with observations on its composition and syntax features. The text is examined from the "horizontal" and "vertical" perspectives, i. e. considering its artistic effect, biographical and social connections, as well as the structure-forming linguistic units of different levels. The paper describes composition which is understood (following Yu. M. Lotman and B. A. Uspensky) as a particular point of view and a perspective of reproducing reality. The study classifies the forms of the author’s deviations from the main course of the narrative. The combination of various lexical layers in the text is investigated as a linguo-poetic indicator of the degree of reliability of the characters’ judgments, the "exposure" of the masked truth, the author’s positive and negative evaluation. The research reveals the aphoristic (formula) "code" of high society life and some syntactic devices characteristic of V. A. Sollogub’s style (in particular, the methods of prose rhythmisation). Special attention is given to the specific high society phraseology and vocabulary used for the literary depiction of aristocratic life.