학술논문
The Existence Formula. Boundaries of the Metafiction in Andrej Bitov's Celovek v Pejzaze/La formula dell'esistenza. I confini della metanarrativa in Celovek vpejzaze di Andrej Bitov
Document Type
Academic Journal
Author
Source
Studi Slavistici. July, 2021, Vol. 18 Issue 2, p115, 16 p.
Subject
Language
English
ISSN
1824-761X
Abstract
Man in a Landscape, a central tale of The Monkey Link: A Pilgrimage Novel, is a poetic, meditative piece, concentrated on human life and its reasons, and on the figure of the Creator in a double sense: religious and artistic. Its structure is based on various dichotomies, such as 'landscape' and 'view', 'genius' and 'mediocre', 'arts' and 'nature', the boundaries of which become a focal point in the long conversations between the icon restorer, Pavel Petrovic, and the first-person narrator, a painter who eventually turns out to be a novelist. This paper focuses on the revelation of the author's self-knowledge process. On the one hand, the process manifests in the characters representing Bitov's alter-ego, and on the other, through the journey that evokes both Dante's descent into the underworld and the drunken journey of Venicka from Moscow to Petuski. By offering a reading of the text that considers the postmodern theory of narcissistic literature and a photographic approach, the analysis discloses how the 'layer-theory' of the main character Pavel Petrovic is transforming into an attempt at self-literary criticism by Bitov. Keywords Metafiction; Postmodernism; Andrej Bitov; Man in a Landscape; Narcissistic Narrative; Pilgrimage Novel.
Andrej Bitov (Leningrado 1937-Mosca 2018), conosciuto soprattutto per il suo romanzo-museo Puskinskij dom (La casa Puskin (1), 1978) oggi e considerato un autore 'classico' fra i postmodernisti russi. La sua [...]
Andrej Bitov (Leningrado 1937-Mosca 2018), conosciuto soprattutto per il suo romanzo-museo Puskinskij dom (La casa Puskin (1), 1978) oggi e considerato un autore 'classico' fra i postmodernisti russi. La sua [...]