The concept “depth” in modernism and metamodernism. From Marcel Proust’s “frozen lava” to Ali Smith’s “plaster”

The article raises the question of studying the concept “depth" in the literature of metamodernism or “new sincerity". A lot of research has been devoted to the literature of metamodemism itself in the last ten years, mainly in foreign literary criticism (Akker, Vermeulen, Constantinou, Gibbons, Timmer). In Russian literary criticism, there are very few such studies, in contrast to the study of metamodernism in philosophy (Pavlov), art history, and psychology. The topic is thus very relevant and insufficiently studied. The subject of the article was the question of depth. Depth is one of the three (apart from affect and historicity) most important (highlighted by foreign authors) concepts on which metamodernism in general, and the literature of metamodernism in particular, is based. The main drawback of foreign studies is the small number of examples from the literature of modernism (and in general of the 19th century), which is referred to by authors who study the literature of metamodernism and consider it, to some extent, to revive some ideas and techniques of literature of the 19th century, primarily modernism. The author of this article has not found any attempts to compare the works of contemporary authors (Wallace, Smith, Beigbeder, Schmitt, Musso), for example, with the works of Marcel Proust. However, if one analyzes “depth” in the works of Ali Smith (first of all), it is simply, in the author’s opinion, necessary to look back at Proust and his searches in the unconscious, at his immersion in himself. Proust’s text is a bottomless depth, which he juxtaposes with the revelation of something ancient buried under a layer of ash in Pompeii (Sodom and Gomorrah) (in addition to comparing Paris under the bombs of the First World War with the eruption of Vesuvius in Pompeii). The secrets of the human subconscious, something repressed, forgotten, resemble a world buried under a layer of black ash. The secrets of the human subconscious, something repressed, forgotten, resemble a world buried under a layer of black ash. Until this ash is erased, the world will not manifest. For Proust, the tool for erasing such a layer was the recollection reflex, evoked by taste, sound, tactile associations. Ali Smith has the same effect. Only instead of ash (something natural, involuntary) a layer of plaster appears in her works. Man (postmodern man) himself has erased antiquity, does not want to look back, wants to forget history. Metamodernism is the revival of history, the revival of forgotten feelings, emotions, someone’s long-forgotten stories. This is an attempt to overcome postmodernism as something that makes a person forget something intimate, something important (connected both with the whole History and with the small stories of individual people), forget, in a sense, himself. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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