Narrative organization of V. Sleptsov's Hard Times: some problems of cryptography

The paper deals with the narrative organization and narrative features of Vasily Alekseevich Sleptsov's novel Hard Times. This matter is investigated on the material of research papers, articles and monographs of Korney Chukovsky, Valeriy Sazhin, William Brumfield and others. Sleptsov's novel is investigated as a social project that depended on the ideology and aesthetic processes of the second part of the 19th century. In the first part of the paper the reputation of Vasily Sleptsov is studied as a phenomenon of the history of Russian literature. So, facts, opinions and suggestions are a complex myth which depended on the literature texts and contexts. Continuing the thoughts of William Brumfield, the author of the paper presumes a different interpretation of the writer and his worldview. In the second part of the article an attempt is made to descript the cryptography of the plot (by Korney Chukovsky). The narrative structure is determined by several narrative techniques. So, one narrative tactic presents a folksy world with "hard eventfullness". Genesis of this type is physiological sketches (by Alexander Levitov, Nikolay Uspensky, sketches of Vasily Sleptsov himself). The other tactic presents the social provincial world (by Ivan Turgenev, and his epigones Nadezhda Khvoshchin-skaya, Nikolay Veseniev and others). Narrative diversity is explained by the competition of these two strategies. As is known, the basis of the plot conflict of the novel is the emergence of the commoner Rya-zanov, who is a friend of the landowner Shchetinin. It must be noted that Ryazanov, compared with Bazarov or Rakhmetov, is a moralizing hero; he is verbose and not always consistent in his words. Following the tradition of Turgenev, Sleptsov uses the principle of the story and the implications of information failure, but the "inner man" of Ryazanov almost always coincides with the "outside", the consciousness of the hero, his inner speech is a thing in itself, a blackbox not available for the perception of the reader. If to consider Ryazanov in the context of semantic derivation of a new man, he represents the traditional type of a superfluous man. Consistently considering ideas and ideals, colliding heros with the uncreative reality of the novel, Sleptsov tests Chernyshevsky's utopian projects and the romantic world vision of Turgenev's Bazarov. So, the motif of impotence and powerlessness is general in the narrative structure of the novel, which is connected with Nikolay Nekrasov's lyrical plot of "Knight for an Hour". In the conclusion it is shown that the novel could be considered outside the context of the polemical novel of the '60s as a kind of "Requiem" on the "new man" that came from the democratic camp. Hard Times in this way not only foreshadows the socialistic and communistic ideology, but also shows the exhaustive evidence of the impossibility of its realization, i.e. finding a common language between the two social worlds. Results and observations which the paper presents can be used in teaching the history of Russian literature of the 19th century.

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