Some aspects of the artistic integrity of M. Shishkin's novel Pismovnik

The article analyzes the specifics of artistic integrity of Pismovnik, M. Shishkin’s novel on the process of creation. The integrity is connected with the author’s use of different paradigm, genre and modus traditions. M. Shishkin’s novel combines features of poetics of sentimental, realistic, modernist and postmodernist novels. Using elements and motifs of different artistic paradigms, world outlooks, the author creates an integrity in which literary codes are interconnected, none of them prevails and plays a decisive (exceptional) role in the integrity of the work. For instance, the composition of the novel is connected with the tradition of the sentimental novel in letters, the whole work is correspondence of two lovers. Psychological details, depiction of life events of ordinary people, dynamics of their characters, connection with specific historical events, depiction of everyday life features contribute to the recognition of the realistic, "authentic" manner of writing. The events of the novel can also be compared to the genre of bildungsroman, characters go through ordeals and formation. The poetical elements of the novel are definitely influenced by the traditions of magic realism: mythological motifs, motifs of miracles, depiction of mythological lands and peoples, relative time, rhythmical speech that contributes to mythologization of the process of writing are used in the novel. Traditions of the antimilitaristic novel of modernism including the motif of absurdity of existence, non-freedom of humans from natural and social worlds are also recognizable in the novel. The novel has elegiac and idyllic motifs. Elegiac memories of the gone childhood and youth are typical for the letters of the characters. The idyllic inclusion of the characters in the harmonious world of nature is characteristic of a number of letters in the novel. The ironical world outlook with disintegration of the man and the world, presence of motifs of predestination and non-freedom, repetition, play, persons’ doubles definitely prevails in M. Shishkin’s novel with accompanying elegiac, idyllic and dramatic mode subdominants. M. Shishkin’s Pismovnik as a predominantly ironic postmodern text demonstrates another important aspect of artistic integrity of the novel: use of archaic structures (motifs, images, plot patterns) that contribute to forming the work on the process of creation and sacralization of the novel’s word.

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