Documentary text, dialogue of styles, and language play in the historical essays of Victor Sosnora

In his historical essays "The Savior of the Homeland", "Two Masques" and "Derzhavin before Derzhavin", V. Sosnora makes use of a wide range of linguistic devices and language play. This comprises the stylistic features of the source documents and the means of various levels of the contemporary language - from its phonetics to phraseology and stylistics. The functions of various devices are interrelated and form a system aiming at the deconstruction of stereotypical views of the people and events of the times of Catherine II. Historical myths and interpretative cliches correspond to language stereotypes and cliches: bureaucratic gobbledygook, idioms, and stock images. Sosnora brings together different lexical meanings and actualizes opposite associative figurative sequences. For example, the historic meaning of the word courtisan ("courtier"), peculiar to the language of the 18th century, interlaces with the modern notion of a woman of easy virtue; one of the meanings of the collocation red day ("fair weather") is substituted for another one ("holiday") and also induces an association with the colour of blood; in the phrase "rider on a white horse" he actualizes the image of a conqueror (tri-umpher) as well as that of an Apocalypse horseman. Suchlike devices reveal the semantic relativity of any verbal expression. The relative value of information is shown through irony which arises from the joint interpretation and juxtaposition of passages written in different styles: quasi-scientific, fictional, lyrical, and journalistic. The narration about historical events is based on a great number of documentary sources, memoirs of the times of Catherine II, but the content of a document, which is often mendacious, is far less important than the individual style of a person because, in Sosnora's opinion, the language will reveal the truth without fail. The close analysis of the style of the autographic documents of Catherine II, E.R. Dashkova, Alexey Orlov, Peter III, and G.R. Derzhavin is used in the essays as a tool for the extraction of the truth. The defamiliarization of images and verbal expressions based on "authoritative" sources makes it possible to reveal their absurdity. Sosnora corrects not only the mistakes of the biased perception of the events by their participants, but also the language "inaccuracy" (e.g. "it's not the major who started to run, but his friend, the horse") - both the former and the latter serve as the means of debunking historical myths. The "scientific" causative logic based on sources and built on evidence, which is questioned in many ways, is opposed to the poetic logic: Sosnora's phrases are often pointedly rhythmical, they are built around alliterations. Taking into account the fact that the author is first and foremost a poet, for whom the primacy of language in a piece of literature is indisputable, the reader, who accepts the author's rules, should take more faith in the poetic logic as well.

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