Forms and types of the "provincial chronotope" in the Russian novels of the 19th century (V. Sleptsov and N. Khvoshchinskaya)

The paper deals with the conceptions "provincial chronotope" and "provincial time" in the context of the Russian prose of the 19th century (novels Svobodnoe vremya [Free time], Kto zh ostalsya dovolen [Who is glad], Poslednee deystvie komedii [Last act of the comedy] by Nadezhda Dmitrievna Khvoshchinskaya (Zayonchkovskaya), and Trudnoe vremya [Hard time] by Vasily Alekseevich Sleptsov). The definition "provincial time" is compared with the definition "provincial chronotope" in the context of Mikhail Bakhtin's theory. As M. Bakhtin writes, "Time here is devoid of moving forward < . . .> Day is never a day, year is not a year, life is not life < . . .> It is ordinary, everyday domestic cyclical time. Time is uneventful and seems like it almost stopped < . . .> It is a thick, sticky time crawling in space." The quote shows the provincial chronotope is a-narrative. In fact, it represents a quasi-event as part of the indiscrete eternity. But the main part of the phrase is connected with the ontological character of the provincial time. The interpretation of the provincial chronotope as "ordinary, everyday domestic cyclical time" presents another phenomenon important for Russian culture. It can be called "everydayness". In the paper, the provincial time is studied as a narrative, phenomenol-ogical and plot-forming category. Despite the fact that Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya and Vasily Sleptsov belong to different social, politic and worldview poles and types of literature, the sense of time, its phenomenology can be recognized as an integral feature. Their texts are characterized by common narration strategies that consist in the representation of everyday life, the implementation of the so-called "provincial plot" (close to Balzac's The Human Comedy). The esthetic worldview of Vasily Sleptsov is a chaos of material events; the art world of Khvoshchinskaya is the order of different elements. So, comparison of these texts from the esthetic point of view is not quite adequate. However, the definition of the category of time allows to find inner connections realized in the form as a self-contained element of a literary text rather than through the naaration tradition. In the works under study, time is definitely spatial, and some time slots, representing a continuous existence, are virtually inseparable in the topology of the text. The provincial chronotope, devoid of limits and abysses, presents reality as a sequence of senseless events and episodes where the human and humanity lose significance. The author believes it is in this context that we should understand Bakhtin's statement about the provincial chronotope as "ordinary, everyday domestic cyclical time". The development of this model of time demonstrates its importance in the Russian literature of the 19th century. In particular, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov felt this elusive flow of time very subtly, many of his stories represent the image of the same actions and the same decorations on a new level of understanding of time, literature and life. In this case, the description of the provincial time should be taken into account as its essence is embodied, is fixed in the material substance. Results and observations of the research could be extended to other texts on "provincial" plots and could also be used in teaching the history of Russian literature of the 19th century.

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