Situations of speaking in the novel of V. Makanin «The Underground, or a Hero of Our Time»

V. Makanin’s novel «The underground, or a Hero of our time» (1998) reflects the social, moral, philosophical crisis of the late twentieth-century society. The novel raises the problem of the absurdity of existence in the «way of life» where a word or a speech have no high mission of searching for and keeping the truth. The paper analyses the situation of speaking that is repeated many times in the novel and presents different options for both everyday and ideological conversations. There are the types of speaking according to the number of participants (dialogue, polylogue, monologue) and the purpose of speech (confessional, didactic, accusatory). Of special interest is the story of the central character-narrator for whom speaking is first, a way to influence the other person (preaching to the brother about the «philosophy of impact»; the preaching to the poetess about «non-writing of love»); second, the way of self-determination: speaking and charming the truth. Also, the external speech, the inner speech of the character is not only aimed at fixing the external events (narration) but also at its interpretation and planning the of reality. In the inner speech, the central character repeats and compares his «plot» and «plot» of the behaviour of other characters with examples of Russian classical literature. It highlights the Gogol’s story of the little man in the stories of secondary characters, the plot of «crime and punishment» and «the duel» in their own history. The author discusses the situation of speaking not only as an appeal to the other person but also as the way of questioning the being. The story of the central character interprets the situation of speaking as an existential act of self-determination not only in the situation of rejecting the writing but also in the case of refusal of speaking (silence), of existential words interpreting Genesis. The central character refuses the word, the logos not by seclusion but he goes to people (Dorm) in every day speaking.

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