In-character narration as a method for game-like expression of authorial position in Russian metropolitan and émigré prose of 1920s

The paper considers language game potential of in-character narration in works of Russian metropolitan and émigré writers in 1920s. The analysis of short stories written by Yevgeny Zamyatin (X, Comrade Churygin Has The Floor) and Nina Berberova (cycle of stories The Tales of Billancourt ) in the context of discussion concerning in-character narration and modern scholarly views of its capabilities welcomes a conclusion that the in-character narration underwent congenial evolution in works of both authors. Being just a tool for a depiction of a mass man in catastrophic circumstances in the beginning, it becomes a method of authorial aesthetic reflection. Playing games with different audiences allowed leading the reader’s perception to wherever the author deemed necessary. Zamyatin’s in-character duology was an experiment, showing author’s intention to tackle the problem of how to represent the results of revolution for a low-ranker life by different artistic means. The in-character narration in Comrade Churygin Has the Floor is almost canonical and functions as an Aesopian language: it camouflages direct authorial speech (delegated to a mass-man) about absurd and tragic consequences of the revolution. The short story X employs a complex narrative technique, which synthesises ornamental style, oral in-character narration and personalised narration. The puzzle of its title is actualised with a metatextual structure where two stories reflect each other: a story of absurd new reality and a story of the secret of creativity that melts real-life events into narration: a short story, a myth, a stage play. In-character narration as used by Berberova was not limited to picturing daily life and psychology of émigré community; it performed a task to preserve the émigré language as a possibility to transmit the vanishing émigré lifestyle «in all its tragedy, comedy, absurd and bitterness» (Berberova’s words) to the future. Authorial metatext reveals the problem of creativity, self-determination in the literary space of diaspora, Berberova’s search for her own prosaic language.

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