Playing Gogol: pastiche as a narrative code (Dostoevsky’s novel “The Double”)

The paper examines the history of reception (from contemporary to later researchers, in particular, formalists) of the novel “The Double” by Dostoevsky. In this novel, Gogol’s influence on the young aspiring writer is clearly pronounced. The “total” character of Gogol’s influence on early Dostoevsky is a philological axiom, with scholars interpreting it in different ways: in terms of style, plot, and character typology. The paper considers the narrative model of the novel. The proposed hypothesis is based on the idea of Gogol’s texts (“The Nose”, “Diary of a Madman”, “The Overcoat”, “Dead Souls”) being extensively used in the novel, forming the narrative model of the story. Anonymous citation is considered to be a determining factor for the narrative model as a whole. The motivation for such a narrative model is given by the figure of the narrator, alter ego of the aspiring writer. The “humble narrator”, author-dilettante, imitates Gogol, “unconsciously” balancing on the brink of parody, but never crossing the style line. Unskilled copying, being a result of excessive diligence of the follower, reproduces the model with absurd superfluity. The writing, composed of quotations from Gogol’s texts and not marked out anywhere graphically, often distorted, creates the effect of a simple and ingenuous rewriting “from memory”. The paper describes various units of unquoted citation and methods of their use. The inversion, distortion, addition, combination and others are considered as main methods of “processing” Gogol’s fragments. A conclusion is drawn that pastiche, involving the fragments of Gogol texts, is key to the narrative code. The author uses the concept “pastiche” in a broad sense. The basic method of pastiche is retained: “seaming” or creating the narrative model from other text’s fragments is saved but subject to another nonlinear compositional principle. The key point of the method can be defined as multiple and multilayered structural impositions of different other text’s fragments within one segment of the narrative field. In conclusion, the question of the need for a special type of commentary on the text constructed in this way is actualized

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