Narrator in the novel by E. Vodolazkin “Soloviev and Larionov”

The paper shows that the narrator consistently applies different narrative modalities of opinion and understanding in the novel under consideration. In the first half of the novel (chapters 1-9), the narrator deliberately imitates the scientific style of speech and uses a modality of opinion, combining scientific discourse with unexpected, paradoxical and witty assertions and rhetorical questions that seem to clarify nothing in the subject of discussion. The whole novel is supplemented by extensive footnotes. In most cases, footnotes create a laughable effect (comic, ironic, satirical) in relation to the text of the novel. The narrator’s ironic attitude to the value of scientific knowledge is also created in the description of most scientists in the novel, who either present factual material that gives nothing to understand history and people or express absurd opinions. In the second half of the novel (chapters 10-19), the narrative modality of opinion gives way to the narrative modality of understanding, which at the plot level correlates with the formation of the main characters of the novel. The narrator focuses on semantic points at the level of subject and speech detail (actualization of the semantics of theatricality in the description of the Kerch Conference and the semantics of a miracle in the last chapter). The modality of understandings expressed in the narrator’s speech in a dialogue of agreement with the main characters, raising their questions about the values of life and looking for the answers to them.

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