Features of Lexical Textual Paradigm Participation in the Actualization of the Title of Gaito Gazdanov's Short Story "Bombay"

The article presents (1) the stylistic decoding of the toponymic title of Gaito Gazdanov's story "Bombay" by describing the functioning of lexical textual paradigms that appear on the basis of the closest associates of the title word and (2) the writer's idiostyle features in the formation of the text's associative-semantic field and in the actualization of elements of the writer's thesaurus. In the first part of the article, lexical textual paradigms are described; their structural typology, features of their volume due to individual author's modifications (the use of analogues, associative "companions", images of comparison and metaphorical periphrases, associative synesthetic chains) are analyzed. At the initial stage of the analysis, lexical textual paradigms are found in the story, their status is determined, their volume and nature of interaction with each other are examined, microthemes and motives are identified, in particular, the associative-synonymous microfield, with such dominants as sadness, despair, anxiety associated with the emigrant fate of the writer. In the second part of the article, attention is drawn to the image of the geographical features of Bombay, expressed by thematic groups of hyponyms (phytonyms, zoonyms, nominations of local residents, national costumes). The analysis confirms the hypothesis that the initially thematic title is contextually converted with rheumatic meanings, which is typical for titles of a postscript type. The feature of the writer's idiostyle is revealed: the condensation of the title word in its concrete, primary meaning to the end of the text and the implicit development of the conceptual and aesthetic basis of the fiction text based on the secondary meanings of the title, its associative text in the previous part of the story, which prepares an expanded idea of the semantic emphasis made at the end. It is established that only the last five pages of Gazdanov's story are associated with the figurative decoding of the regional geographic meaning of the title word. The toponymic title is monosemic; therefore, its development does not begin with the semantic structure of the word, but with the ideas of the Russian emigrant about the desired exotic place, with the associative topoi expressed by repetitions of words, roots, and the title word. Of particular significance is the leitmotif of "travel", which is manifested in the list of the cities the emigrants came to. Numerous intensives, intensifies, forms of subjective assessment (as components of lexical textual paradigms) connect the two poles of the title in the text: climatic features and the mental state of the confessional narrator. The contrasting topoi of Paris (difficulties of emigration) and Bombay (longing for solace) as well as retrospectively-associative memories of Russia determine the choice of leitmotifs: sadness, excitement, anxiety/travel/memory. These leitmotifs hint at a desire to write a diary (of an emigrant about emigration: a text in a text).

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