Reflection and narration in D.V. Grigorovich's Country Roads, a novel without an intrigue

The article analyzes the narrative schemes, motifs and stylistic organization of the first novel of Dmitry Grigorovich Country Roads in the aspect of metatext and reflection. This matter is investigated on the material of popular histories of Russian literature by S.A. Vengerov, A.N. Pypin, A.M. Skabichevsky, research papers, articles and monographs (Lyudmila Lotman, Igor Sukhikh, Alexey Vdovin and others). Moreover, features of the metatext of Russian literature were investigated in the aspect of the article by Valery Maroshi and Vitaly Kiselev. Almost the entire novel is presented as a kind of a palimpsest of Gogol's text, not only duplicating its content, but also overturning its meanings (from "The Portrait" and "Inspector General" to The Dead Souls). As a result, the apparently hermetic text of Country Roads breaks up into a series of identifiable and anonymous quotations, playing with which the author builds several independent narrative lines. They are: 1) the provincial plot connected with the life of Balakhnov; 2) the sentimental plot built around the family of Balakhnov and his wife Liza; 3) the adventurous plot which organizes the Moscow chapters of the novel; 4) the adultery story based on the amorous adventures of Vasilkov, who left his wife in consumption, 5) the realistic plot actualizing the social dimension of the work associated with the recognition / rejection of society. In this aspect, the key motif of Country Roads (in the author's opinion less relevant for The Dead Souls) that deserves attention is the motif of writing which is closely connected not only with the process of writing, but also with the recognition of the writer by society. It is emphasized that most of Grigo-rovich's characters are fighting for literary power. The article makes a hypothesis that selected metanarrative optics, along with the initially determined axis of country roads, actualizes another social axis of Gogol - (Grigorovich-Grigoriev-Dostoevsky (?)), which demonstrates not only social processes in the literary space, but also original author strategies. Taken in the grotesque light, the plot of the work at the same time reveals as if three independent spaces of literature: 1) the world of country roads, a labyrinth that shoots the traveler down from the chosen path, which Aristarkh Fedorovich Balakhnov is taking thus repeating the fate of Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov; 2) the entire Gorshkovsky district, which plays the role of a "concave" mirror (possibly in the direction of literature); 3) the study of Tirsis Ivanovich, a peculiarly reinterpreted Plyushkin of Russian literature, a collector and owner of "dead manuscripts". Naturally, in this perspective the social function of the character dramatically changes: the great Balakhnov correlates with the head of a literary school, Tirsis Ivanovich Yastrebilov is perceived as an archaist and philanthropist who introduces new participants to the literature; finally, Apollon Egorievich Dryankov appears as a fiction writer. Results and observations which are presented in the paper could be used in teaching the history of Russian literature of the 19th century.

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