Vocabulary of the lexeme "memory" in the works of V.M. Garshin

Sun' Yao Doctor of Philology Professor; Faculty of Russian Language; Northeastern Agricultural University 150038, China, Heilongjiang Province, Harbin, Changjianglu str., 600 netservice@bk.ru Other publications by this author

An analysis of publications on the Elibrary website devoted to the work of V.M. Garshin showed that the works of this talented writer are still in the circle of interests of Russian philologists. The content of the articles is mainly related to such texts as "The Incident" and "Nadezhda Nikolaevna", in which the theme of the "fallen woman" is raised ^{[11, 12]}; the allegorical "Legend of the Proud Haggai". In one article, the creation of Garshin is compared with the unfulfilled plan of L.N. Tolstoy. The author comes to a thorough conclusion about the style of the "Tale", seeing in it a combination of "elements of the story and life", which leads to an unusual "combination of motives of ordinariness and holiness" ^{[8, p. 206]}. The story "The Red Flower" is also an object of scientific observation ^{[16, 17]}. The parallels drawn, for example, by E.V. Shorina, between Garshin's madman hero and the characters of N.V. Gogol's "Notes of a Madman" and F.M. Dostoevsky's novel "Demons", as well as with A.S. Pushkin's lyrical and philosophical poem "Anchar" ^[17], are curious.

There are analyses of the story "Night"; here it tells about the tragic hopelessness of a lonely human existence. It is noted that "the impetus for the hero's epiphany is "memories of high school childhood" ^{[7, p. 503]}. In particular, they often turn to the stories "Coward", "Four Days", where Garshin impressively reflected the ugliness and evil of the war ^{[3, 6, 9, 10]}. Interest is also shown in the socio-psychological aspects of the classic's prose. As a rule, techniques for visualizing the inner world of the hero are analyzed. In addition, scientists are focused on understanding the value circle of a character in relation to its spatial and temporal characteristics ^{[1, 11]}.

The analysis of scientific publications, as well as personal experience of reading Garshin's works, convinces that such a phenomenon of the writer's artistic world as the "accent word", expressed by the lexical forms of the noun "memory", remains outside the circle of study. This is a word that can be considered in its function as a verbal image or a semantic core of the writer's aesthetic and ethical ideas.

The choice of a topic has another explanation and is associated with the inevitable obstacles in intercultural communication in the field of fiction. In China, interest in Russian literature is only increasing. Translations of works by Russian writers into Chinese have become systematic. But with the processes of intercultural dialogue, the question of the adequacy of the translation of text from one language to another arises in parallel. The small volume of Garshin's work makes it possible to focus on the verbal and semantic center of his works and identify the features of the translation strategy in working on his texts.

Data on the word "memory" are obtained on the basis of the publication: "V.M. Garshin. Essays. Stories. Essays. Articles. Letters" (1984). With an introductory article by V.I. Porudominsky, who published a book about the personality and work of the writer back in 1962 in the "ZhZL" series. It was this scientist who used the expression that later became a textbook: "Garshin lived a little. Garshin had little time to write. The collection of his works is one small book. But this book is "much heavier volumes"" ^{[13, p. 5]}. Later, in 1986, the book was republished with changes under the title "The Sad Soldier, or the Life of Vsevolod Garshin". The author included a fragment in it under the title "The expediency of memory". Perhaps V.I. Porudominsky is a rare researcher who, reflecting on Garshin, appeals to the concept of "memory". True, Garshin's biographer does not stop at it specifically, uses it in a working order in connection with various circumstances of the writer's life. For example, he indirectly expresses the writer's thoughts: "The paradoxical thought of Spencer, who argued that memory is a rudimentary instinct, and instinct is an organized memory, seems to be erroneous – both because instinct sometimes does not take into account previous experience, and because memory does not know the expediency of instinct. Unless some higher expediency, let's say creative, is available to memory; thanks to which they are retained <...> by memory, images that seem to be insignificant, unnecessary, are held back in order to break free one day, to find a new meaning <...> to become the cornerstone on which a new building will be erected" ^{[14, pp. 136-137]}. The following statement of the researcher is also interesting: Garshin "feels, touches – with skin, nerves, memory" [ibid., pp. 136-137]. Admittedly, the subtle considerations of an authoritative literary critic have not been picked up and developed in research on Garshin. As it was said, it was not possible to find works on the Elibrary website in which the writer's precedent statement finds actualization – the word "memory" does not appear not only in the title of scientific papers, but also in the content of the texts themselves. And if it is called, then without reference to the style of his prose.

In this paper, statistical data are presented to make sure that "memory" has the status of thoughtful speech and mental activity in Garshin's work, and is a fairly independent semantic unit. The word has a sum of meanings that are possible only in Garshin's artistic world; it functions on the border of the value characteristics of the characters, which allows us to assert that most of the writer's characters are extremely close based on their socio-psychological and moral experience; and on the border of the hero and the author – the author's world in Garshin's prose often acts as a "double" of the world of heroes. Thus, we can say that the word "memory" largely determines the worldview of both the author and his characters, who are very similar in psychological makeup.

In the mentioned edition of the works, which included almost everything written by the writer, including articles, letters, there are about 175 cases of using words with the common Slavic root "to crumple", that is, "to think", "to think". In V.I. Dahl's Dictionary, the noun "memory" is given a detailed comment. Dahl defines it as "to think, to think", connects the substantive with the property of "the soul to keep, to remember the consciousness of the past." It is reported about the "inner memory" aimed at assimilation of "spiritual and moral truths" ^{[5, p. 9]}.

The nomination in its original grammatical form ("memory") in literary texts, Garshin is not used so intensively – only once in the story "Coward". It is used four times in the form of "monument" – in the stories "From the memoirs of Private Ivanov", "Bears", in the story "Nadezhda Nikolaevna". But it is the key in his published letters – its frequency is 16. In addition, Garshin strengthens the semantics of the main word with the help of prefixes: "unconsciousness", "memorable", "came to my senses", "to forget". The most frequent grammatical form is "memory". In 6 cases, it is used in combination with the word "without" ("without memory"), and in all others it has the following expressions: "in memory", "in your memory", "in full memory", "erase from memory", "resurrected in memory", "according to the old memory", "in memory of memories", etc. The total number of words consisting of the morpheme "memory" is approaching 41. If we take into account only works of art, then there is a reasonableness in their distribution. For each story – "From the memories of private Ivanov", "Night" – words with a significant part of "memory" are used in 4 cases. In the stories "Artists", "Coward", "Meeting" and the story "Nadezhda Nikolaevna" in total – 7.

In Garshin's texts, the main role is played by verbs of different temporal classes formed from the noun "memory": "remember", "I remember", "I remember", "I remember", "I remember", "remember", "I came to my senses", imperative "remember", etc. The total number of such words is 123. They are most often used in the story "Nadezhda Nikolaevna" (32), the stories "Night" (24), "From the memoirs of Private Ivanov" (23); with less intensity in "Incident" (12), the stories "Four Days" (8), "Meeting" (8), "Coward" (8). In other works, such verbs are either rare or completely absent. This makes it possible to determine for which range of artistic issues in the writer's work the word "memory" acquires significance. Verbs can be used in the past, present and future tense. In Garshin's prose, the semantic load falls on the verb of the present tense: "I remember." It indicates an action performed by the subject and lasting over time. In the short story "Four Days", the iterative "I remember" is used in 9 cases. It is used with noticeable frequency in the plot exposition and the development of the action. In "Coward" – throughout the entire narrative, which allows us to see the function of the word not only as a semantic organization of the text, but also as a rhythmic one, bringing the story closer to a lyrical poem. The verb "to remember" and its variants abound in the introductory part of the story "Night". Then the author resorts to the "pause" effect, but starting from the fourth chapter, the verb comes into its own, saturating the further narrative. In the story "Meeting", as in the case of the story "Coward", the word "remember" is dispersed throughout the text space. The same pattern is observed in the story "From the memories of Private Ivanov", where "to remember" is used mainly in the present tense, which creates, as in the lyrics, the effect of a directly experienced action. This effect, among other things, is set by the genre of "memories", reviving the past in memory. In this context, the genre of remembrance falls on a par with the genre of confession, in particular, the story "Four Days" and especially the story "Nadezhda Nikolaevna". Texts of this kind can be classified according to the formula: memory of memory, recollection of memory. Garshinsky is characteristic: "a lot of memories have been resurrected in memory" ^{[2, p. 77]}.

In Nadezhda Nikolaevna, the story is told in the first person. It takes the form of a deathbed confession by the artist Lopatin. The hero recalls the events that have remained in the past. But the verb "I remember" acts as a refrain of confession; it is used by the author in 16 cases. It creates the illusion that events are taking place at the present time, which increases the tension of the narrative and provides a strong emotional impact on the reader.

But here, I think, there are difficulties. On the one hand, there is a grammatical series: I remember – I remembered – I remember; it is not such a "hindrance" for the translator, although the translator should take into account their contextual colors and especially rhythmic sound every time. It is quite another matter when the author uses a prefix to create verbal forms that are not completely transparent for translation. This applies primarily to such words as "to come to my senses" ("Nadezhda Nikolaevna", "Night", "Meeting"); "to remember" ("The Legend of the proud Haggai", "Coward", "Four days"); "to remember" ("From the memoirs of Private Ivanov").

It is necessary to specifically focus on such verbal concepts as "remembering" and "remembering". There is no separate description of the lexeme "to remember" in Dahl's Dictionary, but a great comment is given about "to remember": "to bring to mind, refresh, awaken, renew in your mind the memory of whom, what; to sort through the past or the past in thoughts or words." The word is included in the synonymous series: recall (recall), recall (recall) ^{[4, p. 342]}. As for the meaning of the word "to remember", in T.F. Efremova's Dictionary we read: "To restore in consciousness, in memory, events, circumstances, images, etc., related to the past" ^{[15, p. 342]}. Thus, "remembering" and "remembering" are concepts correlated in the Russian language, they coincide in their meaning.

The noun "memory" in Garshin's writings, along with the forms of the word "memory", is fixed in 30 examples. Of these, 4 cases of use fall to the share of the story "Nadezhda Nikolaevna"; in the stories "Four Days", "Night", "Orderly and officer" there are 3 cases of its use. The same amount is in Garshin's "Autobiography". Once each in "The Incident," "A Very Short Novel," and "The Meeting." In Garshin's letters, the word is registered 11 times.

In the writer's texts, "memories" appears in different semantic and emotional contexts. They "crowd into the head", in the memory of the hero, "former happiness" and "real torments" enter into contrasting relations, coupled with longing, "which is worse than wounds" ^{[2, p. 24]}. In the story "Four Days", the word is concentrated in the middle of the narrative. It fills the beginning and further development of the plot with expression. The memories in the story "Meeting" are associated with the chronotope of the meeting: "at the sight of you, so much stirred in my soul, so many memories came back to me..." But in the story "Night", the face is distorted from "memories"; they serve as a reminder "of something" to the "confused person". In this work, the word "memory" is twice placed next to the emotionally colored adjectives "fragmentary and incoherent". The first time is in the fourth chapter, the second time is in the final fifth. In The Orderly and the Officer, some memories give rise to others, "also not particularly pleasant" [ibid., pp. 77, 125, 128, 138].

It is noteworthy that the word "memory" is used by Garshin in the sense of "collective", in the plural. In the story "From the memoirs of Private Ivanov", the accent word is given only in the title, but it does not occur in the text itself. The story "Nadezhda Nikolaevna", written in the genre of confession, is also based on memories of past events. This is confirmed by the fact that the author uses information from Bessonov's diary and Lopatin's notes. Lopatin's confessions in chapter XIX make it possible to think that the reader has memories clothed in the form of a deathbed confession: "Wouldn't it be better to end your memories on these lines?" The noun "memories" is used twice in the short first chapter. In both cases, it is given in an environment full of melancholic confessions: happiness, which "was so short", "a strange thought", etc. Thanks to this, "memories" are endowed with the function of a key sign, and repetitions bring the word closer to the lyrical origin. Further, the word occurs only in the sixteenth chapter and is associated with Lopatin's lyrical reflections on the fate of Nadezhda Nikolaevna: "... maybe her life over the past three years will become for her only a distant memory, not experienced years, but only a vague and heavy dream..." And finally, in the final chapter in Lopatin's notes. ^{[2, pp. 284, 229, 278]}. The key role of the lexeme "memories" is enhanced by the fact that the narrative begins with it and ends with it; the verbal sign frames the confession of the hero.

The word "recall" in various grammatical forms is used by Garshin in 89 cases. The statistical picture includes not only works of art, but also essays, articles and letters by Garshin. It is known that the writer's journalism was distinguished by the sensitivity of aesthetic analysis, which did not prevent him from coloring it in subjective and personal tones. Due to the repeated word "memory" in various articles (8), they are read in the form of confession or personal revelation. The most common variant of the word is the verb "to remember", which most often refers to the past tense: "remembered" (6). Semantically, other forms are close to it: "remembered" and the participle "remembering". The past tense in Garshin's texts is conditional, it rather refers to the present tense, the boundaries between time pointers are blurred. In the context of the whole statement, they seem to model the situation of an already fulfilled intention. This is noticeable in Garshin's letters, in which "recall" occurs 28 times. The verb "remembered" (5), formally indicating an action in the past tense, is "absorbed" by the forms: "remembered", "remembered", "remembers", "remember", "remembering", "remembering", etc. A characteristic example: "... then I often remembered another world of suffering..." (Unknown, September, 1877). In this phrase, as you can see, the past and the present seem to merge. The subject presentation of the verb is also important. It is mainly correlated with the category of the first person: I remembered, I remember, which is completely consistent with the genre of correspondence, in which intimate, confidential intonation prevails.

The stylistic and stylistic features of Garshin's journalism and letters are enhanced in his artistic works. In his prose, there are 59 cases of using the verb "to remember" in its various grammatical versions. The most frequent is "remembered" ("remembered", "remembered", "remembered" – remembered", "remembered"). There are about 26 grammatical forms of this order. According to the number of uses, the first position is occupied by the story "Night"; here "memory", "remember", "recall" divide time into "here and now", "then", "long ago". In second place is "From the memoirs of Private Ivanov", in which the word "recall" and its variants are used 10 times. The sound of the word is associated with an increase in the inner tension of the hero. It occurs in 5 examples in Nadezhda Nikolaevna, and in meaningfully tense fragments. In "Artists" (11), the word at first glance is devoid of energy, its use seems accidental, but upon careful reading it turns out that the main character invariably resides in the zone defined by the boundaries of "memory" and "oblivion". In the "Tale of the Proud Haggai", a spiritual rebirth takes place with the help of "memories". There is a convergence of the semantics of the words "memory" and "understand".

The category of memory in Garshin's works is realized not only with the help of the words "remember", "recall", "remembrance". To characterize the value consciousness of the characters, the writer uses "substitute words" such as "forget - do not forget", "know – do not know", "think", "imagine", which require separate analysis. For example, the word "imagine" in the meaning of "imagine" about the past, "bring something to mind" is used by Garshin in more than 60 cases. In the story "Signal", the theme of memory is present in a veiled way, it finds conceptualization just through the words "I will not forget" – "forget". If words related to "memory" and "oblivion" are isolated from Garshin's texts, then the first group will consist of the following words: "memory", "remember", "did not forget", "memory", "recall", "imagine"; the second – "oblivion", "I don't remember", "disappeared from memory", "unconsciousness", "oblivion".

What catches your eye is that in the stories "The Meeting", "The Orderly and the Officer", "The Red Flower", the verb "to remember" finds use once, and in the stories "What did not happen", "Bears", in "A very short novel" and "Fairy Tale about the toad and the rose" he is completely absent. Which means that the category of memory has a personal and borderline meaning for Garshin. It forms the core of war stories and those creations where the hero is faced with a moral choice.

Thus, Garshin's writings are mostly based on memories with the keyword "memory" and derivatives from it. The use of this iconic word obeys the author's intention, it is intentional, characterizes the most important aspects of the writer's artistic world. As for the question of the translation interpretation of the writer's texts, special attention should be paid to the semantic nuances of the word, its contextual sound. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that Garshin often uses individually authored words-synonyms included in the semantic nest of "memory".