Features of the artistic time in M. A. Kuzmin's novels "The Adventures of Aimé Leboeuf" and "The Journey of Sir John Fairfax through Turkey and other notable countries"

Glazkova Marina Mikhailovna ORCID: 0000-0003-0518-9896 PhD in Philology Associate Professor, Department "Russian Language and General Educational Disciplines", Tambov State Technical University 392000, Russia, Tambov region, Tambov, Sovetskaya str., 106 rusfilol37@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Ikonnikova Yana Vladimirovna ORCID: 0000-0001-9170-8546 PhD in Philology Senior Lecturer; Department of Russian Language and General Education Disciplines; Tambov State Technical University 106 Sovetskaya str., Tambov, Tambov region, 392012, Russia janakareva@yandex.ru

The category of "artistic time" as a structural component of the chronotope has been in the focus of attention of researchers for several decades. Introduced by M.M. Bakhtin in the work "Forms of time and chronotope in the novel" (1937-38), this term meant "the relationship of temporal and spatial relations" ^{[1, p. 341]}, representing a binary structure. Characterized by discreteness, multidimensionality of space, unevenness and reversibility of the passage of time, subjectivity, the artistic chronotope is multifunctional: like an artistic image, it structures and organizes the artistic space of a work, ensures its unity, ontologizes artistic and cultural meanings, identifies the author's concept, which directly depends on his model of the world, his worldview, defines the genre of the work and the image of a person in literature. Permeating each other, time and space merge in the plot, and time is the leading beginning. The chronotope parameters are characterized by concreteness, since, depending on the material world, the signs of time and space form a meaningful and concrete whole. In the literary and artistic chronotope, time, thickening, compacting, becomes material, space is involved in the movement of time: "Signs of time are revealed in space, and space is comprehended and measured by time" ^{[1, p. 287]}. The chronotopic approach as a way of comprehending the meaning of human existence makes it possible to simultaneously imagine layers of different times, which makes it possible to evaluate the past through the prism of the present in order to determine the future, erasing random features, and identify real milestones of time.

Each epoch gives rise to specific forms of artistic reflection of reality – each epoch has its own chronotope.

Having designated time and space as "the defining parameters of the existence of the world and the fundamental forms of human experience" ^{[2, p. 43]}, A. Ya. Gurevich in the book "Medieval categories of Culture" focused on changes in their perception in the process of human development. The scientist wrote that "space and time not only exist objectively, but are also subjectively experienced and realized by people, and in different civilizations and societies, at different stages of social development, in different strata of the same society and even by individuals ... they are perceived and applied differently" ^{[2, pp. 43-44]}. D. S. Likhachev also drew attention to the dynamics of the nature of the experience of time in the history of mankind. The scientist wrote that "The development of ideas about time is one of the most important achievements of the new literature" ^{[3, p. 212]}, reflecting the experience of the variability of the world in time, "the diversity of forms of movement and at the same time its unity throughout the world", as well as, perhaps even more importantly, the desire to "to perceive the whole world through time and in time" ^{[3, p. 213]}. Meanwhile, G. G. Shmakov, studying the writer's notebooks, drew attention to Mikhail Kuzmin's opinion that history "enters our cultural everyday life only in the guise of elegant fiction" ^[4], creating his works, Kuzmin took into account changes in the perception and evaluation of history. This determined the peculiarities of the artistic time in his prose works studied by us. The heroes of Kuzmin's novels are people of the New Age. They consciously relate to the process of moving their own lives and try to record the temporary milestones of what happened in their memories.

The novel "The Adventures of Aimé Leboeuf" opens with the hero's reasoning about the strangeness of the behavior of Madame Tombel, who found herself in the garden on Wednesday at two o'clock after lunch, whereas, as usual, on this day of the week, she did not leave the house until evening. So, the hero fixes a violation of the temporal rhythm of her life. He reports that he first saw Louise de Tombel up close three weeks after her arrival in the city. This, he notes, happens in early September. Life with Louise in a hotel in Paris, according to his calculations, lasted several months. At the end of the first one, he unexpectedly received a salary from the count from the hands of the butler, soon became "almost a real servant, quarreling and playing cards with neighboring lackeys..." ^{[5, p. 335]} and finally, after "not sleeping for three nights in a row" and decided to test the fidelity of his beloved, having stolen the key to her bedroom and staged a jealous scene for her, he left the count's hotel. For about a month, his game of playing one of Signorina Paschi's cousins will last ("So," recalls Aime, "we lived for a month, sharing income in a brotherly way..." ^{[5, p. 345]}). However, more often than not, the boundaries of the stages of his life are indicated by the use of the adverb "one day", not a specific date.

Sir John Fairfax is even more precise in marking the chronology of events. Perhaps this is due to M. A. Kuzmin's orientation towards the genre of travel: in the works related to it, as a rule, the dates of the beginning and end of the wanderings are indicated. Thus, the "Voyage beyond the Three Seas of Athanasius Nikitin", included in the chronicle under the year 1475 ^{[6, p. 349]}, opens with the designation of the date of entry, in the "year 6983" (1475). And further, the author of the note prefixing the text of the "walking" reports that he received the records in the same year, and the Tver merchant Athanasius stayed in India for four years ^{[6, p. 349]}. The hero of N. M. Karamzin also calculates the duration of his journey. The "Letters of a Russian traveler" open with a record of the date of the hero's parting with friends (May 18, 1789" ^{[7, p. 5]}) and end with remarks that they represent a "mirror" of his soul for eighteen months ^{[7, p. 388]}. Although at first he stressed that he was not inclined to strictly follow the accuracy. After all, a traveler is not a scientist "in a Spanish wig." "And those who are looking for statistical and geographical information in the description of travel," he adds, "I advise them to read Biting Geography instead of these Letters" ^{[7, p. 393]}. For Jules Verne, on the contrary, the accuracy of the dating of the heroes' journey is an important artistic principle. The writer followed him not only in "Around the World in Eighty Days", where Phileas Fogg's stay was determined with punctuality to the minute and was a condition of the bet, but also in each of his travel novels. Robinson Crusoe, who was on a desert island, kept a diary in which he indicated the exact date of what happened to him. On the first of October, when he discovered that the ship on which he was sailing had been taken off the shoal and washed up closer to the shore by the tide, he decided for the first time to go to it. In the following days (he notes that it was from the first to the twenty-fourth of October), he records that he was busy transporting everything necessary from the ship. On October twenty-fifth, due to heavy rain, everything that remained of the ship was destroyed, and Robinson had to shelter and protect all the goods he had saved. Saying goodbye to the island, the hero Defoe indicates the exact date of his departure (December 19, 1686) and reports that he stayed on it for twenty-eight years, two months and nineteen days ^{[8, p. 276]}.

John Fairfax, the hero of M. A. Kuzmin, like other travelers, not only names the exact date of his departure from home (March 3, 1689) and his return (September 13, 1691), but also calculates the duration of his wanderings, noting that in his absence he "stayed two years, three months and ten days" ^{[5, p. 424]}. John Fairfax's awareness of time perception is also manifested in the fact that he tends to correlate his own past with the present. The fourth chapter of the description of his journey ends with the hero comparing what he dreamed of while at home in Portsmouth with his position during the period when he was a slave of Sayyid. And, being on the ship taking him away after his experience in Stephanie's garden, when he lay in a fever for a long time, John Fairfax even tries to comprehend the peculiarities of his perception of time. "And it is strange," he admits, "that I remembered life in Portsmouth much better than Smyrna and especially Constantinople, from my stay in which I had only vague and disturbing memories" ^{[5, p. 416]}. But even in his records, the exact dating (for example, the fact that he and Jacques stayed at the slave market for three days, after which they were bought by a Turk) is more often replaced by the same "once" as in the memoirs of Aimé Leboeuf. Let's define the role of this designation of a time milestone in the works.

Most researchers pay attention to the subjectivity of the perception of time in a work of literature. Thus, in particular, emphasizing the difference between "natural", actual time and artistic time, D. S. Likhachev wrote that artistic time is an object of an image, and it is always given in someone's subjective perception: "It can "stretch" and can "run". A moment can stop, and a long period can “flash by". A work of art makes this subjective perception of time one of the forms of depicting reality" ^{[3, p. 215]}. Reflecting on the essence of such a key category for narratology as "event", German scientist Matthias Freise emphasizes that the "categorical root" for its description is "time". He notes: "... according to its basic qualities, time does not exist without a point of view on it, and the main question in relation to time should then be the following: how, that is, how points on the time axis are perceived." ^{[9, p. 41]}. Due to the fact that in the works of M. A. Kuzmin analyzed by us, the presentation of events is given through the prism of their assessment by the participants themselves, time is represented in their subjective vision. At the same time, statistically descriptive and dynamically narrative fragments alternate in the transmission of various stages of the characters' lives. The sign of the transition from statics to dynamics is, as we have noted, the adverb "one day". In our opinion, its significance in the studied works of M. A. Kuzmin is the same as "suddenly" in the novels of F. M. Dostoevsky. Defining its semantics and functions in Dostoevsky, V. A. Podoroga writes that "suddenly-time" is "time belonging to a sharp change." He named "instantaneous, sudden and accidental" as the main modes of its manifestation ^{[10, p. 589]}. So in the works of M. A. Kuzmin, "once upon a time" is the point in time when the narrative ends about what has become familiar and monotonous for the hero, and the transition to the unexpected and largely accidental takes place.

Aimé Leboeuf's stay as a servant-lover in the hotel rented by the Count for Louise de Tombel is described as an indefinite period of time. The imperfect past tense verbs found in this description indicate the repeated repetition of actions performed over several months. "We left early," Aimee recalls of Madame de Tombel's few visitors. She herself only went shopping during the day and occasionally three or four times a month to the opera. The old Count de Chaffreville visited us more often than others, the only one who was alone at different times and who was allowed into the mistress's bedroom" ^{[5, p. 336]}.

The description of this repetitive series of activities is interrupted by a message about an event that happened "one day": Aimee was sent with letters to the Count and the Duc de Socier. A few minutes spent by Aimee "on a wooden chest in the Duke's large darkish anteroom" are given more attention than a few months of his residence in the hotel. He describes in detail the stranger he met there: his appearance and his words ^{[5, p. 336]}. And then he recreates in detail the events of the last day at the hotel, when he first pretended to look for the key that was hidden in his pocket, then made a scandal because of Louise de Tombel's infidelity to him and finally left his unfaithful lover forever. The next chapter is entirely devoted to describing the events of the night on the bridge, where Aimé met Francois and his friends, and Colette's room, where they led him. Thus, "once upon a time", following the description of a motionless due to the absence of events for a long period of time, becomes a sign of the transition to a new stage in the hero's fate, as well as to significant meetings for him. In this case, his acquaintance with the son of Duke Francois.

The seventh chapter of the second part of the "Adventures of Aimé Leboeuf" opens with a sentence in which a long period of time is described as one day, since it reports on the behavior of Francois, which became regular after the prince's marriage: he "was boring, stopped drinking, became even more pious than before, often lay on the bed..." ^{[5, p. 340]}. Everything is dramatically changed by the inclusion of another "one day" in the description, followed by a detailed reconstruction of the circumstances of the conversation between Francois and Aime, from which the hero learned what his friend was thinking all this time and what he decided to do. And then the static-descriptive fragments in the story of the adventures of the hero of the work are replaced by dynamically narrative ones, and the boundary between them is the inclusion in the memories of another "once", which occurs seven times in the work. He is not present in the final part of the novel, which is full of dynamics, alternating events that are significant for the hero. Most often, all important events for the hero take place in the evening or at night.

The first chapter introduces Aimé Leboeuf, acting under the name of Meister Ambrosius, in the palace garden. It describes in detail one evening in his life. From the chapter it becomes clear what place Aime occupies in the life of the princess, how he manages to give the right advice to the duke (he overhears the conversation of the maids). From the fact that Aime uses eavesdropping, it follows that for him time management (and his conversation with the princess is dedicated to the elixir of youth) is a game that gives him the opportunity to maintain a significant position at the duke's court. The second chapter directly continues the content of the previous one: Aime, having learned from the conversation of the servants from the barnyard that the first in the family of rulers was always a boy, informs Duke Ernest Johann that he will have a son. The conversation takes place in the evening, as the pale evening sky is visible from the window. The third chapter presents the scene of Aime's conversation with Duchess Elizabeth Beatrice, the essence of which lies in the demand of the imaginary Ambrosius to take the side of the duchess, not the princess, in the political game. Aimee leaves the Duchess when the clock strikes eleven o'clock at night. The fourth chapter contains a description of Aime's date with the princess, suddenly interrupted by the announcement of the birth of the duke's heir – an event that strengthens faith in the power of Aime-Ambrosius as an astrologer. Therefore, pointing to the light of real stars in the sky during a date with the princess acquires a metaphorical meaning: the stars symbolize the success of the hero at court. The duke's brother, who is in love with Aime, exclaims to Aime: "Meister, meister, your prediction has been fulfilled, your star is rising, your path is bright and radiant..." ^{[5, p. 355]}. However, it later turns out that the hero's position at the duke's court is not so strong and depends on many accidents, including the rivalry of Prince Philip and the princess, who are in love with him, and political intrigues, from which the hero cannot stay away. However, the hero, who misses in Germany "the free life in Italy" ^{[5, p. 357]}, is not particularly seriously worried about this. In the seventh chapter, a new face appears – "the cheerful chamberlain Bertha von Liebkozenfeld with huge "cow blue eyes", whose passion, most likely (the novel ends with Bertha's words addressed to Aime, "Believe that I ..." ^{[5, p. 359]}), will determine a new round of the hero's fate. The fullness of the fourth part of the "Adventures of Aime Leboeuf" with sharply changing events allows us to conclude that the dynamic narrative plan prevails in this part of the work.

This, in turn, gives grounds to detect differences between the genres that M. A. Kuzmin was guided by and his own works. In the comments on the "Adventures of Aime Leboeuf", A.V. Lavrov and R. D. Tymenchik give an assessment of the work by Valery Bryusov, published in the seventh issue of Libra for 1907. Assessing the idiosyncrasy of Kuzmin's "The Adventures of Aime Leboeuf", V. Ya. Bryusov calls the work "fragments of an old French novel of the middle of the XVIII century.", speaking about the absence of "rapid transitions from one event to another" in the latter, noting Kuzmin's deviation from immersion in tedious detailed descriptions and the introduction of a tacit method by him, thereby giving free rein to the reader's imagination. Bryusov focuses on the subjectivity of M.A. Kuzmin's narrative: "... of course, by the fact that the author has mastered the very manner of speaking and thinking of the narrator of the XVIII century, he introduces his reader much more intimately into the depicted century than he could achieve this with various external descriptions." Bryusov emphasizes the advantage of Kuzmin's idiosyncrasy: "Reading The Adventures of Aimé Leboeuf, we seem to skillfully select individual and, moreover, the most significant pages from the somewhat stretched story of Lesage or Abbot Prevost with our eyes" ^{[5, pp. 552-553]}. Valery Bryusov's remarks are important because they express the perception of the stylization of the "Old French novel" by the artist of the same era to which the author of the novel belonged. V. Ya. Bryusov calls the signs of M. A. Kuzmin following the style of the recreated era and the style of narration (on behalf of a participant in the events) and at the same time designates the signs of the novelty of the manner of the author of "The Adventures of Aime Leboeuf", which We emphasize that they relate to the features of artistic time in the work. If the authors of the XVIII century "used to conduct their narrative consistently, almost day after day," then Kuzmin quickly moves from one event to another; if in the novels of the XVIII century everything is "put in its place," then M. A. Kuzmin allows himself to keep something back, thereby activating the reader's imagination and his the ability to catch the subtext.

In Sir John Fairfax's Journey through Turkey and Other Notable Countries, static-descriptive and dynamic-narrative plans for the transmission of events also coexist. And just like in The Adventures of Aimé Leboeuf, the sign of transition between them is the adverb "one day". So, in particular, telling about his stay in Damascus (and life itself in the city, where Jacques and John, "settling down" in a "semi-dark narrow shop", "did not bargain very successfully at first", did not contain any outstanding events), John Fairfax tells about adventures related to Mrs. Noza, who fell in love with him. Initially, it is reported about a period of time of indeterminate duration, during which "rarely anyone looked into their shop" ^{[5, p. 417]}. Such an existence continued until the moment when they "began to be very often visited by some stout, modest-looking woman who sold the most expensive carpets all the time" ^{[5, p. 417]}. At first, her appearance in their shop did not change the static lifestyle of John Fairfax and his friend Jacques. The turning point was the appearance of a veiled lady with this woman. She bought the goods that Aime was supposed to take to her house. Unlike the previous long and eventless period of time, this evening is described in detail in the work. First, John was put to the test of modesty and silence in the women's bath, then in the mistress's chambers. Then, in the presentation of events, there is again a period during which nothing changes. All this time, the hero pretended that he did not understand what Mrs. Noza expected of him, pretended to be chaste and stupid. Finally, he and Jacques drew up a plan of action, which, as John admits, was supposed to "innocently" entertain them ^{[5, p. 418]}. The evening of the magic session played out by the friends is described in detail, as well as the night after the wedding and the morning following the exposure.

So, the characters consider it necessary to dwell in detail on some of their own actions or the actions of other people who make changes in the order of their habitual and monotonous activities. The static of the descriptions is replaced by a dynamic narrative. As a rule, the signal for the transition to dynamics is "once upon a time", which occurs seven times in "The Adventures of Aimé Leboeuf", and eleven times in "The Journey of Sir John Fairfax...".

The narrative of events by the main characters is dominated by a linear sequence. But the author also uses cases of its violation. In The Adventures of Aimé Leboeuf, inversion appears twice. So, the hero first tells about the arrival of Louise de Tombel, about his studies, that Mademoiselle Blanche is his "probable bride." And only at the end of the second chapter of the first part does he announce that he is a foster child in the family. The last ninth chapter of the second part of the novel ends with the hero's message that he and Francois left Paris and went to Italy in search of happiness, but the reader learns about the arrival of young people in a completely penniless situation only from the first chapter of the third part of the novel, despite the fact that Francois discovered the abduction of the wrong box in Paris.Both cases of inversion in the novel "The Adventures of Aimé Leboeuf" are connected with the author's desire to shorten the narrative, focusing on key points in the hero's fate.

In Sir John Fairfax's Journey through Turkey and Other Notable Countries, the inversion function is different. We are referring to a violation of the sequence in the presentation of events that began in Rodets and ended in Marseille. First, the hero himself tells about the infatuation of Mlle Jacqueline, for whom he killed the innocent Mr. de Bazancourt, after which he was forced to violate his travel plan and go to Genoa without the money he gave to the imaginary parents of his beloved. And then Jacques tells John a story that "extremely" surprised him. It turns out that John was the victim of scammers who were not relatives at all and took advantage of his naivety and infatuation to get rid of Mr. Bazancourt, and the money was "quietly pocketed". And in itself, the early departure from Marseille, which Jacques insisted on, was not due to the danger of persecution of the duelist, but to Jacques's "own cheating tricks", "for which he was threatened with imminent prison" ^{[5, p. 403]}. In this case, the inversion enhances the entertainment of events, sharpens the surprise of the finale. Just like the prospectus at the end of the sixth chapter. Its purpose is to increase interest in subsequent events, to emphasize the importance of what the hero is going to tell, who writes: "... at that time, an event happened that chained me tightly to Istanbul and pushed me subsequently to further wanderings" ^{[5, p. 411]}. And he devotes the next part of his story entirely to the story of the mysterious and tragic story of the infatuation with the "beautiful Greek woman" Stefania. With the exception of these cases of violation of the sequence of events, the narrative in both works unfolds in a linear manner.

Introducing the category "chronotope" into the circle of literary concepts, M. M. Bakhtin solved the question of to what extent the ways of transforming real time and real space are determined by the genre model of the work. He identified the following types of novel: "a novel of wanderings, a novel of hero's trials, a biographical (autobiographical) novel, a novel of upbringing" ^{[11, p. 199]}. However, at the same time, he considered it necessary to emphasize that "no particular historical variety stands up to the principle in its pure form" ^{[11, p. 199]}. Since the characters in M. A. Kuzmin's works move in space all the time, their lives unfold as "an alternation of various contrasting positions: good luck – failure, happiness – misfortune, victory – defeat, etc." ^{[11, p. 200]}, and the world in them appears as a "spatial contiguity of differences and contrasts", their it should be attributed to the novels of "wanderings". It is this kind of novel, according to M. M. Bakhtin, originated in ancient literature (Petronius, Apuleius), and was later realized in the European picaresque novel ("Lasarillo from the shores of Tormes"), the adventurous-picaresque novel by Defoe, the adventure novel by Smollett and so on. And at the same time, we cannot talk about the absolute correspondence of "The Adventures of Aimé Leboeuf" and "The Travels of Sir John Fairfax in Turkey and other remarkable countries" to one of the genre models named by M. M. Bakhtin.

Describing the "novel of wanderings", M. M. Bakhtin wrote that his hero is "a point moving in space, devoid of essential characteristics and not in itself in the center of the novelist's artistic attention." And explained: "His movement in space – wanderings and partly adventures-adventures (mainly of a test type) allow the artist to expand and show the spatial and socio-static diversity of the world (countries, cities, cultures, nationalities, various social groups and the specific conditions of their life") ^{[11, p. 199]}. However, in the novels of M. A. Kuzmin, in our opinion, it is the hero who represents the center of the narrative. It is not countries, cities, or social diversity that occupy his attention, but those adventure events that require him to show some of his own qualities - determination, enterprise, artistry, loyalty, the ability to love, and so on. Therefore, to a large extent, "The Adventures of Aimé Leboeuf" and "The Journey of Sir John Fairfax through Turkey and other notable countries" include signs of a "novel of trial." Its specificity is that "the arena of struggle and the trials of the hero; events, adventures are a touchstone for the hero. The hero is always given as ready and unchangeable. All his qualities are given from the very beginning and throughout the novel are only checked and tested" ^{[11, p. 201]}. This kind of novel is "characterized by a combination of adventurousness with problemativeness and psychology." Although, as M. M. Bakhtin clarified, "even here the test is performed from the point of view of a ready-made and dogmatically accepted ideal" ^{[11, p. 202]}. This last remark gives grounds to judge the peculiarities of M. A. Kuzmin's works. Aime Leboeuf and John Fairfax do not have such a "ready-made" ideal. Therefore, unlike those works that M. M. Bakhtin wrote about, they had to search for him on their own. They had nothing to "dogmatically" assimilate, since the stories about them lack the idea of a foregone conclusion of events. The heroes of "The Adventures of Aimé Leboeuf" and "The Travels of Sir John Fairfax..." had to form their own idea of life values.

Both in the novel "wanderings" and in the novel "trials", adventurous time plays a leading role. Its main feature is that "this is a time of exceptional, unusual events, and these events are determined by chance and are also characterized by random simultaneity and random timing" ^{[1, p. 372]}. They may also contain elements of a fabulous time. Since these novels, although they are built in chronological sequence and are conducted on behalf of the hero, depict "only exceptional, completely unusual moments of human life, very short-lived compared to a long life whole" ^{[1, p. 372]}, M. M. Bakhtin saw no point in talking about the signs of biographical time in them. In the future, this feature will be most evident in the picaresque novel, since it focuses on the main milestones of adapting the hero to the environment and turning him into a fraud.

After announcing that he was born in a mill, Lasarillo from Tormes immediately proceeds to narrate what happened when he was eight years old. Gilles Blas, after a brief history of his parents and uncle-canon, proceeds to tell how his uncle, who sheltered him "from infancy", developed his mental abilities. The first event that both report is that they leave the house where they grew up. However, their goals are different: Lasarillo was trying to survive, and Gilles Blas, whom his uncle hoped to "bring ... to people" ^{[12, p. 20]}, was seized with a "desire to travel" and, as a seventeen-year-old boy, went to study at the University of Salamanca. But both of them somehow had to adapt to the laws of the big world they were entering. "The composition of the novel," writes I. A. Shaludko, characterizing the chronotope of the works of which Picaro is the hero, "is subordinated to the idea of the consistent and inevitable formation of the literary type of the rogue "..."; and the temporary space of the work is organized according to the laws of the biological time of the individual's life" ^{[13, p. 104]}. As a result, the time of the hero's childhood, when he develops, is also expanded. When the development stops, the narrative time narrows down.

This does not apply to works of Russian literature that arose on the basis of assimilation of the traditions of the European picaresque novel. Frol Skobeev and Martona from "The Pretty Cook, or The Adventures of a Depraved Woman" by M. D. Chulkov are introduced into the work as adults. Frol Skobeev serves as a sneak in court, and nineteen-year-old Marton, at the moment from which she begins her life story, is already the widow of a sergeant. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the story of the moral formation of the hero of the "Tale of Frol Skobeev", devoted to the description of only one of his adventures aimed at gaining a solid social and material position by marrying the daughter of a well-born boyar, did not occupy its author much, as well as the reader. It was not the origin and upbringing of Martona, who was left without support after the death of her husband in the war, that became the main reason for her adventures.

In the works of M. A. Kuzmin, which are in question, the childhood of the characters is also almost ignored. The reader learns that Aimee was raised by strangers, and John Fairfax was raised by his uncle after the death of his parents. The story begins at the moment when they are already adults and are able to make a conscious choice about their future. Aimee chooses love at the age of eighteen, and John chooses freedom of wandering at nineteen. The fact that the characters are introduced into the work already formed is caused, in our opinion, by the fact that their actions and characters are not conditioned not only by the peculiarity of their upbringing, but also by the influence of the environment on them. On the contrary, Aime represents the lifestyle of the people who sheltered him, however limited and meaningless ("all day ... sitting in a dark shop, not seeing anything, not going anywhere..." ^{[5, p. 333]}), but quite prosperous. And John, although he dreamed of seeing the New World, Australia, Italy, makes a reservation about the caring care of his uncle. Kuzmin's heroes are heroes of the new age: the determinant of their conflict with the world is the dissatisfaction of the characters with the ordinary, which is completely atypical for this novel. They easily change their calm but boring existence to one that contains, perhaps, difficulties and hardships, but at the same time presents more opportunities for adventures, unforeseen encounters. And the most important thing for the heroes is the discovery and affirmation of their own abilities and the formation of an understanding of the big world.

This does not exclude the presence of everyday time in the novels of M. A. Kuzmin. Thus, the chronotope of the house in which Aimé Leboeuf was raised can be described as idyllic. One of its main features is, according to M. M. Bakhtin, "strict limitation ... only by the few basic realities of life." "Love, birth, death, marriage, work, food and drink, age – these are the basic realities of an idyllic life," he explained ^{[1, p. 473]}. And although he wrote that "idyll does not know everyday life" ^{[1, p. 473]}, this means that the inhabitants of the idyll themselves do not realize that everyday life is the content of their lives. But, from an external point of view in relation to the idyllic world, time in the idyll is limited by everyday life. The perception of time is also common among the inhabitants of Portsmouth, who count it as everyday events. Here's what John Fairfax learned about Portsmouth in those two years while he was away from home: "Mr. Fai died a year ago, leaving me as heir, it was a very cold winter, comedians came from London, a French ship crashed nearby, Katie Page disappeared soon after the wedding to unknown places..." ^{[5, p. 424]}. So, time is filled exclusively with everyday phenomena. Let's compare it with the note opening the medieval "Walking across the Three Seas by Afanasy Nikitin": "I asked when Vasily Papin was sent with gyrfalcons as an ambassador from the Grand Duke, and they told me that a year before the Kazan campaign he returned from the Horde, and died near Kazan, shot through with an arrow when Prince Yuri went to Kazan" ^{[6, p. 349]}. For a medieval author, only that which relates to history is significant and deserves the reader's attention, and therefore in this monument temporary milestones are indicated in their close connection with historical events. For the inhabitants of an idyllic space, on the contrary, the milestones of the passage of time are cases from their private lives, those that are characteristic of the everyday side of life.

The most difficult question is the presence of historical time both in those genres that M. A. Kuzmin was guided by when creating his works, and directly in these works themselves. Characterizing the artistic time in the novel of trial, M. M. Bakhtin wrote about the combination of signs of an adventurous and fabulous time, as well as about the "indifference" of this novel to historical time ^{[11, p. 204]}. "There is no genuine interaction between the hero and the world," the scientist noted, "the world is not able to change the hero, he only tests him, and the hero does not affect the world, does not change his face; enduring trials, eliminating his enemies, etc., the hero leaves everything in its place in the world, he does not change the social face of the world, does not rebuild it, and does not pretend to do so" ^{[11, p. 205]}. The latter may well be applied to the "Adventures of Aime Leboeuf", in the final part of which the hero meets with a pale young man who develops before him "utopian dreams of equality, freedom, brotherhood, supposedly great events to come, world upheaval, a new flood..." ^{[5, p. 358]} and to whose words Aime He remains indifferent. Historical time does not really affect his interests. However, this does not mean that it is absent from the work. "Time,– writes O. A. Yakovleva, –manifests itself not only in the customs and tastes of the characters. There are also more direct ways of timing events. For example, a historical person may act as an episodic character or an indication of a historical event may be contained" ^{[14, pp. 119-120]}. Like the novel by M. D. Chulkov, in which the beginning of the transformation of the heroine into a "depraved woman" is the death of her husband in the battle of Poltava. So, the authors present what is happening to their characters, unlike themselves, in a historical context. Let's define its functions.

As a rule, in a classic picaresque novel, the narrative opens with a kind of "prologue": the hero confesses his desire to tell about his life path. "I judged for the good," Lasarillo begins with a description of his "hardships and misadventures" from Tormes, "so that such unusual and, perhaps, unheard–of and unprecedented incidents would become known to many and would not be hidden in the tomb of oblivion..." ^{[15, p. 206]}. Gilles Blas, addressing the reader from his "present", tells him a parable about two friends, one of whom, after reading the inscription on the stone, indicating that the soul of a certain Pedro Garcias was "enclosed" under it, burst out laughing and set off on his way, and the second decided to dig into the ground under the stone and into As a result, I found a purse with money there. And the reader is recommended to read the hero's notes "with attention" ^{[12, p. 17]}. Thus, at the very beginning of the picaresque novels, there is an installation on the subjectivity of the narrative, and thereby of the picture of the world that will unfold before the eyes of readers. In addition, it is clear that events will be reported through the prism of their vision of the future hero-narrator, and thus the importance of temporary relations in the work is actualized, emphasis is placed on the character of the hero's vision in his present of what happened to him before, as he was then. Ya. F. Askin wrote about the meaning of such a coexistence of two The time layers in the work are as follows: "It becomes possible to see things in their development, to identify trends in this development" ^{[16, p. 72]}. A similar prologue sets the educational character of the life of the hero, who is going to confess the origins of his actions and warn the reader against the mistakes he has made.

In the prologue, the names of thinkers who have become part of history are mentioned. Lasarillo refers to Pliny and Tullius (Pliny's remarks that "there is no book, no matter how bad it is, in which there is not something good" and Tullius about "writing" as a difficult occupation worthy of reward ^{[15, p. 206]}). Gilles Blas is like Horace, who spoke about combining the useful with the pleasant ^{[12, p. 17]}. Of course, the inclusion of these names is not intended to represent the adventures of the characters as part of the story. Their "stories" remain a narrative of private adventures. Here, a literary tradition has manifested itself to reinforce the significance of one's own work (to justify one's writing) by referring to authorities, as well as the authors' desire to justify the legitimacy of not only useful, but also entertaining in a work of fiction.

To a certain extent, M. A. Kuzmin's assimilation of this literary tradition is John Fairfax's mention of the works of Virgil and Seneca in the first chapter of his memoirs. However, the meaning of including their names, as it seems, in Kuzmin is not limited to literary etiquette or the formulation of ideas about the tasks of a work of art, as in those European novels discussed above. When John Fairfax leaves the house where he grew up, he glances at the table "where Seneca lay open" ^{[5, p. 398]}. When he returns, he is "greeted" by the same book. It seems to him that everything in the house is the same, but only the "open page of Seneca" seems to him to be turned over, "bearing another, more comforting saying" ^{[5, p. 424]}. So, among the sayings of Seneca, he is looking for advice on how to proceed in the future, which means that he realizes that he is attached to the same life that the thinker wrote about.

Lucius Annius Seneca lived a long life from 4 BC to 65 AD. His position in relation to the authorities changed – he was in exile, but he was also close to the court when he performed the duties of Nero's tutor. The subject matter and tone of his writings changed. However, his attention has always been focused on moral norms and problems of the maintenance of human life. He saw the main purpose of human existence in contemplating the greatness of the world. Judging by his treatise "On the Transience of Life" addressed to Paulin, he believed that only the life of a sage who "is not confined within the same earthly term as other mortals" and "all ages serve him as God" lasts a long time. "Some time passes," Seneca writes, –he retains it in his memory; some time comes: he uses it; some time must come: he anticipates it in advance. And this combination of all times into one makes his life long" ^{[17, pp. 59-60]}. "So finally break out of the human whirlpool, dear Paulin," he urges in the XVIII part of his message, "return to a quiet harbor: you have already been carried along the waves longer than would be appropriate for your age. Remember how many times you were caught at sea by bad weather; how many domestic thunderstorms you had to endure, how many social storms you caused yourself. Believe me, in your many labors, worries and worries you have already fully proved your virtue; it's time to experience what it is worth at your leisure..." ^{[17, p. 62]}. According to Seneca, contemplation of eternity is no less important activity than participation in the affairs of society. And his whole treatise is based on the opposition: "to live in peace is to stay on earth."

It seems that the path that John Fairfax walked is in accordance with the advice that he learned from the writings of Seneca. Thus, in Sir John Fairfax's Journey through Turkey and Other Remarkable Countries, the private life of an individual is evaluated in its indispensable connection with the universal; the individual is included in universal existence, is evaluated as its component both in space and in time. Despite the fact that the space of events in the hero's life is limited only to the everyday sphere, the author sees it as part of the history of mankind. And the reluctance of Aimé Leboeuf to support the impending political coup, which was discussed above, can be attributed not only to the limitation of his interests in the space of everyday life.

A man of the era of political upheaval (let's call here at least the first Russian revolution), M. A. Kuzmin, like his hero, could doubt the possibility of liberating the world from tyranny through violence and, like his hero, object to the future revolutionary that prejudices, decency and feelings of man himself are no less dangerous tyrants than the rulers. Thus, historical time is present in the works of M. A. Kuzmin, although the life of his characters is not directly connected with political, social, ideological movements and coups.

The inclusion of the events of the life of the heroes of M. A. Kuzmin's novels into the universal human plan, as well as the conditionality of what is happening to them not by the struggle for existence, but by the search for the content of life, allows us to judge the presence in the works of what can be designated as the defining development of the human chronotope, which becomes one of the forms of artistic development of new facets of reality. At the same time, the chronotope of the world turns out to be the background on which the author's nascent new knowledge about the world and man is formed and based on it. Such a transformation is one of the properties of transitional epochs.

The category of "transitivity" is most directly related to the novels of Kuzmin under consideration, created in the era of the Silver Age, which was expressed, in particular, in the concept of man embodied in them. M. Kuzmin's heroes, even at the most dangerous moments in their travels, do not imagine themselves as toys in the hands of fate. On the contrary, they take the initiative into their own hands. Their movements in space make sense. If the world retains signs of static (only the countries in which the heroes find themselves change, but not the way of life of their inhabitants, who are the same everywhere and obey the same aspirations), then the images of M. A. Kuzmin's heroes, who draw "ideals and strength" not "in their own inner subjectivity, which has come "into "serious the collision with the objective forces of being" ^[18], but in collective values, acquire features of dynamism.

Based on the positions of scientists regarding artistic time and artistic space, which in some cases are considered in their interdependence and are defined as a chronotope, the leading attribute of the artistic system of a work (L. M. Tsilevich), a genre-forming factor (M. M. Bakhtin), as well as the positions of scientists developing the theory of time and space in literature, the place was studied these categories in the art world of "The Adventures of Aime Leboeuf" and "The Travels of Sir John Fairfax in Turkey and other notable countries" by M. A. Kuzmin, defining artistic time as the leading parameter in the implementation of chronotope functions.

The genre nature of M. A. Kuzmin's novels is due to the predominance of adventurous time in them. At the same time, they also show signs of a domestic (mostly idyllic) time, which makes it possible to more fully reveal the image of the environment. Aimee Leboeuf and Sir John Fairfax show no interest in history. However, the author himself includes historical time in the subtext of his works (which makes it possible to correlate the fate of Aimé Leboeuf on the eve of the events of the revolution in France with the fate of M. A. Kuzmin's contemporaries who witnessed political events). As a result, the life of his characters appears as part of a universal one. Fundamentally new to the works of M. A. Kuzmin, in comparison with those European novels of the late XVII – XVIII centuries, on the genre models of which he was guided, is the representation of the existence of the characters as the realization of their own choice. They have no pre-established landmarks, just as there is no consciousness of the original purpose of the structure of social life. They themselves must develop life value orientations for themselves.

The artistic time in Kuzmin's novels is predominantly linear in nature. At the same time, the time periods presented statically and descriptively are replaced by time periods characterized by dynamics. As a rule, the boundary between them is indicated by the word "suddenly", which is traditional for adventurous times.

The writer also introduces inversion into novels: by breaking the chronological sequence of events, the writer uses artistic time as an imaginative means by which the author focuses the reader's attention on important plot nodes of the novel.

The analysis of the chronotope in the artistic world of Kuzmin's novels allows us to see the features of the creative consciousness of a bright representative of the Silver Age era, whose work was reflected in the world literary process, to appreciate the skill in using the chronotopic approach as a way of artistic reflection of reality.