"The Queen of Spades" by A.S. Pushkin as a polygenre text: chronotope, narration and worldview of the author

Prodanik Nadezhda ORCID: 0000-0003-1871-328X PhD in Philology Associate Professor; Department of Literature and Cultural Studies; Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education Omsk State Pedagogical University 644099, Russia, Omsk region, Omsk, Central district, Partizanskaya str., 4A omsk.nadezhda@mail.ru

Introduction

The novel "The Queen of Spades", created by A. S. Pushkin in 1833, has been at the epicenter of attention of literary critics and literary critics for centuries. During this time, the first disputes about the possible genre of the work (anecdote ^{[1, p. 577]}, a tale of socio-historical issues ^{[2, p. 364]}) were replaced by judgments about the multigenre nature of the text ^{[3, p. 68-69]}. The multidimensional genre structure of the text is beyond doubt, however, in our opinion, today scientists face another urgent task: it is necessary to ask about the principles of interaction of genre models within the artistic world of the "Queen of Spades", since the genre combinatorics of the work more clearly exposes the author's vital position, which had developed by the 1830s.

Discovering the artistic world of The Queen of Spades, the reader finds himself trapped in a stereotypical genre expectation: it seems that he is waiting for a household novel or a non-fantasy novel. By the way, some researchers of the Pushkin text also thought so ^{[2, pp. 363-365]}. The action of the first part of the story takes place on an ordinary winter night, and the end of the card game coincides with the predawn time. At first glance, nothing violates the logic of the narrative, and the narrator's remark that "the long winter night passed unnoticed" sounds quite reasonable ^{[4, p. 210]} (here and further italics in quotations are ours – N. P.). The imperceptible passage of time can be explained by psychological reasons — playing cards compressed the time frame. the limit, because excitement canceled the count of hours and minutes.

The lulled vigilance of the reader does not allow him to notice that the time coordinates have already been magically shifted. This is the chronological specificity of the final sentences of the first part: "However, it's time to go to bed: it's already a quarter to six. Indeed, it was already dawn..." ^{[4, p. 213]}. The time of dawn in the "Queen of Spades" clearly contradicts the natural hour of dawn: in winter in St. Petersburg, the sun rises later above the horizon, besides, the "long winter night" simply cannot last long if it ends so early.

The main part

For examples, let us turn to other texts: for example, the naturally consistent passage of time in the novel "Eugene Onegin" and in the story "The Peasant Girl" is not violated. As Yu.M. Lotman proved, restoring the chronotope of the duel between Onegin and Lensky and using the data from the Tartu (Dorpat) Observatory, on the day of the winter duel (January 14, 1821), the sun rose only at 8:20 a.m. The preparation for the duel could take up to half an hour, and only closer to nine o'clock in the morning, in conditions of sufficient visibility, the duel took place ^{[5, p. 303]}. In terms of its duration, the night period in "The Queen of Spades" is very similar to the brief spring night from the story "The Peasant Girl", where at the same hour (at the beginning of the sixth morning) the sun only breaks above the horizon: "The dawn was shining in the east, and golden ridges of clouds seemed to be waiting for the sun, as courtiers expect The sovereign <...> She was thinking ... but is it possible to accurately determine what a seventeen-year-old young lady is thinking about, alone in a grove, at six o'clock on a spring morning?" ^{[4, p. 104]}.

It is curious that in the Petersburg Tale, the time of day strays from its usual course after words that have genre prognostics and set the movement of events in two coordinates at once. Firstly, in the coordinates of a household novel, an anecdote, a non-fantasy story (as one player stated, exclaiming after Tomsky's anecdote: "Chance!") and, secondly, in the magical plan of a fairy tale, a fantastic story ("A fairy tale!" – so Hermann exclaimed) ^{[4, p. 212]}. Researchers speak of the "Queen of Spades" as a synthetic "multi–genre education" ^{[6, p. 8; 7, p. 307-315; 8, p. 40]}, however, we believe that in some cases it is possible to observe their counter-analysis along with the synthesis of genres, since the features of one genre conflict with the features of the genre. the other one. For example, the chronotope of the "long winter night", which ends so early, demonstrates the fabulous passage of time. Such an inexplicable shortening of the winter night period, contrary to natural law, contradicts the genre of a realistic story that copies reality. In a fairy tale, as noted by D. S. Likhachev, there is a wonderful lightness of the world, it is due to the lack of resistance of the material environment, which results in the abolition of the laws of nature ^{[9, pp. 339-340]}.

At the same time, the narrative solution of this fabulous chronotope looks quite realistic, non-magical: the narrator does not emotionally emphasize the wonderful change of time of day. The narrator's intonational calmness prevents the reader from immediately noticing this chronological paradox. Thus, a polygenre is formed, in which, along with a review of the genres of fairy tales and short stories/novellas, the fabulous chronotope and its realistic everyday narrative are combined.

The principles of synthesis and contraversion of elements of different genres are even more clearly seen in the example of another fragment of the "Queen of Spades". In the work, numerical symbols appeal to the fabulous chronotope — events often occur at the "magical" "three" or "twelve" hours. The indication of the minutes at this clock — "a quarter to three," "twenty minutes past eleven," "half past eleven" — seems to return existence from a magical topos to a prosaic one: to that everyday world, which is calculated in space and time. We agree with N. N. Petrunina's opinion that Pushkin's "... the miraculous is woven into the fabric of a realistic narrative" ^{[10, p. 49]}, and we doubt the correctness of N. Rosen, who argued that the game event in Pushkin's work has only a supernatural origin ^{[11, p. 270]}. In our opinion, the combination of two characteristics in the narrative — magical time and everyday time - demonstrates that chronos is set in two coordinate axes at once. And the axis of the unpredictable and inexplicable intersects with the axis of the real-historical in the artistic world of the "Queen of Spades".

The dual system of chronotopic coordinates also makes itself felt when the reader seeks to understand in which genre system and, accordingly, in which plane of being he needs to decode such a spatial element of the text as the verb "lock up". Back in the 20th century, scientists hypothesized ^{[6, p. 8]} that Hermann entered the Countess's house through locked doors: the doorman "locked the doors", but "... at half past eleven Hermann stepped onto the Countess's porch and entered the brightly lit vestibule..." ^{[4, p. 223-224]}. Literary critics have suggested that this is how the logic of the miraculous makes itself felt.

Meanwhile, in the "Dictionary of the Pushkin Language" this verb has two meanings: "to close, lock, lock" and "to close", to close the door without using the lock ^{[12, p. 81]}. In his works, the author uses both meanings of the verb "lock up". In the story "The Stationmaster", Samson Vyrin waited at the "locked doors" of his daughter's St. Petersburg apartment, later "the key rattled, they opened it..." ^{[4, p. 96]}. And, on the contrary, locked doors in the "Shot" open without a key. The count "... locked the doors, told no one to enter...", but at the climax, the locked doors open easily, preventing the irreparable from happening: "Silvio began to aim at me. Suddenly the doors opened, Masha ran in and threw herself on my neck with a squeal..." ^{[4, p. 68]}.

Once in the inner world of the "Queen of Spades", the reader cannot unequivocally decide which genre "navigators" he should use to determine how the hero can overcome the enclosed space – wonderful or miraculous? Even if we assume that an ordinary person (Hermann) magically walked through the locked doors, it seems strange that the ghost of the Countess leaves Hermann's room in a non-magical way, slamming the door: "Hermann heard the door slam in the hallway..." ^{[4, p. 233]}.

The thoughtful recipient of the "Queen of Spades" constantly balances on the border of fact and fiction, tries to find an answer and ... immediately doubts its correctness, since the polysensical magma of the text is in front of him. Chronotopic confusions interspersed by the narrator into the work (a long winter night that turned out to be short-lived) or potentially ambiguously understood elements of the artistic world (locked doors or only closed without a lock and key) form a multigenre structure of the text ^{[13, p. 48]}, which can be defined as a "case-or-tale" story.

We agree with literary critics who claim that the artistic world of the "Queen of Spades" was created as a multigenre structure and as a genre frontier. Arguing from the point of view of the latter, we point out that the boundary is also set in the perception of the hero. For example, a lot of things "seemed" or "seemed" to Hermann in the whole story: It "seemed" that an "unknown force" attracted Hermann to the Countess's house ^{[4, p. 220]}; the dead Countess's grin "appeared" ^{[4, p. 232]}; and it even "seemed" that the queen of spades on the map grinned and squinted ^{[4, p. 237]}. This verb does not allow either the hero or the reader to unequivocally decide: did the subject magically dream about what happened, or did he only see it indistinctly in reality? In other words, was it all real, or did it happen only in the character's inflamed brain? Any solution would be a kind of step towards one genre and one model of worldview, but Pushkin's text presents us with a constant frontier and dynamic interaction of various genre principles: fabulous and fantastic and everyday historical.

Conclusion

Summing up our research, we emphasize and clarify the main judgments. We believe that the polar principles are harmoniously juxtaposed in the field of vision of the narrator of the "Queen of Spades" (V. V. Vinogradov spoke about synthetic narrative fabric ^{[14, p. 75]}). In our opinion, the reader is faced with a harmony of narrative and genre units in the spirit of the "bow and lyre" – the harmony of the conjugation of opposites ^{[15, pp. 66-67]}, including the unification of elements of genres-antinomies: household novels and fairy tales, fantasy and non-fantasy stories. Due to their combination, the irrational, the spontaneous penetrates into the real (prosaic, historically defined) world, thereby this world ceases to be one-dimensional. At the same time, the energy of the magical is unable to escape from the framework of the narrator's clear, untold vital gaze. The inner world of a work of art looks dynamic, rather than definitively resolved or static.

The "Conclusion" of the text is also dynamic, in its last lines there is a return to the prose of life and ... a guarantee of a possible repetition of events with new characters. This is confirmed by the similarity of the destinies of Lizaveta Ivanovna and the Countess, this similarity gives rise to the assumption that after some time in the life of Lizaveta Ivanovna, the mystery of the three cards may come to life again. Thus, the plot completeness in the "Conclusion" juxtaposes with its antithesis — the hypothetically possible resumption and repetition of the plot.

It should be noted that in the first surviving edition of The Queen of Spades, the author never used the verb "to appear" or its root variants; the events depicted here formed a single everyday realistic plan of life - concentrated in obvious reality ^{[4, pp. 495-496]}. In the final version of the text, Pushkin changed the structure of the artistic world, complicating it: now the miraculous "explodes" the pre-thought-out order of the characters' lives (Hermann thinks about the predictability of his life at the beginning of the work), and the logical-rational principle protects vital forces from an ecstatic explosion of coincidences or a fantastic explanation of what happened, while exposing its inertial force.

The author also changed the narrative nature of his creation, excluding the narrator from the characters; the first version of the text began with the words: "About four years ago, several young people gathered in St. Petersburg..." ^{[4, p. 495]}. As you can see, at first the narrator was one of the heroes of everything that was happening. The final version of The Queen of Spades is of a complicated narrative nature: in the text, the narrator's vision is the counterpoint of vision, but not omniscience. The continuous change of points of view on the depicted event and chronotope; the multi–genre nature of the text and the resulting possibility of multiple interpretations of one event and chronotopic detail; the finale, which contains a possible resumption of the plot - all this provokes an endless internal dialogue of the reader, he is faced with the impossibility of deciding anything definitively. A "mystery of the event, inextricable by analysis," is being created ^{[6, p. 8]}. It consists in the fact that life has an infinite number of prospects for self-development that do not fit into any genre-ontological models.

Pushkin himself, asserting this versatility and optimistic perspective of the future, exclaimed in a letter to a friend: "But life is still rich..." ^{[16, p. 286]}. The author, thanks to his "stereometric" vision and the gift of guessing, saw the polar-synthetic essence of Life, its multidimensionality, and with such a structure of the text of the "Queen of Spades" he opened up the scope for a "free play of semantic possibilities" ^{[17, p. 79]}.

The article is published in the version approved by the reviewers (after receiving a positive review recommending the manuscript for publication) with corrections made by the author (after receiving the editor’s comments, if any).
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