Poetics of Beginnings in P. P. Bazhov’s Tales

Abstract

This article considers an aspect of Pavel Bazhov’s poetics, i.e. the motif and figurative structure of the opening fragments in the skazes included in the collection The Malachite Box. The author aims to verify the supposition about the formulaic nature of the genre which is close to the poetics of folklore genres, such as fairy tales, whose opening fragments are often based on repeated images, motifs, and rhetorical turns. The opening fragment is understood as the first paragraph of the work, sometimes together with a remark following it. Since Bazhov worked a lot on the texts already published, the significantly different versions of the beginnings of the two skazes are considered separately. First, the author studies the formal numerical characteristics of the length of opening fragments and points out a tendency to its decrease in the 1940s as compared to the 1930s, although between 1948 and 1950, the length somewhat increases again. Second, the author singles out and describes the few first paragraphs characterised by the dominance of the compositional elements of the preface and the plot beginning. The main part of the article is devoted to the description and characterisation of exposition motifs in the opening fragments. One group is associated with the representation of the characters: the main character (his name, biography facts, personality characteristics), members of his family, the narrator, a group of people, the social environment to which the character and the narrator belong. The other group represents the time and place of action. Stylistic motifs are considered separately: they include appeal to the listener and reasoning. A conclusion is made about a low degree of formulaicity of Bazhov’s tales in view of the variety of motifs used in the opening fragments.

Keywords

• бажов
• сказ
• рассказчик
• зачин
• экспозиция
• мотив
• формульность в литературе