Alfred Nobel University Journal of Philology (Dec 2023)
THE RECEPTION OF MARGINALITY IN POSTMODERN AESTHETICS: PATRICK SÜSKIND’S VISION
Abstract
The purpose of the article is to trace the fictional features of the reception of marginality through the prism of social communication of the main characters in Patrik Süskind`s texts “Der Kontrabass”, “Das Parfüm”, “Die Taube”, “Die Geschichte von Herrn Sommer”. The task is to find out the signs of marginalization of the main characters, to understand their symbolic essence, to determine the triggers that provoked the “borderline” state of a person, and the literary techniques used by the author to reveal the problem of marginality. Historical-literary, cultural-historical, hermeneutic, comparative research methods, sociological approach in the study of marginality were used in this investigation. The concept of “marginality” is interpreted as the presence of an individual in a borderline, peripheral state in relation to other social or professional communities. In the works of Patrick Süskind, within the framework of postmodern aesthetics, a type of marginal hero is invented, and some variations of him are built. The key motif in reproducing the mechanism of marginalization of characters in P. Süskind`s stories is the motif of loneliness in its various manifestations: the seclusion of the hero, his alienation from society, sociophobe. It was found that the image of a marginal hero is not typical, Süskind’s characters are different: the contrabass player is a procrastinator, the perfumer Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is a brilliant criminal, the bank guard Jonathan Noel is a modernized image of a “man in a case”, the eccentric traveler Herr Sommer is a sociophobe. The last literary character is open to the world (three other characters can be described as “recluses”). The image of Grenouille is a simulacrum, and as for other literary characters, readers can find their prototypes in real life. It is emphasized that the author forces readers to look at the problem of marginality in a new way: these are not only scum but also creative people who somehow ended up in the peripheral state of a certain professional or social community. Such creative natures appeared in Süskind’s texts as a contrabass player and a perfumer – in order to clarify the mechanism and features of their marginalization, the author reconstructed the professional environment in the historical context in detail. The author`s reproduction of the specifics of the behavior of marginal heroes is traced: from mental suffering to suicide, with an emphasis on determining the triggers that provoked suicide. The analysis of Süskind’s works shows that the extreme forms of marginalization of literary characters caused the psychological trauma experienced by the characters. The writer is guided by deep knowledge of psychology, in particular, the theory of psychoanalysis, the phenomenon of procrastination, and suicidal behavior. The article decodes the socio-historical background, which is present as a dotted line in each of Patrick Süskind’s stories. They take place in Germany and France in the second half of the 20th century (in the novel “Perfume” – in the French city of the 18th century). Undoubtedly, the author, who is apolitical in the public sphere, consistently condemns the war, Nazism and its manifestations in all his texts. P. Süskind posed to the readers numerous questions relevant to German society: overcoming the legacy of Nazism, for instance, in music, the impact of the Holocaust on the psyche and fate of its victims, re-evaluation of the value system and the role of art in it. Such fictional techniques of postmodernism as the “multilayering” of the texts, their open ending, irony, parody, allusions, the reception of binary oppositions, the motif of energy vampirism, materialism, the blurring of genre boundaries, etc. made it possible to realize author’s ideas.
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