SEMIOTIC CODES OF SPACE IN THE TEXTS BY MIKHAIL BULGAKOV: AN ANALYTICAL REVIEW

Abstract

The analytical review gives different aspects of the category of space in the texts by Mikhail Bulgakov: historical and cultural, structural and semiotic, communicative, intertextual. The main aspect of the review is the structural and semiotic aspect. The texts by Mikhail Bulgakov under consideration are his novels of The White Guard, The Master and Margarita, The Dog’s Heart, and the play of Zoika’s Flat, in which the semiotic category of space is the key one in plot-making. The object under consideration is the semiotic category of space in the text fictional world. The subject of the issue is the semiotic codes, which show the axiological characteristics of different parts in space structure in Bulgakov’s texts. The research presents the biographical codes, which cause the key motif of the “self”, inhabited cultural space (Home) in the texts by Mikhail Bulgakov. The space is often structured in Bulgakov’s novels and plays according to the principle of the “Nativity play”. The border between the “upper” and the “lower” levels show the audial (in particular, musical) and the literary codes. These codes (irrespectively of the classical or popular versions of musical and literary masterpieces mentioned) represent axiologically the “upper” part of the space as the positive one. Besides these codes, there is one more relevant semiotic code of space for Bulgakov – the theatricalized, the visual one. It is almost always a marker of the “lower”, profane level of space, which is shown satirically. The article concludes that the positively marked space in Bulgakov’s texts is not an all-world and cosmic space, as it was for his contemporary Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, but marked by the border of Home cultural space, in which the characters get their wholeness and anthropocentricity.

Keywords

• fictional world
• space
• semiotic code
• Mikhail Bulgakov
• художественный мир
• пространство
• семиотический код
• Михаил Булгаков