POLYSEMY OF THE SENSE IN A. TERZ (A. D. SINYAVSKY) «GOOD NIGHT»

Abstract

The novel «Good night» was published in Paris in 1984.The author of the novel is a writer-immigrant A. D. Sinyavsky who took a pseudonym Abram Terz. The key conflict of the novel is the fight for interpretation. The opponents of the protagonist aiways insist on unambiguous answers but he himself prefers polysemy. The refusal from simplicity is viewed in many aspects of the novel «Good night»: (good wish but the connotation of fear, horror); intertexual character of the titles in the chapters («Shifters» – the title of the article in which the activity of A. D. Sinyavsky was judged; «Dangerous ties» – the novel by Sh. De Laklo; «In the belly of the whale» – the story of prophet Jonan); stylistic discord (from taboo language to archaic); characters (many names of the wife in one of the abstracts, reincarnation of a father in a different person, edge erasure between fantasy and reality (a confession of a father about a device in his brains); avoiding of linear plot development; three independent having their own titles parts («Mirror», «Glasses», «Treatise about mice and about our incomprehensible fear of mice»). The most important tool in the fight for breaking unambiguous understanding of a reality in the novel is metanarrative. The crossing of «Literature» and «Reality» is seen in the initial plot situation-condemnation of a hero for publishing his works abroad. Real events in the novel are compared with these or those aspects of literature. The character himself can be less important than his name, the number of letters. One of the main motifs of the novel is the motif man-word. In «Good night» there are fragments which do not have any connections to plot division but they are devoted to the ideas of writing a book. The narrator takes a leading role in maintaining a sense polysemy.