Perceptual space in the short story “Lieutenant Yergunov’s Story” by I. S. Turgenev

Abstract

The paper is the first to examine the system of perceptual imagery in I. S. Turgenev’s short story “Lieutenant Yergunov’s Story”. The scientific novelty of the research is accounted for by its subject – the analysis of the structure of perceptual space, which includes all types of “physiological” (P. A. Florensky) spaces: visual, acoustic, olfactory, tactile, gustatory. The aim of the research is to show the dependence of the perceptual image on the point of view of the character (subject of perception) and the narrator (subject of expression). In accordance with the stated aim, special attention was paid to liminal space, the description of the state of the protagonist’s transition from wakefulness to sleep and delirium. As a result of the research, it has been found that I. S. Turgenev purposefully creates an artistic narrative about the transformation of perception under the influence of the external environment: he shows how the deprivation of visual and acoustic sensations actualizes other forms of sensory perception – smell and touch. Thus, the short story, to which researchers tend to refer as “mystical”, is presented as an artistic version of the description of human psychophysiology, as a response to the works of H. von Helmholtz and I. M. Sechenov, with which the writer became acquainted in the 1860s.