Facets of Misfortune: Aesthetic Methods of Representing Consciousness in the Texts of Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Evdokiya Rostopchina and Anna Bunina
Ksenia KuzminykhThis article analyzes how the consciousness of the feminine figures is represented in the texts Jew’s Beech by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Нелюдимка [The Misanthrope] by Evdokiya Rostopchina, and Вечер у камина [An Evening by the Fireplace] by Anna Bunina. Although Jew’s Beech has enjoyed a broad research response, the focus here will be on other aspects. The text Нелюдимка [The Misanthrope] by Evdokiya Rostopchina was not translated into German until 2019 and is considered to have been unexplored in international discourse. This also applies to Anna Bunina’s oeuvre with a few exceptions. These facts determine the innovative component of the present contribution. The intended analysis uses the theories of cognitive narratology, combines them with elements of text-oriented analysis, and focuses on the female characters’ ‘mental events’. The article uses close reading method as its method of literary analysis. The representation of consciousness is assumed to be realized explicitly and implicitly in both epic and dramatic texts, with consciousness being marked as the object of the representation in the first form and as a motivating factor that needs to be reconstructed in the latter form. This motivating factor justifies the characters’ verbal, mental, and factual actions, with indicative and symbolic forms also being found for representing consciousness. The study uses the following questions to guide the intended analysis: How has the characters’ consciousness in epic and dramatic texts been aestheticized at the levels of histoire and discours, how are narrative strategies such as intertextual narration used for this, can similarities be identified in the texts of the German and Russian authors in relation to the representation of consciousness, and can discontinuities be identified in the depiction of the inner worlds?
Facetten des Unglücks: Ästhetische Verfahren der Bewusstseinsdarstellung in Texten von Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Evdokija Rostopčina und Anna Bunina
Ksenia KuzminykhIm Beitrag wird die Analyse der Bewusstseinsdarstellung der femininen Figuren in den Texten Die Judenbuche von Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Die Menschenfeindin von Evdokija Rostopčina und Ein Abend am Kamin von Anna Bunina vorgenommen. Die Judenbuche erfreut sich zwar einer breiten Forschungsresonanz, doch liegen die Schwerpunkte auf anderen Aspekten. Der Text Die Menschenfeindin wurde erst 2019 in die deutsche Sprache übersetzt und ist auch im internationalen Diskurs unerforscht. Dies gilt ebenso mit einigen wenigen Ausnahmen für das Oeuvre von Anna Bunina. Diese Fakten bedingen die innovative Komponente des vorliegenden Beitrags. Die intendierte Analyse erfolgt vor dem Hintergrund der Theorien der kognitiven Narratologie, die mit Elementen der textorientierten Analyse kombiniert wird, und fokussiert die mentalen Ereignisse der femininen Figuren. Als literaturanalytische Methode wird das close-reading-Verfahren verwendet. Es wird davon ausgegangen, dass die Bewusstseinsdarstellung explizit und implizit sowohl in epischen als auch in dramatischen Texten realisiert wird. Bei der zunächst genannten Form wird das Bewusstsein als Gegenstand der Darstellung markiert. Bei der zuletzt genannten Form handelt es sich um einen zu rekonstruierenden Motivierungsfaktor. Dieser begründet das verbale, mentale sowie das faktische Handeln der Figuren. Hinzu kommen indiziale und symbolische Formen der Bewusstseinsdarstellung. Folgende Fragen sind für die intendierte Analyse leitend: Wie wird das Bewusstsein der Figuren in epischen und dramatischen Texten auf den Ebenen der histoire und des discours ästhetisiert? Wie werden dafür narrative Strategien wie intertextuelles Erzählen verwendet? Können Parallelen in den Texten der deutschen und russischen Schriftstelleinen in Bezug auf die Bewusstseinsdarstellung identifiziert werden? Lassen sich in der Darstellung der inneren Welten Diskontinuitäten feststellen?
This contribution analyzes how feminine figures’ consciousness is represented in the texts Jew’s Beech by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Нелюдимка [The Misanthrope] by Evdokiya Rostopchina, and Вечер у камина [An Evening by the Fireplace] by Anna Bunina. Although Jew’s Beech has enjoyed a broad research response, this study will focus is on other aspects. The text The Misanthrope wasn’t translated into German until 2019 and is also considered to be unexplored in the international discourse. This also applies to Anna Bunina’s oeuvre, with a few exceptions. These facts determine the innovative component of the present contribution. The intended analysis uses the theories of cognitive narratology and combines them with elements of text-oriented analysis to focus on the female characters’ ‘mental events’. Close readings are used as the method of literary analysis, with the representation of consciousness being assumed to be realized explicitly and implicitly in both epic and dramatic texts. In the first form, consciousness is marked as the object of the representation, while the latter form is a motivating factor that needs to be reconstructed. This justifies the characters’ verbal, mental, and factual actions, with indicative and symbolic forms also being found to represent consciousness.
The following questions guide the intended analysis: How has the characters’ consciousness in epic and dramatic texts been aestheticized at the levels of histoire and discours, how are narrative strategies such as intertextual narration used for this, can similarities be identified in the texts of the German and Russian texts in relation to the representation of consciousness, and can discontinuities be identified in the depiction of the inner worlds?
The use of narratological categories such as narrator, focalization, and mental event, as well as templates for the presentation of speech and thoughts have allowed the study to arrive at the following results. Anna Bunina depicted a world strictly regulated by the norms of corporate society, with her text having a narratorial perspective. The clearly profiled, reliable, omniscient narrator with unrestricted introspection continuously incorporates his assessments and comments into the course of the narration and clearly conveys an instructive, moralizing intonation. This applies to the characters Nina and Timon, as well as to Nina’s parents. The narrator augments the images of femininity that prevailed in patriarchal society at the time the text was written and again indicates the discourse to also restrict the freedom of male individuals severely. Nevertheless, Nina’s lamentation is to be understood as a direct inner monologue and soliloquy in which the narrator lets Nina reveal her finest soulful movements and confessions, indicating her imminent death. This predetermination in the lament reduces the eventfulness, and the constitutive feature of unpredictability is missing. Intertextual relations and the allegorical parallelism of situations, as well as the mirroring and the variation of the central decision-making motif play a prominent role in depicting the inner world of the female figure.
In the drama Нелюдимка [The Misanthrope] by Evdokiya Rostopchina, the prospectively contrasting character monologues evoke the feeling of unreliability and reveal the figural contents of consciousness. The narrator’s ascriptions specify the characters’ inner happenings. The intertextual connections, the mirroring and variation of core motifs, the music, and finally the contra-facture of intra-textual relations of thematic units play a decisive role in the representation of consciousness.
In the story Jew’s Beech by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, the flexibility of the narrator functions as a distinctive feature of the narration. The narrator indicates the need to interpret the representation of consciousness but doesn’t attempt to explain what is happening nor the contents of consciousness. The concretization of the nexus of motives and actions is left to the interpreter. Because the conception of the character Margreth is characterized by underdetermination, the use of templates for speech and thought reproduction is marginalized. Regarding her character, one can speak of psychologia in absentia. However, the reader can refer to the following diegetic procedures: formation of intratextual equivalence of thematic units, the parallelism of situations, and the development and realization of phraseological turns of phrase, tropes, and clichés.
In terms of similarities, all three female figures can be said to have been conceived with a rich inner world in which they try to hide, reflecting the extra-textual, sociopolitical, and mentality-historical discourses. The methods of representing their mental worlds are nearly identical, with all three figures’ oscillations between freedom and imprisonment appearing in the rigid social constructs. Nina’s death, Margreth’s inner antagonism, and Zoë’s distancing from society can be interpreted as an indication of rebellion and read as a plea for freedom and female self-determination.