Silence as a Narrative Strategy in Robert Walser’s Berlin Novels
Maryana Yaremko, Khrystyna Dyakiv, Nataliia PetrashchukThe purpose of the article is to study silence and its linguistic means of expression in relation to the macro- and micro-structures of literary text. The theoretical foundation of this research involves linguistic and literary studies that consider the communicative, pragmatic, semantic, cultural, and literary-historical aspects of silence and emphasize its difference from quietness, which should be understood as a natural phenomenon. Based on the model of literary communication, we have identified the role of silence in the author-text-reader triad as well as the ways it is realized in the structure and language of literary text. This paper finds within its scope that silence not only occurs as non-speaking, but also as non-meaningful speech that actualizes the semantics of silence in the context of a communicative situation. These two opposite forms of silence come to the forefront in Robert Walser’s (1878-1956) Berlin novels and are subject to a close analysis from the perspectives of macro- and micro-stylistics. The study analyzes the narrative principle of chatting in Walser’s The Tanners (1907), text irony in his The Assistant (1908), and the fragmentary narrative style in his Jakob von Gunten (1909) and establishes that silence is realized both at the thematic level as well as in the structure and language of the text. As a narrative strategy, silence influences the form and content of Walser’s Berlin novels and thus achieves the author’s desired effect on the reader.
Schweigen als narrative Strategie in den Berliner Romanen von Robert Walser
Maryana Yaremko, Khrystyna Dyakiv, Nataliia PetrashchukDas Ziel des Beitrages ist es, das Schweigen und seine sprachliche Gestaltung in Bezug auf die Makro- und Mikrostruktur des literarischen Textes zu erforschen. Den theoretischen Hintergrund bilden linguistische und literaturwissenschaftliche Arbeiten, die kommunikative, pragmatische, semantische, kulturelle sowie literaturhistorische Aspekte des Schweigens behandeln und seine Abgrenzung von der Stille hervorheben, die als Naturphänomen zu verstehen ist. Hingewiesen wird ausgehend vom Modell der literarischen Kommunikation auf die Rolle des Schweigens in der Triade Autor-Text-Leser sowie auf seine Realisierungsmöglichkeiten in der Struktur und Sprache des Erzähltextes. Dabei richtet sich die Aufmerksamkeit nicht nur auf das Schweigen als NichtSprechen, sondern auch auf die nichtssagende Rede, die im Rahmen der Kommunikationssituation die Semantik des Schweigens aktualisiert. Die zwei gegensätzlichen Schweigeformen kommen in den Berliner Romanen von Robert Walser (1878-1956) zum Vorschein und unterliegen der genauen Analyse aus der Perspektive der Makro- und Mikrostilistik. Untersucht werden das Erzählprinzip der Geschwätzigkeit in Geschwister Tanner (1907), die Ironie in Der Gehülfe (1908) und die fragmentarische Erzählweise in Jakob von Gunten (1909), durch die das Schweigen sowohl auf der thematischen Ebene als auch in der Struktur und Sprache des Textes realisiert wird. Als narrative Strategie beeinflusst Schweigen die Form und den Inhalt Walsers Berliner Romane und erzielt somit die vom Autor gewünschte Wirkung auf den Leser.
The purpose of the article is to study silence and its linguistic means of expression in relation to the macro- and micro-structures of literary text. The theoretical foundation of this research involves linguistic and literary studies that consider the communicative, pragmatic, semantic, cultural, and literary-historical aspects of silence and emphasize its difference from quietness, which should be understood as a natural phenomenon. Based on the model of literary communication, the study has identified the role of silence in the author-text-reader triad, as well as the ways it is realized in the structure and language of literary text. This paper finds within its scope that silence not only occurs as non-speaking, but also as non-meaningful speech that actualizes the semantics of silence in the context of the communicative situation. These two opposite forms of silence come to the forefront in Robert Walser’s (1878-1956) Berlin novels and are subject to a close analysis from the perspectives of macro- and micro-stylistics. The study analyzes the narrative principle of chatting in Walser’s The Tanners (1907), text irony in his The Assistant (1908), and the fragmentary narrative style in his Jakob von Gunten (1909) and establishes that silence is realized both at the thematic level, as well as in the structure and language of the text. The context of silence in the artistic and linguistic macrostructure of Walser’s novels is created by means of: the use of the micro-themes of travel, a little man, a failure, and humble service in the motive-thematic complex; the structure of the genre of the noveldiary; fragmentary composition; heterogeneous narrative perspective; rendering the characters’ communication through quasi-direct speech and indirect speech; monologues; describing a communicative situation or creating a speech portrait of a character on the basis of their chatty or quiet behavior; and textual irony. The speech microstructure of the text in R. Walser’s novels represent silence as the absence of a verbal response in the following ways: with the help of verba tacendi, and verba dicendi in the form of negation, as well as verba dicendi and verba credendi indicating selfdirection at the lexical level; by means of reducing the syntactic structure (aposiopesis, ellipsis, parcellation) and means of violating the syntactic coherence of the sentence (prolepsis, connectives, parenthesis, anacoluthon) at the syntactic level; and by use of the single, double, or triple dash and two-line indentation between the depicted episodes at the graphic level. The individual author’s narrative principle of chatting, which actualizes the semantics of silence in a text fragment by annihilating the semantics of the statement, arises on the following bases: the use of synonyms or semantically related words accompanied by the repetition of lexical-grammatical figures and listings, contrasting antonymous pairs by means of antithesis, the chain accumulation of adjectives and participles before the modified word, and the negation or refutation of the denied. This study also explains the relationship between irony and silence. In the text, irony expresses the dual nature of artistic communication and denotes the difference between the narrator’s speech activity and the author’s intention. At the linguistic level of the text, irony determines the metaphorical nature of speech, which diverts attention from the semantics of the statement and represents silence as a storytelling strategy. Based on this comprehensive analysis of R. Walser’s novels, the study has found that the peculiarities of the means of actualizing the semantics of silence in the macro- and micro-structures of the text in R. Walser’s novels reflect its functioning as a narrative strategy within the author’s individual creative system. The use of silence as a narrative strategy increases the communicative and pragmatic effect of the text, contributes to the realization of the author’s intention, determines the content and form of the text, gives its linguistic structure a stylistic expressiveness, produces an effect on readers, and engages them in receptive activity.
