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умеешь, - не согласилась Шарлотта. - Оставь это Александру - Александру! С каких пор Александр что-то умеет?» [16, с. 169]. Вильгельм находит Александра ненадежным. В завершении дня рождения рушится праздничный стол, за которым собирались семья и друзья на протяжении многих лет, что символизирует разрушение юбилейного ритуала как такового.
Лишь Надежда Ивановна, русская бабушка Александра, с неподдельной радостью ждет день рождения Вильгельма. У нее нет чувства неприязни к семье Повиляйт, и она ей благодарна за возможность испытать на себе легкую жизнь в Германии после тяжелой жизни в Славе (на Урале). При этом Надежду Ивановну не прельщает жизнь в цивилизованной Германии с ее педантичным порядком. Ее утомляет гортанная немецкая речь на фоне ее теплых раздумий о родном крае, где она жила раньше. Проводя все свое время в комнате, Надежда Ивановна ощущает груз одиночества и желание вновь вернуться в привычный образ жизни с его спокойным укладом, обрести вечный покой одолевает ее с новой силой. Семейные праздники обогащают ее жизнь. Несмотря на то, что она не владеет немецким языком, она рада любому общению вне дома. В романе Надежда Ивановна является воплощением русской души. Добродушная и открытая ЬэЬизоЬка - как называют ее гости Вильгельма, совершенно бескорыстно принимает участие в традиционном торжестве.
Библиографический список
Таким образом, все члены семьи принимают участие в мероприятии, тем самым продолжая семейную традицию. Как справедливо отмечает Х. Лутош, «...с помощью традиции между поколениями создается чувство принадлежности и преемственности» [7, с. 17]. Традиция, в свою очередь, требует определенных договоренностей и усилий для создания непрерывности преемственности между поколениями, которая сама по себе всегда маловероятна, «она не приходит естественным образом» [14, с. 91]. В главах, посвященных юбилею, предстают личные воспоминания персонажей, которые в процессе взаимодействия поколений в своей совокупности должны преобразовываться в семейную (коммуникативную) память. Но отчуждение в семье Умницер-Повиляйт приводит к разрыву коммуникации, в результате которого семейная память утрачивается.
Продолжая традиции классического семейного романа, О. Руге придает мотиву праздника новый смысл, делая его способом авторской рефлексии о проблеме соотношения индивидуальной, семейной и культурной памяти. Празднование юбилея проявляет ситуацию распада семьи Умницер-Повиляйт: отчуждение поколений друг от друга, их неспособность услышать друг друга, травмы, которые сохраняются в памяти каждого из членов семьи. С другой стороны, бессмысленность ритуала на юбилее Вильгельма связана со скорым закатом ГДР. Кризисное состояние семьи Умницер-Повиляйт и немецкого общества передаёт поэтика театральности, характерная для романа Руге в целом.
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3. Бахтин М.М. Вопросы литературы и эстетики. Исследования разных лет. Москва: Художественная литература, 1975.
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6. Herrmann L., Horstkotte S. Gegenwartsliteratur. Eine Einführung. Deutschland: J.B. Metzler Verlag, 2016.
7. Lutosch H. Ende der Familie - Ende der Geschichte. Zum Familienroman bei Thomas Mann, Gabriel García Márquez und Michel Houellebecq. Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag, 2007.
8. Ostheimer M. Monumentale Verhältnislosigkeit. Traumatische Aspekte im neuen deutschen Familienroman. Gedächtnis und kultureller Wandel: Erinnerndes Schreiben -Perspektiven und Kontroversen. Niemeyer, 2009: 149-167.
9. Ассман А. Длинная тень прошлого: Мемориальная культура и историческая политика. Москва: Новое литературное обозрение, 2018.
10. Eigler F. Gedächtnis und Geschichte in Generationenromanen seit der Wende. Erich Schmidt Verlag GmbH & Co KG, 2005.
11. Welzer H. Opa war kein Nazi: Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familiengedächtnis. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 2008.
12. Bauer U. Interview mit Eugen Ruge. Literaturtest.de: Agentur für Buch-PR und Buchmarketing. Available at: http://newsletter.literaturtest.de/1112/web/
13. Assmann A. Generationsidentitäten und Vorurteilsstrukturen in der neuen deutschen Erinnerungsliteratur. Wien: Picus Verlag, 2006.
14. Assmann A. Zeit und Tradition. Kulturelle Strategien der Dauer. Köln: Böhlau, 1999.
15. Евтушенко А.Г. Юбилей как социокультурный феномен. Автореферат диссертации ... кандидата культурологических наук. Москва, 2012.
16. Руге О. Дни убывающего света. Москва: Логос, 2017.
17. Заварницына Н.М. Формирование понятия театральности и составляющих этого феномена в отечественном литературоведении ХХ - начала XXI вв. Вестник Воронежского государственного университета. 2020; Выпуск 4: 58-62.
18. Манн Т. Будденброки. Москва: АСТ, 2023.
References
1. Eichenberg A. Familie - Ich - Nation. Narrative Analysen zeitgenössischer Generationenromane. Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2009.
2. Vedder U. Am Nullpunkt der Familie: Generationen und Genealogien in der Gegenwartsliteratur. Zfl-berlin.org: Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung. Available at: https://www.zfl-berlin.org/veranstaltungen-detail/items/am-nullpunkt-der-familie-generationen-und-genealogien-in-der-geg.html
3. Bahtin M.M. Voprosy literatury i 'estetiki. Issledovaniya raznyh let. Moskva: Hudozhestvennaya literatura, 1975.
4. Gurevich A.Ya. Kategoriisrednevekovojkultury. Moskva: Iskusstvo, 1984.
5. Lotman Yu.M. Teatr i teatral'nost' v stroe kul'tury nachala XIX veka. Izbrannye stat'i: v 3 t. Aleksandra, 1992; T. 1: 269-286.
6. Herrmann L., Horstkotte S. Gegenwartsliteratur. Eine Einführung. Deutschland: J.B. Metzler Verlag, 2016.
7. Lutosch H. Ende der Familie - Ende der Geschichte. Zum Familienroman bei Thomas Mann, Gabriel García Márquez und Michel Houellebecq. Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag, 2007.
8. Ostheimer M. Monumentale Verhältnislosigkeit. Traumatische Aspekte im neuen deutschen Familienroman. Gedächtnis und kultureller Wandel: Erinnerndes Schreiben -Perspektiven und Kontroversen. Niemeyer, 2009: 149-167.
9. Assman A. Dlinnaya ten'proshlogo: Memorial'naya kul'tura i istoricheskaya politika. Moskva: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2018.
10. Eigler F. Gedächtnis und Geschichte in Generationenromanen seit der Wende. Erich Schmidt Verlag GmbH & Co KG, 2005.
11. Welzer H. Opa war kein Nazi: Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familiengedächtnis. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 2008.
12. Bauer U. Interview mit Eugen Ruge. Literaturtest.de: Agentur für Buch-PR und Buchmarketing. Available at: http://newsletter.literaturtest.de/1112/web/
13. Assmann A. Generationsidentitäten und Vorurteilsstrukturen in der neuen deutschen Erinnerungsliteratur. Wien: Picus Verlag, 2006.
14. Assmann A. Zeit und Tradition. Kulturelle Strategien der Dauer. Köln: Böhlau, 1999.
15. Evtushenko A.G. Yubilejkaksociokul'turnyj fenomen. Avtoreferat dissertacii ... kandidata kul'turologicheskih nauk. Moskva, 2012.
16. Ruge O. Dni ubyvayuschego sveta. Moskva: Logos, 2017.
17. Zavarnicyna N.M. Formirovanie ponyatiya teatral'nosti i sostavlyayuschih 'etogo fenomena v otechestvennom literaturovedenii XX - nachala XXI vv. Vestnik Voronezhskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. 2020; Vypusk 4: 58-62.
18. Mann T. Buddenbroki. Moskva: AST, 2023.
Статья поступила в редакцию 31.05.23
УДК 802.0-4
Konurbaev M.E., Doctor of Sciences (Philology), Professor, Department of English Linguistics, Lomonosov Moscow State University; Professor-Consultant, Department of Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication, Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation (Moscow, Russia), E-mail: mekonurbaev@fa.ru
Andreeva E.Yu., Cand. of Sciences (Philology), teacher, Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation (Moscow, Russia), E-mail: KATERINA88557@yandex.ru
STILL SMALL VOICES IN MODERN ENGLISH FICTION: ANALYSIS OF INDISCREET TIMBRES. Fiction is simultaneously the most fascinating and challenging object of timbre analysis. This article aims at an analysis of how polyphony, narrative shifts, semantic and syntactic parallelism and other means of the language create a unique aesthetics of each individual piece of artistic writing and generate a recognizable timbre or the voice of the author, where he or she does not want to be too explicit. E.M. Forster, for instance, in his "A Room with a View" sets the scene in Florence where the two ladies seem to be displeased about the room they have in a
Pension. But the dialogue is delicately interspersed with lexical elements used in describing a theatrical performance. When the reader succeeds in observing this fact, he begins to hear new timbres in the voices of the heroes and starts noticing the elements that were formerly beyond his or her attention, occupying the side line going parallel to the main narrative. The experience of 'hearing' this theatrical timbre in the reader's mind and perceiving the interplay of timbres related to scene-making discloses a new plane of cognition that is over and above a plain chain of events. Thus, the mental hearing of the text by the reader appears to be a totally new experience, when discovered, making the book the object of unfathomable attraction for the reader and a mental hold that makes a piece of writing totally unforgettable. Key words: linguopoetics, fiction, Ishiguro, Forster, timbre, stylistics, connotation, gestalt, semantics, cognitive linguistics
М.Э. Конурбаев, д-р филол. наук, проф., Московский государственный университет имени М.В. Ломоносова, проф.-консультант Департамента иностранных языков и межкультурной коммуникации Финансового университета при Правительстве Российской Федерации, г. Москва, E-mail: mekonurbaev@fa.ru
Е.Ю. Андреева, канд. филол. наук, преп., Департамент иностранных языков и межкультурной коммуникации Финансового университета при Правительстве Российской Федерации, г. Москва, E-mail: KATERINA88557@yandex.ru
НЕЯВНЫЕ ТЕМБРЫ В СОВРЕМЕННОЙ АНГЛИЙСКОЙ ХУДОЖЕСТВЕННОЙ ЛИТЕРАТУРЕ: АНАЛИЗ НЕДИСКРЕТНЫХ ТЕМБРОВ
Предметом исследования в рамках данной статьи являются произведения художественной литературы как самые увлекательные и самые сложные единицы тембрового анализа. Цель научной работы составляет анализ того, как полифония, повествовательные сдвиги, семантический и синтаксический параллелизм и другие средства языка создают неповторимую эстетику отдельно взятого художественного произведения и порождают узнаваемый тембр или голос автора там, где он не хочет быть слишком откровенным. Например, Э.М. Форстер в романе «Комната с видом» разворачивает сцену во Флоренции, где две дамы, кажется, недовольны комнатой, которую они занимают в пансионе. Но диалог деликатно перемежается лексическими элементами, используемыми при описании театрального представления. Когда читателю удается заметить этот факт, он начинает слышать новые тембры в голосах героев и замечать элементы, которые раньше оставались за пределами его внимания, занимая боковую линию, идущую параллельно основному повествованию. Научная новизна настоящего исследования заключается в том, что авторы раскрывают опыт «слышания» особого театрального тембра в сознании читателя и восприятие им взаимодействия различных тембров, связанных с созданием сцены, освещая новую плоскость познания, которая находится над обычной цепочкой событий. Таким образом, мысленное слушание текста читателем оказывается совершенно новым опытом, который, будучи обнаруженным, делает книгу объектом непостижимого притяжения для читателя, а также создает эффект ментального удержания, что делает произведение совершенно незабываемым.
Ключевые слова: лингвопоэтика, художественная литература, Исигуро, Фостер, тембр, стилистика, коннотация, гештальт, семантика, когнитивная лингвистика
Introduction
All timbre in a piece of writing and the voice of the author rest on the implicitly auditory impact zones in a text of fiction, which collectively form a recognizable aesthetic gestalt [1], or otherwise stated, a perceivable image of a piece of writing [2]. This holistic image (or images) of a book does not equal the semantic scope of the words used by the author but is often related to the conceptual worldview of the reader [3; 4].
Aesthetic gestalt is largely semiotic in nature [5]. The reader recognizes certain implicitly expressed semantic, psychological and cultural patterns in a book or a piece of writing and then, instead of 'storing' them in memory for further analysis, directly associates them with cultural concepts of his own worldview. This could be called 'understanding by association'. The reader is not so much interested in the perception of the text per se but hastens to 'understand' it as 'a thing for himself' [6; 7] when much of the true purport of the text will be ignored for the sake of a better recognizable image or set of patterns that will eventually form into a familiar holistic auditory image in the reader's mind - a timbre [8].
In this sense every piece of imaginative writing has a cognitive enigma for a reader to unravel and explain. Some timbre patterns will be familiar to a reader and will form 'a voice' in his or her mind immediately, other patterns will remain dark or require a broader vision of the author's world [9; 10]. A writer is not free from his or her memories of early childhood, the teen years' reminiscences, education as well as the influence of a social environment and various intellectual preferences [11].
And these do not always coincide with what a reader feels and sees in the context of reading [12; 13]. An outstanding Russian academician Lev Scherba suggested that the so-called auditory image of a book may be exceedingly diverse in tone and brightness and readers may perceive it differently in their minds: some parts of the book are cognitively straightforward and uncontroversial and could be perceived relatively easily by the majority of the readers; other parts of it would allow different readings and even the author himself would agree to various semantic interpretations by the readers, yet other parts of the book would be quite obscure to the author himself and could be interpreted freely to satisfy the declamatory intentions of various readers and the author would hardly have anything against such interpretation [14; 15]. The shared cognitive and semiotic code between the author and his readers would reduce the scope of freedom in the interpretations, of course, but it is very unlikely that the described discrepancies will be delimited altogether [16-19].
The relevance of this article lies in revealing the relationship between the various means of language and the author's intentions. The purpose of the present paper is to analyze how polyphony, narrative shifts, semantic and syntactic parallelism and other means of the language create a unique aesthetics of each individual piece of artistic writing and generate a recognizable timbre or the voice of the author, where he or she does not want to be too explicit. To achieve the target, the authors set the following tasks: 1) to do semantic and stylistic analysis of several pieces of literature belonging to different time periods; 2) to identify which lexical and syntactic elements help the reader hear new timbres in the voices of the characters in the considered works. The scientific novelty of this study lies in the fact that the authors reveal the experience of "hearing" a special theatrical timbre in the reader's mind and his percep-
tion of the interaction of different timbres related to the creation of the scene, illuminating a new plane of knowledge that lies above the usual chain of events.
Results and Discussion
These variations in interpretation are only very natural and not infrequently the readers plunge into the same text again and again for the sake of seeing a new picture evoked under the burden of new circumstances and new knowledge [20, 21, 22, 23]. The excellent example of such semantic polyphony could be found in Shakespeare's Hamlet, where the Prince learns from the Ghost the terrible truth of his father's murder and is shocked being full of righteous anger and desire of revenge: HAMLET
O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else? And shall I couple hell? Oh, fie! Hold, hold, my heart, And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee! Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee!
The last line of the extract includes Hamlet's simultaneous address to himself, to the world and to the spectators 'holding a seat' in Shakespeare's 'Globe theatre' during the performance of the play, the word 'globe' allowing all three interpretations together - 'the head', 'the world' and direct name of Shakespeare's theatre. It's like portmanteau - there are three meanings packed into one word. The effect of this polyphony is enhanced by the fact that 'globe' in all three interpretations perfectly collocates with the attribute 'distracted', in each case meaning a different thing: 'distracted globe' (head) means Hamlet's failure to concentrate under the pressure of exceeding grievance, 'distracted globe' (the world) could mean an otherwise preoccupied, unfocused world that little cares of Hamlet's grief and sorrow, while a 'distracted Globe ' (the theatre) -is an abstraction inviting the 'distracted' audience never to forget Hamlet's woe (while memory holds a seat in this distracted globe).
The word 'globe' is an impact zone in the auditory perception of the reader that forms a pattern together with the words 'distracted' and 'seat' [24, 25]. One or another application of the pattern is largely the decision of the reader himself. He may or may not see and hear the polyphony. Accordingly, his understanding would be closer to or more remote from the immediate context of the play where the meanings 'the world' and 'the theatre' hardly seem valid for its proper understanding [26]. In this sense the timbre will be either more or less diverse and the voice of the main hero - either more or less addressed to the audience [27].
Superficial semantic and stylistic analysis may certainly reveal Hamlet's voice that will be heard in the reader's mind while reading [28]. But it is often misleading when a new background or a context appears, casting additional light on the otherwise obvious semantic contrasts and revealing the unexpected shade and size of objects that are at the heart of the author's purport in a piece of writing [29]. The ultimate goal of a work of literature is to mould a new reality through millions of semantic associations in the reader's mind. This metareality will exist almost exclusively in the reader's imagination by the liaising force of his attentive eye that succeeds in identifying the author's skeletal blueprints in a story. If a reader fails to identify the secret mechanics
of the author's plan he might be content only with the superficial design of the literary 'carpet'. However, when assisted by a talented commentator the secret threads of the plot may suddenly form wonderful patterns, the new gestalt formerly unobserved, but once revealed, aggrandizing into a new reality of a secret plot with its own formerly non-existent cultural and aesthetic associations.
The British writer Kazuo Ishiguro born in Japan, developed into a man of letters in England. One of his most stunning discoveries was that everything he knew or felt from his early childhood was 'movable', as the writer puts it in one of his public interviews. His first short stories were set in Japan. 'But when [he] got this tremendous response to the Japanese short story from [his] classmates, [he] went back and looked at the story set in Cornwall. [He] realized that if [he] told this story in terms of Japan, everything that looked parochial and small would reverberate' [30]. This was the beginning of Ishiguro's most successful literary experiments with the metaphors of life.
His novel The Remains of the Day is set in one of the stately homes of England with the main hero, the butler, pondering during his motoring trip around West England about the essence of stewardship, dignity and Englishness.
Everything looks and sounds perfectly English on the surface of the plot, except one detail, a single literary 'stitch' that sounded somewhat false and rose a suspicion of the existence of a different 'backstage light' in the novel: Stevens, the butler, failed to understand irony and humour addressed to him and spent quite a bit of time musing on the essence of the word 'banter ' and its place in the life of the English butler under a new American employer at the formerly English aristocratic home.
Over the following days, however, I came to learn not to be surprised by such remarks from my employer, and would smile in the correct manner whenever I detected the bantering tone in his voice. Nevertheless, I could never be sure exactly what was required of me on these occasions. Perhaps I was expected to laugh heartily; or indeed, reciprocate with some remark of my own. This last possibility is one that has given me some concern over these months, and is something about which I still feel undecided. For it may well be that in America, it is all part of what is considered good professional service that an employee provide entertaining banter.
How unusual indeed that the 'art of bantering', 'good-humoured ridicule', 'an exchange of light, playful, teasing remarks', so English in nature, appears to be of un-surmountable difficulty for the English butler Stevens. And he invariably fails, however hard he tries. As a result, his voice eventually sounds pompous, tense, excessively solemn, too earnest for a true Englishman:
/.../ I must say this business of bantering is not a duty I feel I can ever discharge with enthusiasm. It is all very well, in these changing times, to adapt one's work to take in duties not traditionally within one's realm; but bantering is of another dimension altogether. For one thing, how would one know for sure that at any given moment a response of the bantering sort is truly what is expected? One need hardly dwell on the catastrophic possibility of uttering a bantering remark only to discover it wholly inappropriate. Everyone familiar with the English literary traditions as well as habits and customs of the English people would probably find it weird. The English social anthropologist Kate Fox makes it rather clear that 'as a race, we are incapable of straightforward rational assertion or engagement. This is why humour is so important to us. It is not so much an asset as a pervading characteristic, a default mechanism /.../
Fox's conclusions about the English are conventional: we are tolerant, humorous, courteous, reserved, moderate, badly dressed' [31]. This is exactly what Stevens is not doing. He is serious, grave, at times nearly tragic, exceedingly inhibited, very straightforward, not the least self-ironic and has no sense of humour whatsoever. A typical . warrior. Judging by some famous Japanese sources, we would go as far as assuming that this character was mimicked as a Japanese warrior - a Bushi or a Samurai.
This looks pretty odd. The book written on a British soil, awarded The Man Booker Prize for Fiction, with a film adaptation of the novel, made in 1993, with Anthony Hopkins (as Stevens) and Emma Thompson (as Ms Kenton the housekeeper), nominated for eight Academy Awards. Could it really be expected that the book was Japanese and not English? If this is true, it could be arguably one of the most successful cognitive dissonances in the modern English literature. The action set in the heart of England in one of the stately homes of England featuring a man speaking perfect English, wearing the uniform of a butler - but producing at the background of his voice, almost invisibly, the timbre of a Samurai - a highly respectable, loyal, honourable, dignified warrior, concerned with finding the best way to serve his master:
Incidentally, now that I come to think further about it, it is not quite true to say there was no dispute as to who were the great butlers. /.../
If one looks at these persons we agree are 'great' butlers, if one looks at, say, Mr Marshall or Mr Lane, it does seem to me that the factor which distinguishes them from those butlers who are merely extremely competent is most closely captured by this word 'dignity'.
This looks and sounds pretty much like an extract from Bushido, the Soul of Japan to me:
Honor
The sense of Honor, a vivid consciousness of personal dignity and worth, characterized the samurai. He was born and bred to value the duties and privileges of his profession. Fear of disgrace hung like a sword over the head of every samurai ... To take offense at slight provocation was ridiculed as 'short-tempered.' As the popular adage put it: 'True patience means bearing the unbearable.'
Loyalty
/.../ True men remain loyal to those to whom they are indebted: Loyalty to a superior was the most distinctive virtue of the feudal era. /.../ Character and Self-Control
Bushido teaches that men should behave according to an absolute moral standard, one that transcends logic. What's right is right, and what's wrong is wrong [32, 33, 34].
This affinity of Stevens with the attendant of the Japanese aristocrat was a most curious and stunning revelation that initially rested on our cognitive guess as well as a comparative stylistic analysis of Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day and the books devoted to the ethical code of those who were born to attend to their masters. Much of our initial conjecture is proved by Ishiguro himself in one of his public interviews [30]: ISHIGURO
/.../ I became obsessed with the butler as a metaphor.
INTERVIEWER
As a metaphor for what?
ISHIGURO
Two things. One is a certain kind of emotional frostiness. The English butler has to be terribly reserved and not have any personal reaction to anything that happens around him. It seemed to be a good way of getting into not just Englishness but the universal part of us that is afraid of getting involved emotionally. The other is the butler as an emblem of someone who leaves the big political decisions to somebody else. /./ INTERVIEWER Did you do a lot of research? ISHIGURO
Yes, but I was surprised to find how little there was about servants written by servants, given that a sizable proportion of people in this country were employed in service right up until the Second World War. /.../ So most of the stuff in The Remains of the Day about the rituals of being a servant was made up.
When Stevens talks of the 'staff plan', that's made up'. The author defines his hero's voice' in a manner that makes the English national character almost unrecognizable and even though Kazuo Ishiguro tries to impart an 'international' sounding to his main hero he actually ends up producing an excessively reserved unemotional business-like character naturally prepared to follow his employer's instructions, devoid of the flesh and blood of a European character who is even prepared to sacrifice his life defending the values of his master. Very Japanese, hardly English:
The hard reality is, surely that for the likes of you and I there is little choice other than to leave our fate, ultimately, in the hands of those great gentlemen at the hub of this world what employ our services. What is the point in worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one's life took?
Not infrequently the real voices of the fiction heroes and their timbres could be 'heard' almost exclusively in the setting that a talented writer might have specially developed as a riddle for the attentive reader to divulge. E.M. Forster in the initial chapters of the Room with a View visibly sets the scene in Italy but the 'backstage stylistic light' reveals the entourage of a theatre. Masterful combination of several most typical details of the theatre environment makes the recognition of the theatre stage almost unmistakable:
She looked at the two rows of English people who were sitting at the table; at the row of white bottles of water and red bottles of wine that ran between the English people; at the portraits of the late Queen and the late Poet Laureate that hung behind the English people, heavily framed; at the notice of the English church [22], that was the only other decoration of the wall. 'Charlotte, don't you feel, too, that we might be in London? I can hardly believe that all kinds of other things are just outside. I suppose it is one's being so tired'. J..J
'I want so to see the Arno. The rooms the Signora promised us in her letter would have looked over the Arno. The Signora had no business to do it at all. Oh, it is a shame!'
'Any nook does for me', Miss Bartlett continued; 'but it does seem hard that you shouldn't have a view'. Lucy felt that she had been selfish. 'Charlotte, you mustn't spoil me: of course, you must look over the Arno, too. I meant that. The first vacant room in the front'—
J..J Lucy mumbled that those seemed very odd people opposite. 'Eat your dinner, dear. This pension is a failure. To-morrow we will make a change'.
Hardly had she announced this fell decision when she reversed it. The curtains at the end of the room parted, and revealed a clergyman, stout but attractive, who hurried forward to take his place at the table, cheerfully apologizing for his lateness.
The seemingly unimportant details of the entourage collectively form a theatre hall with rows, seats, views, rooms, curtains and theatrical scenery. Once the reader identifies the nature of the setting, he or she begins to look at the heroes as dramatis personae with dramatic action requiring greater loudness and grotesque. Each action will require a more obvious pattern, a continuation and will be perceived as part of a larger action with a definite dramatic outcome rather than a general abstraction or a piece of introspection. The reader will notice that the speeches of the personages are rather short and brisk and emotional and the action and voices acquire the shade of pretence which is an inevitable mechanism to highlight and emphasise action in drama against ordinary epic narration.
The discovery of the author's aesthetic 'blueprint' calls for attention to detail and not just the ability to trace the plot that is largely plain, mute and flat. While reading you may certainly 'see' and 'hear' what the heroes are saying and how they act, but the taste, flavour and timbre of the action will be purposefully concealed under a burden of associations for an intelligent reader to restore and under the minor details of grammatical and syntactic organisation of the text - much like in real life - when the true nature and the essence of words or actions is not on the surface - but much deeper, in the minute axonal 'bridges' between the past and present reality, in the knowledge of facts and texts and even in the memory of real voices stored in the reader's memory.
The voices in the text will come up to the surface only if they already exist one way or another in the reader's memory, in his or her auditory worldview [11]. The timbre of an aesthetic pattern of a work of fiction will make itself obvious only when the reader's knack for building a pattern rests on his or her ability to connect the vertically arranged prominent parts of the text into hierarchies and constellations, forming recognizable shapes that could be reproduced, remembered, estimated, compared to hundreds of similar images that an attentive reader has in his mind and experience [35; 36].
There are two young people, minutes before execution in Ch. Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. The girl is afraid, the boy is comforting her that there is no death for those who believe. The girl goes first. And the timbre gushes out when 'the knitting-women count Twenty-Two' and the biblical text comes forward in one of its most solemn forms - the King James Version. The text does not belong to anyone. There is nobody to actually pronounce it in the novel. But it is just there and forms the theatrical scenery for the action. No longer is this a mere description of an execution, but a sumptuous hymn of life, and likewise does it sound in the mind of the reader who is familiar with the text of the Bible and its history against the background of 'the murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces' as if everyone present actually heard it:
She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly bless each other. The spare hand does not tremble as he releases it; nothing worse than a sweet, bright constancy is in the patient face. She goes next before him - is gone; the knitting-women count Twenty-Two.
'I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die'.
The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away. Twenty-Three.
The holy texts in general are richly imbued with 'voice', relying to a considerable extent on syntactic and semantic parallelism, observable for example in the Bible or in the Koran. Repetition of any kind makes the reader impart communicative significance to the repeated parts. And when the repeated part is structurally and stylistically solemn, it makes the whole text sound accordingly. Parallel constructions act like the shaping rods in the potter's work that do not allow the reader to divagate to strongly from the central image under the influence of multiple images, metaphoric descriptions and colourful epithets:
It is the Merciful who has taught the Koran. He created man and taught him articulate speech. The sun and the moon pursue their ordered course. The plants and the trees bow down in adoration. He raised the heaven on high and set the balance of all things, that you might not transgress that balance. Give just weight and full measure. He laid the earth for His creatures, with all its fruits and blossom-bearing palm, chaff-covered grain and scented herbs. Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny? He created man from potter's clay, and the jinn from smokeless fire. Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny? The Lord of the two easts is He, and the Lord of the two wests. Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny? He has let loose the two oceans: they meet one another. Yet between them stands a barrier which they cannot overrun. Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny? Pearls and corals come from both. Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny? His are the ships that sail like mountains upon the ocean. Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny? All that lives on earth is doomed to die. But the face of your Lord will abide for ever, in all its majesty and glory. Which of your Lord's blessings would you deny?
This will strongly resemble biblical Psalms (Psalm 136), that are partially poetic, partially inspirational, and all due, again, to a repetition in an elevated stylistic form:
O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.
O give thanks unto the God of gods: for his mercy endureth for ever.
O give thanks to the Lord of lords: for his mercy endureth for ever.
To him who alone doeth great wonders: for his mercy endureth for ever.
To him that by wisdom made the heavens: for his mercy endureth for ever.
To him that stretched out the earth above the waters: for his mercy endureth for ever.
To him that made great lights: for his mercy endureth for ever:
The sun to rule by day: for his mercy endureth for ever:
The moon and stars to rule by night: for his mercy endureth for ever.
To him that smote Egypt in their firstborn: for his mercy endureth for ever:
And brought out Israel from among them: for his mercy endureth for ever:
With a strong hand, and with a stretched out arm: for his mercy endureth for
ever.
The instruments used by the author to make his or her readers actually hear the voices and the timbre of the writing are legion, ranging from repetitive grammatical constructions and syntactic parallelism to lexical contrasts and mere sound imitation. In the story The Last Library, the author, A.K. Benedict creates a wonderful echoing atmosphere of the vast interior of a museum by accumulating multiple clicking sounds, vivid comparisons of people's appearances and, surprisingly enough, by the repetitive use throughout the whole story of the verbs in the form of Present Simple, making the reader feel the necessity to freeze motionless here and now, being the witness of what is actually happening in the museum halls:
Maggie, the guide, has long fingernails the colour of greenback beetles. They click as she flicks at the screen. 'That's on storey fourteen,' she says. 'Old exhibit. It's not interactive. Due to be shut.'
Angela's heart punches like a librarian's stamper. 'But we'll get there?' she
asks.
Maggie's forehead almost creases. 'We'll have a quick look if there is time, though we are due at the winery at four and, if we are any later, will miss the complimentary tasting of the last Sancerre.'
Dad lets out a protesting snort and leans over to talk to his boss; his laugh sounds like rain in a tin bucket. He uses it when he's trying to get something out of a richer man. Mum reaches down and smoothes out Angela's fringe where it kicks out on the left side. 'We'll get you a souvenir,' she says. Why don't you play with those kids?'
At the end of the story, that is full of impressionistic images of books and libraries, appears a thin air of vertical associations with the biblical plot in addition to the lexical and syntactic instruments already employed by the author in the beginning of the story. Nowhere is the Bible mentioned directly. But collectively the lexical references draw into the story the unmistakably identifiable image of the divine history: the young boy and girl, the first editions, apples, eaten together when performing a prohibited act of reproducing a new book-tree within six days of creation. This isn't merely a new fact of the story, but rather a new timbre instrument, that is turning an enticing plot into an ancient history, where nothing changes, and everything is repeated along the same circles of old. And again the verbs, invariably used in the Present Simple monumentalize the action, turning it into an epic history of man and the whole narrative sounds low, solemn and rhythmical as befits an old epic narrative:
She watches. He watches. They both watch at different times, sometimes with eyes that hope, sometimes with eyes that don't. Nothing happens apart from they both get tummy ache from eating apples and get cramp sitting cross-legged on the grass. After a couple of days, they lean against each other, first editions, and tell each other the stories they've been storing: new ones; old ones; stories that end badly; stories that do not end.
On the sixth day, the soil shifts. Angela watches as a hand reaches out of the earth, holding a book. The hand stretches out its soil-caked fingers and shoots into leaves; the leaves hold onto branches; each branch has a dozen or more books that breathe in and out, the branches to a trunk, the trunk to the earth. On the trunk, the knots are covered in open eyes.
Mrs Oldcastle from Number After-Not-Nine creaks out of her deckchair and walks over. 'Is that a book?' she asks pointing to one of the windfalls on the ground. She picks it up, puts on her glasses and dances a little dance. Angela has only ever seen her walk with a limp before but she scurries now, back to her room, smiling and muttering.
One by one, then in groups, first from the building - Mr Spedding, the Warden, the Eyebrow twins - then from the street, then from the outer towns, people came to get books. When they have read them, they come back and hand them in for another.
Angela and Tom sit by the library tree, handing out books, hearts stamped. 'Do you think they'll come for us?' she says.
Tom takes a page and plants it in the ground. He places a finger to his lips. 'Ssssh,' he says. Leaves float down around them, like feathers and last words.
Conclusion
During the semantic and stylistic analysis of works of fiction it was revealed that the ability 'to read' the vertical context of a book and form variously marked impact zones and voices into timbre patterns and visual gestalts is one of the indispensable parts of reading in general. Poor education, feeble associative thinking, shallow knowledge of literary history and culture turns reading into a rather trivial pursuit of most primitive designs of plot that was not by far the purpose of writing. Literature at large is a container of human history not in a sense that it itemizes all facts, events and data, but due to its ability to fertilize and evoke historical and cultural associations crowded with timbers and voices of real life.
The theoretical significance of this paper is to expand knowledge of the relationship between the various linguistic techniques of lexical and syntactic levels used by authors and the mental listening of the reader.
The practical value of the work lies in the fact that the results of this study can be used as a basis for further study of nondiscrete timbres in different genres of literature. In addition, the theoretical and practical provisions of this article can serve as material for the creation of practical seminars on the study of the timbral organization of English speech.
The prospect of further research in this area may be a comparison of the timbral structure of English texts and their translations into Russian.
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Статья поступила в редакцию 26.05.23
