CC BY
8
Volume 2, Issue III, November 2017
Reviews and Notes
T.A. Snigireva, A.V. Podchinenov. B. Akunin and his Imaginative World. Monograph by T.A. Snigireva, A.V. Podchinenov, A.V. Snigirev. Saint Petersburg. Aleteya, 2017. 178p.
ISBN 978-5-906910-83-7
In 2017, under the auspices of a book festival that is held annually on Moscow's Red Square, a monograph on Boris Akunin's literary works was presented. Apparently, this monograph represents the first serious study of Akunin's writings published in Russia.
The fundamental notion underlying the author's concept is captured in the following excerpt:
"Akunin is a novelist who writes in Russian and is acutely aware of his belongingness to Russian culture. However, Akunin feels and recognizes a certain level of 'otherness'. This alienation allows the writer to take a twofold perspective - from within and from outside - in his attempts to capture the history of Russia and the peculiarities of the Russian mentality. Akunin's specific attitude towards the National Question can be interpreted from the viewpoint of an obsession typical for Russian intelligentsia - people who by birth cannot be entirely referred to as belonging to the titular nationality. This obsession, which can be conventionally called the complex of the absorbed, is frequently found in the works of such classic Russian authors as Vl. Khodasevich, O. Mandelstam, B. Pasternak, F. Iskander, B. Okudzhava, A. Kabakov and S. Dovlatov. All the mentioned writers, although feeling their belongingness to other cultures, were simultaneously captivated by Russian culture. Their reflection on the fact of such absorption eventually became a particular optic filter through which these authors looked at contemporary philosophical and existential problems."
On the other hand, the authors of the monograph show that Akunin's world is a space for play: a play with literature, history, the reader and the author himself. Importantly, this play is a pleasure that is mutually shared by the author and the reader. While formally following the rules of mass culture (game), Akunin is constantly escaping into a different space (play), where it is he himself who formulates the laws to be abided by. The game inherently implies such attributes as being competitive, athletic and successful; whereas the play relates more to the adjectives artistic, theatrical and talented. In such terms, the monograph philologically reconstructs Akunin's creative strategies and analyses the uniqueness of his imaginative world.
The first chapter (Roles) aims at identifying Akunin's principal masks (a philologist, a popular writer, an author of detective novels, a blogger). It analyses the author's numerous pseudonyms and unearths the underlying system of their creation. Sophisticated correlations between the pseudonyms and the texts produced under these names are revealed.
Cross- Cultural Studies: Education and Science (CCS&ES) ISSN -2470-1262
The second chapter (National Repertoire) unveils Akunin's creative representation of the national discourse. Analysing the Fandorin Project texts, it sets out to investigate rhetorical devices that Akunin applies when engaging people from different nations in dialogue in order to explore the specifics of their national identities. The writer's ironic mode of narration is examined. On the one hand, it can be perceived in terms of conventional situational irony; on the other, as a complicated system of exquisite parodies both of pre-texts and of traditional mass and elite genres. Research into works belonging to Akunin's Provincial Detective, or the Adventures of Sister Pelagia literary project allowed the authors of the monograph to identify the writer's peculiar rhetorical device: juxtaposition of the capital and the province as the two main types of Russian national comportment. The city is represented in terms of imperialism and demonism, while the province is associated with Russianness and faith.
The third chapter (Historical Scenography) scrutinizes Akunin's concept of history, which formed a basis for his new project - History of the Russian State. The writer is shown to wittingly and creatively modernize his narration style to enable the reader to perceive historical events more congenially. This is achieved not only by overtly displaying his own attitude to these events, but also by translating the archaic language of historical documents into contemporary language. The specific relations between history and literature typical for today's interpretation of the evolution of the Russian state are revealed. Akunin's mechanisms for systematizing - at the same time as taming - Russian history are demonstrated. Akunin's approaches to the presentation of a writer's personal judgments and their presence in the text, as well as to the establishment of rapport with the reader through dialogues, are investigated.
The specific discourse features of Akunin's History of the Russian State project are studied in terms of the main principle of its realization. According to this principle, the writer simultaneously plays two roles in one and the same text - those of a historian and of a popular writer. The writer is shown to differentiate these roles by developing two conventionally separate text streams, one of which presents a serious historiographic analysis while the other articulates ideas, which are elaborated on the basis of the previously developed historical plot.
