Routes of Passage: Essays on the Fiction of Vladimir Makanin

The Poetics of the Interval: Modes of Mediation, Disjuncture, and Connection

The Poetics of the Interval: Modes of Mediation, Disjuncture, and Connection John Kachur Throughout his work, Vladimir Makanin exhibits a tendency to experiment with thematic questions, plot development, and generic forms. In each case Makanin frequently posits a "thesis," often in the form of a parable (either opening a text or inserted at some point in the narrative) that is "tested" in the main portion of the story, or even in subsequent works1 In "Voices" ("Golosa," 1977), for example, the following passage indicates a familiar, even "commonsensical" conception of history, the progression of time, and the formation of self-identity: "Life goes on. Minutes that are bright, and then just the opposite, minutes that are more ordinary, duller. And there more of the duller ones; flowing one into another, they link up like a chain, familiar and ordinary: an epic age, minute after minute. And suddenly you notice behind you connected up with all of this a little line of character. A trail.,,2 In this case, this passage serves as a "proposition" upon which Makanin "tests" various approaches to the problems of memory. More importantly, however, this example uncovers a vital poetic, as well as philosophical, principle that determines the structure and outlook of Makanin's work, whatever the theme he is exploring. Familiar from "Voices," these lines are also used at the beginning of a short story titled "About an Old Man" ("0 starike"), which appeared in Makanin's first published collection in 19743 Indeed, "About an Old Man" is reprinted in its entirety as tl1e first part of the last chapter of "Voices." This repetition, in a different context with minor or no variations, is a common device Makanin uses to re-contextualize and dialogize not only moments within 1 Peter Rollberg characterizes this feature of Makanin's prose as "an inclination to construct an experimental situation premised on both a philosophical hypothesis and a metaphor," leading to several "formulaic" plots that Makanin recycles from work to work. Rollberg, "lnvisible Transcendence: Vladimir Makanin's Outsiders," Occasional Paper 253 (Washington, DC: Kennan lnstitute for Advanced Russian Studies, 1993), 27. 2 Vladimir Makanin, Golosa: Povesti. Rasskazy (Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1982), 317. 3 ln Povest' a starom poselke: Povesti i rasskazy (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel', 1974). The passages are not completely identical. In the version that appears in "Voices," Makanin added the words "flowing" and "character." The former strengthens the sense of connection between past and present, while the latter emphasizes the role memory plays in self-identity. Routes of Passage: Essays on the Fiction of Vladimir Makanin. Byron Lindsey and Tatiana Spektor, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2007, 37- 61. 38 JOHN KACHUR one text, but, as in this case, large-scale utterances from one text to another. In and of itself this process of repetition debunks the linearity, imposed retroactively , displayed in the above quotation. No utterance is ever primary, authoritative, or final. Each utterance, like each moment of life, cannot be divorced from its context. The passage cited above, for instance, belongs both to the novella "Voices" and to the collection of stories contained in Tale of an Old Village. Moreover, each context is forced into contact with the other, creating a nexus of relations that encompasses a majority of the author's work and involves most of his central themes.4 Such dialogized repetition is a recurring principle in the construction of Makanin's work, in which episodes are often depicted numerous times with small differences in tone or point of views It is also part of his strategy of publication6 and, more significantly, his philosophical worldview. This worldview is fundamentally dialogic in that Makanin portrays humans , as well as their relationship to the world and to each other, as a series of interrelationships and works always in progress, which are expressed in an unending process of addressing and being addressed? Makanin, however, does not create a polyphonic symposium of the type Bakhtin attributes to Dostoevsky; Makanin's "speaking subjects" are often reticent, incapable of 4 As Tatiana Tolstaya writes: "To judge Makanin on the basis of anyone work is difficult . Each of them may be interpreted in a traditional manner and only in connection with the others does it reveal a new quality; each by itself is about one thing, but all of them together are about something else." Tariana Tolstaia and Karen Stepanian, " ...Golos, letiashchii v kupol," Voprosy literatury, no. 2 (1988): 78-105, here 82. 5 Again, the same could be said of whole...