Expositional discourse and its narrative function in the short prose of I.S. Turgenev

Sun' Yao Doctor of Philology Professor, Russian Language Department, Institute of Humanities and Natural Sciences, Northeastern Agricultural University 150038, China, Heilongjiang Province, Harbin, Changjianglu str., 600 netservice@bk.ru Other publications by this author

In dictionaries of terms, "exposition" is defined as a "component of the plot". It means that it "immediately precedes the initiation and unfolding of the conflict"; the exposition "usually provides information about the circumstances that make up the background of the action" ^{[12, p. 507]}. The Concise Literary Encyclopedia (1962-1978) provides more detailed information. The exposition is "the initial part of the plot of a literary work, the situation, logically and chronologically" "preceding the plot". In it, the reader receives preliminary information about the characters, "their relationships and the main circumstances." The exposition "is distinguished by its internal solidity with the main action" ^[11]. It can also anticipate the time and place of the plot action, set an emotional mood for further narration ^{[5, pp. 157-159]}.

The definitions of exposure, which are recorded in reference sources, are based on empirical observations. In its essential flow, fiction confirms the data of literary dictionaries. But, as usually happens in any live process, there are exceptions that do not fit into a given scheme. For example, we noticed that the exposition in a number of I. S. Turgenev's stories does not fully correspond to the parameters that have become traditional in understanding its artistic function. The features characteristic of the Turgenev exposition, Russian scientists tend to explain it in a stylistic manner, by the fact that the lyrical beginning occupies an important place in the writer's prose.

Indeed, there is a poetic stream in Turgenev's works. The author's subjective lyricism seems to "oppose" the epic beginning in his texts. Russian scientists drew attention to the fact that lyricism in the writer's stories, novellas and novels usually manifests itself through the landscape, that is, creating an image of nature, where he "manifests himself as an artist, psychologist and philosopher." Using the example of the exposition part of the story "Bezhin Meadow", L.N. Gareeva concludes that Turgenev solves several problems at the same time. First of all, he "reveals the features of a living being in nature." Secondly, "the landscape does not reflect a physical picture of the world, but is the result of a reworked impression of the narrator." Thirdly, the narrator finds "a connection between himself and the world." The researcher believes that the "subjective approach" is the most appropriate in understanding the lyrical layer of Turgenev's works ^{[6, pp. 42, 43]}.

It is known that Turgenev aspired to a "lyrical monologue" in his works. L.M. Lotman called "The Noble Nest" a lyrical novel. In the process of researching the writer's work, she often uses such expressions as "lyrical pessimism", "lyrical novella", "lyrical story" ^{[13, pp. 136, 153, 156]}. N.A. Zakharchenko's idea is also important for us that due to the lyrical Turgenev "brings the plot" to the "subtext level", which "expands the functions of the narrative". Natural images in Turgenev's works do not so much "perform the function of landscape sketches associated with the inner world of the lyrical subject, as they formalize the space surrounding the characters, directly participate in plot formation" ^{[9, p. 13]}. The thought is undoubtedly true when panoramic contemplation of the writer's prose. Our goal is to show that there are exceptions in Turgenev's works when the exposition does not directly, but indirectly, indirectly "participates in plot formation". It tends to perform in some cases the function of a "meta-text" based on the subjective author's narrative discourse.

Before turning to the immediate object of this article, we will give definitions of the terms "metatext", "meta-discourse". This is necessary for the concept of our modest research.

In literary studies, the term "metatext" means a text addressed not only to the subject, but also to the author's word about it, in which the literary image itself becomes the object of the image (M. Y. Lotman). The role of metatext in a work of fiction is performed not only by the title of the work, its structural division, epigraph and author's notes, but also by "lyrical digressions", a method of narration in which super-meaning ("secondary" meaning) is revealed, which scientists tend to call "meta-discourse", which did not manifest itself directly and directly in the text. The terms "metatext" or "meta-discourse" in their meaning are close to the concept of "poetry of poetry", which was used by Fr. Schlegel, exploring "transcendental poetry". Metatext is characterized by isolation, self-reflection of the author. It plays a significant role in identifying the author's presence in the text and its organization. At the metatext level, the author implements his intention "to involve the addressee in changing the external world or to express his attitude (emotional or rational) to the world and changes in it" ^{[17, pp. 82-83]}.

Discourse is anthropocentric ^{[8, p. 31]}, implies the presence of an event or human history. Narrative discourse [le discours narrativ] – "can exist insofar as" "tells some story [histoire], in the absence of which the discourse is not narrative" ^{[7, p. 66]}. The category of the meta - discourse Z. Harris associated with the attempt of "the author who created the text to help the reader better understand and perceive this text" [cit. according to: 8, p. 3]. In our opinion, eventfulness covers history not only externally, but also internally, for example, "the story of the hero's soul", a chain of lyrical observations in the process of contemplating the surrounding world, which are part of the text in the form of a lyrical event. Taken in the event aspect, discourse is "speech immersed in life" ^[1]. S. N. Plotnikova describes meta–discourse in the form of a "different" discourse, which is produced at the level of metacognition ^{[16, pp. 92-95]}. Z. Asratyan draws attention to the main difference between the discourse of a work of art. In his opinion, the writer, through the "language of discourse", "attempts to influence directly the "spiritual space" of the reader. Under the spiritual space, the researcher thinks of a system of values ^{[2, p. 32]}.

However, in the arguments about narrative (history) and discourse V. I. Tyupa discovers a seam, which he seeks to eliminate. In his opinion, the narrated "history" and the "discourse" that narrates it are inseparable. The probabilistic picture of the world, narrated in the modality of understanding (intense "comprehension", and not already achieved "intelligibility"), contributes to the unfolding of the enigmatic intrigue of revelation. The structure of such a narrative is focused not on an epistemological riddle, but on an ontological mystery, which does not imply the exhaustion of the intrigue with a solution, but only a chain of clarifications, approximations, touches to the content of life that is beyond human experience" ^[20]. This thought, I think, is extremely important for understanding the lyrical and philosophical subtext of the exposition in Turgenev's stories.

Let us turn, for example, to the story "Bezhin Meadow", well researched in Russian literary studies. The introduction in this work is similar to the lyrical and philosophical beginning. It seems to live its own special life, in its attachment to the subjective, that is, the personal space of the hunter-narrator. The exposition seems to have an indirect, not direct, relation to the further narration. We can say that it is endowed with "two-voiced" semantics, but in it the correlation with the author's narrative is felt more strongly.

In the lyrical and philosophical introduction of the story "Bezhin Meadow", a close look reveals a mythological touch. The main links of the plot (the beginning, the development of the action, the climax) are correlated with a specific time: night. Meanwhile, the exposition is a consistent story about how noon replaces morning and how evening and night come. The story of the changing times of the day is accompanied by a lyrical description of nature in its movement from sunrise to sunset on a "beautiful July day". There is something resembling a mythological circle. The July day with its smooth flow seems to act as a shortened model of the mythological picture of the universe, free from chance; here the change of seasons, days is subordinated to the principle of "now and always", therefore, it is not subject to change.

A hint of mythology gives the introduction the character of generalization, gives it semantic completeness: the world with its rules has developed, the laws of the universe receive the status of "eternity" and only the fate of man against the background of this "eternity" seems random. This is evidenced, firstly, by the formal binding of the exposition to the tie ("On exactly such a day I once hunted grouse ...") ^{[22, p. 86]}, and, secondly, by the motif of night wandering through the night forest. The motif, which, in the language of metaphorical allegory, hints at the idea of the loss of mythological unity with the world around him by a person of the new time.

The color images that appear further in the author's narrative also carry "two-voiced" information. On the one hand, they are realistic, the night naturally transforms the colors of nature, and on the other hand, they are symbolic and are given in contrast with the rainbow shades of the exposition. In the introduction, such expressions are intensively introduced as: "the sky is clear", "the morning dawn", the sun is "bright and welcoming radiant", "its purple mist", "playing rays", "scarlet radiance", etc. The lost narrator ("but then I finally made sure that I was completely lost") ^{[21, p. 88]} sees an alarming color scheme in nature: "cold shadows", "narrow valley", "motionless dampness" ("as if I entered a coffin"), "in a dimly clear sky", "low bushes", "night was approaching and growing like a thundercloud", "darkness poured down from above", "gloomy gloom". Nocturnal images of nature are accompanied by the motif of off-road, loss of spatial landmarks ("there was no road"). At the level of metatext or meta-discourse, the night symbolic landscape can also be understood in the context of the romantic night image of the universe.  

In the story "My Neighbor Radilov", the exposition connects two time planes – the past and the present. The picture created by the narrator strives for a subjective-lyrical coverage of life in its entirety. The introduction begins with a story about the present. The story is localized in time and space: "...In autumn, woodcocks are often kept in ancient lime gardens. We have quite a lot of such gardens in the Orel province" ^{[21, p. 50]}. Then there is an unexpected transition to the topic of ancestors, which creates the effect of a "lyrical digression": "Our great-grandfathers, when choosing a place to live ...". The return to the present is realized through the description of lime trees that have preserved their identity, while "after fifty, many seventy years, these estates, "noble nests", gradually disappeared from the face of the earth, the houses rotted." But only one "lime trees still grew to their glory and now" [ibid.]. Thus, the exposition goes beyond the boundaries of its formal function, as if it receives the status of a "closed system", a complete and complete utterance; it acquires the values of a meta-discourse correlated with the narrator's memory of generations.

Of particular interest is the introduction in the story "Tatiana Borisovna and her nephew": it differs from those discussed above. In the stories "Bezhin Meadow" and "My Neighbor Radilov", the narrator's point of view was determined by his position in space. The point of view in them reflects nature horizontally and vertically. True, there is little harmony in this completeness of the coverage of nature's life. The relationship between the "lyrical hero" and the universe is described with a focus on the dramatic mode. Despite this, in the landscape paintings of those stories, "top" and "bottom" support each other. The sky vertically holds nature within its designated boundaries, and nature vividly listens to the sky. There is an image similar to the figure of the cross.

According to B. O. Korman, "a point of view is a fixed relationship between the subject of consciousness and the object of consciousness" ^{[10, p. 51]}. And N. D. Tamarchenko wrote that "a point of view in a literary work is the position of an "observer" (narrator, narrator, character) in the depicted world." The point of view, "on the one hand, defines his outlook – both in terms of "volume", "and in terms of assessing the perceived; on the other hand, it expresses the author's assessment of this subject and his outlook" ^{[18, p. 380]}. Following the provisions of scientists, for example, V. G. Mehdiyev explores the "borderline meanings" of the landscape in N. V. Gogol's "Dead Souls". The researcher concludes that in the poem "the landscape is endowed with a multilevel semantic and narrative plan." The hermeneutic potential of this type of landscape is determined by the fact that here the author's point of view enters into a complex interaction with the point of view of the character ^[15].

Something similar is seen in the exposition of the story "Tatiana Borisovna and her nephew". The story begins like this: "Give me your hand, dear reader, and come with me" ^{[21, p. 184]}. From this it can be seen that the point of view on nature belongs to two subjects at the same time – the author and the reader, who contemplates the world as if through the eyes of the subject of speech. Perhaps the presence of a parallel (author's and reader's) point of view in the narrative prompted the author to adopt a horizontal or linear description of nature. Only once, at the beginning of the introduction, it says: "the May sky is meekly blue." The further description is marked by some "mundanity"; the view covers the space in a linear sequence: "smooth young leaves", "a wide, flat road is all covered with that fine grass", "to the right and to the left", "forests darken in the distance", "villages turn yellow". The illusion is created that the author seems to create a spatial image through the eyes of the reader, tied to the richness and diversity of earthly existence. In the story, the description of nature is limited to a closed space.

The difference is sharply evident in comparison with the exposition of the story "Date", where the point of view alternately covers the "top" and "bottom": "I was sitting in a birch grove in autumn, about half of September. From the very morning a fine rain fell, replaced at times by warm sunshine; the weather was unstable. The sky was then covered with loose white clouds, then suddenly cleared in places for a moment, and then azure appeared from behind the parted clouds, clear and affectionate, like a beautiful eye" ^{[21, p. 240]}.

A bold comparison of the heavenly azure with a beautiful eye gives the impression of heaven descending to earth and dissolving into it. The phrase "the whole interior of the forest was filled with the sun and in all directions, through the joyfully noisy foliage, the bright blue sky seemed to sparkle" [ibid.] - confirm our guess.

The following types of compositional organization of the subjective author's narrative are distinguished, which Ts. Todorov associated with the narrative pledge: "a story about himself", in which the narrator simultaneously plays the role of one of the actors of the narrative and which is characterized by "identification of the self of the narrator character with the real subject of the narrative" ^{[20, p. 75]}, and "a story about others", in which the narrator does not appear as a character in the narrative. Regarding Turgenev's stories with an atypical exposition, it can be argued that in them we see the author's stories about himself. The author's narrative is located in the border zone of "a story about oneself" and "a story about others".

Thus, in most of Turgenev's stories, the exposition functions in accordance with the prescribed rules. But in the cycle "Notes of the hunter" there are also such introductions to the main narrative that do not fit into the "canon". In the stories "Bezhin Meadow", "Date" and others, the exposition implements a specific strategy of the author's narrative. It is as if it is not provided for by the further development of the plot and is a pure product of lyrical and philosophical contemplation of nature. It is a reflection of the subjective perception of the hero-narrator. On its basis, an idea of the world and space belonging to the innermost side of the spiritual personality of the writer is formed. The natural images in the exposition part of the stories are artistically comprehended in the categories of "eternity", opposing the "temporary" plan of human existence. Parallel to the epic narrative, a narrative of lyrical, subjective authorial origin is being built. Following the author, the reader seems to be "infected" with the double bottom of his artistic memory. Contemplates the depicted world through the eyes of a lyricist and an epic storyteller. At the junction of the lyrical and epic principles, the level of meta-discourse, the metalanguage of the writer's texts is formed.