Praesens Historicum as a stylistic method of removing Gender opposition in B. Akunin's detectives (based on the material of the works "Decorator" and "Sulazhin")

The term "praesens historicum" ("present historical") is used to denote the form of the present tense in the meaning of the past, highlighted and described by various researchers in ancient Russian texts. Thus, this form is described by V.V. Vinogradov in the Life of the Protopop Avvakum ^[7], and A.V. Bondarko was engaged in its research in Slavic languages, including Russian ^[4]. Describing this form in epics, M.V. Novikova notes: "since the present historical is a figurative use of the form of presentation, there are no strict conditions that could be considered necessary and sufficient for its appearance in the narrative: the use of this form is entirely subordinated to the will of the speaker and his intention to build a narrative this way and not otherwise" ^{[10, p. 210]}.

In modern Russian, the form of the present historical is also found – as a figurative meaning of the present tense form, it is described by M.Ya. Glovinskaya ^{[8, p. 288]}, Yu.S. Maslov ^{[9, p. 514]}. The choice of the form of the present tense, according to the researchers, is due to the intention to create the effect of a direct living narrative, bring the action closer to the reader, make his perception more vivid. E.V. Paducheva, analyzing texts in which the "present historical" is adjacent to the past tense, indicates that "the speaker as a subject of temporal deixis is in the present, and as a subject of observation – in the past to which the situation relates" ^[11]. In the case of self–observation – the speaker's description of his own actions using the form praesens historicum - the choice of the tense form of the verb can be determined by other factors, one of which is the subject of this study.

Of great interest is the use of the form praesens historicum as a tool for neutralizing gender opposition – in a text whose author decided not to designate the gender identity of the narrator until a certain point when presenting in the first person. The form of the past tense varies by gender, and when telling about his actions in the past tense, the narrator almost immediately identifies his gender: "I came / I came", "I saw / I saw", etc. Accordingly, if it is necessary to present the narrator as a mysterious being whose gender is not clear up to a certain point (or is not indicated at all in the text), the author resorts to using praesens historicum.

An illustration of this use of the time form is the novel by B. Akunin "Sulazhin", which, according to the author's definition, is an "octopus book". The author's idea implies eight different options for the development of the plot, which are set by the reader himself, making a choice in favor of one or another development of events. "Sulazhin" is positioned by the author as a pilot version of the Octopus project, which implies the variability of the text. In the online version, the reader builds the text by clicking on the proposed links, in the paper version - by going to a specific page.

In the first chapter, which is common to all variants of the development of the text, the story of a man who suffers from advanced stomach cancer is told in the first person, and takes a medicine called "sulazhin", which gave the name to the whole novel. The text of the first chapter is constructed in such a way that it is impossible to determine which gender the narrator is – he (she) speaks about himself using only the forms of the present tense and without applying any adjectives to himself. In one of the variants of the development of the text of the second chapter, the hero is a man (and half of the texts are subsequently written on behalf of a man), in the other – a woman (respectively, half of the texts are further written on behalf of a woman). As noted by A.L. Fokeev and D.A. Sukhina, "The first (unchangeable) part of the book plays an important role in the development of the further plot. The reader is invited to learn the beginning of the story, the foundations on which the author's plan will develop. Here the main character of the work appears, asexual at the moment. The narrative is conducted in the present tense, and at first it is impossible to determine whether it is a man or a woman, but later, after the first choice made by the reader, the hero acquires certain outlines and is drawn in more detail" ^{[13, p. 193]}.

The narration is conducted precisely in the form of praesens historicum: as soon as the text of the first chapter is completed, and the hero "acquires certain outlines", the text immediately switches to the past tense. So, at the end of the first chapter, the phrase "I understand: he addresses me personally" ^{[2, p. 21]} is constructed in the present tense, and the next phrase describing the actions of the hero, already in one of the continuation options, sounds like "I turned around. I wasn't the only one looking after that woman..." ^{[2, p. 25]}. In another version of the continuation of the text , the first paragraph is constructed in the present tense: "Shaking my head, I drive away the ridiculous fantasy. Where can a woman I don't know call me? I turn to Gromov" ^{[2, p. 49]}, but after that the hero-narrator is called by name – "Tonya", after which the presentation in the first person is already built in the past tense: "I tried to make a joke" ^{[2, p. 49]}, and so it continues in the future. In all versions of the continuation (two versions of the second chapter, four versions of the third chapter and eight versions of the fourth chapter), the presentation is in the past tense. Consequently, the function of praesens historicum in the first chapter was precisely the neutralization of gender opposition: the text was fundamentally constructed in such a way that the main character could be identified both as a man and as a woman.

In the first chapter, the verb forms of the past tense are also used in the meaning of "long past" - plusquamperfectum. So, at the beginning, the hero describes the night and the morning before: "The medicine helped ... the sleep was smooth ... in the morning everything swayed, floated" ^{[2, p. 9]}, etc., and then: "I call him at half past seven. ... "Well," I say, "should I go?" ^{[2, p. 9]}.

A similar function is performed by the presentation in the first person in the present tense in an earlier work by B. Akunin – the detective "Decorator" from the cycle of works about Erast Fandorin. In accordance with the plot, the end-to-end hero of a number of Akunin's works, Erast Petrovich Fandorin, catches Jack the Ripper, who moved from the UK to Russia. There are nine chapters in the story "Decorator", and each of them ends with a small excerpt of the direct speech of the "decorator" - Jack the Ripper (except for the last one, since in the last chapter the reader finds out who exactly is the criminal). In order to preserve the detective intrigue and make as many characters as possible potential suspects, the author builds these monologues from the first person also in the present tense. The past tense in them performs the function of plusquamperfectum – long past, and the present – praesens historicum: "I had to fast for too long, from the very Maslenitsa. My lips dried up, repeating…

Late evening. I can't sleep. Excitement and delight lead me through dirty streets, through vacant lots, between crooked houses and crooked fences. I haven't slept for many nights in a row. He presses his chest, squeezes his temples. During the day, I forget myself for half an hour, for an hour, and wake up from terrible visions that I do not remember in reality." ^[1]. At the same time, the entire text of the chapters telling about the search for the criminal is constructed in the past tense: "At an emergency meeting at the Moscow Governor-General Prince Vladimir Andreevich Dolgoruky was present ... with these words, Vladimir Andreevich opened a secret meeting. ... Everyone present sighed with concern, only the investigator on the most important cases showed some amazement on his face" ^[1].

From the first to the sixth chapters inclusive, the author supports the "androgyny" of the criminal who speaks about himself: "I am your brother and sister, father and mother, husband and wife. I am both a woman and a man. I am an androgynous, the most beautiful ancestor of mankind, who possessed the characteristics of both sexes. Then androgynes split into two halves, male and female, and people appeared – unhappy, far from perfect, suffering from loneliness.

I am your missing half. Nothing will prevent me from reuniting with those of you whom I choose."^[1]

Talking about his adventures, Jack the Ripper periodically mentions that he identifies himself as a man, then as a woman: "today I'm in a man's dress", "today I'm a woman" ^[1]. His androgyny makes it possible to suspect both men and women – in particular, among the suspects there is a female doctor who perfectly owns surgical instruments. At a certain moment of reflection on the identity of the criminal, Fandorin suspects his close friend – Angelina Krasheninnikova. However, at the end of the seventh chapter, the question of gender is removed: the criminal says about himself, "After this masterpiece of decorative art, it was pointless to waste time and inspiration on the maid, and I left her as is. ... I heard the air coming out of the punctured lung"^[1]. The circle of suspects is narrowing by that time, and Egor Zakharov, a pathologist working in the morgue, seems to be the most likely candidate.

In the detectives about Erast Fandorin, Akunin uses the schemes of classic detective novels aimed at playing with the reader – various characters of the work appear as suspects, and from time to time the author focuses on one or the other, inviting the reader to join the investigation ^{[3, 6, 12]}. It is possible to multiply the number of solutions by neutralizing the gender opposition – at a certain stage of the investigation, the sex of the criminal is in a superposition, it is equally likely that the suspect is a man or a woman. The character himself thinks of himself as an androgyne – both a man and a woman at the same time.

Androgyny is one of the key cycle-forming motifs in the macrocycle about Erast Fandorin, his ancestors and descendants. As shown in the study of one of the authors of this article ^[5], in a number of works ("Extracurricular reading", "The Falcon and the Swallow", "Just Masa", etc.), gender identification of key characters is difficult, and the evolution from "androgynous involuntarily" (those who, due to circumstances, are forced to pretend to be a being of the opposite sex) to "genuine androgynes" - beings from the distant future ("Children's Book for boys"), who have completely leveled sexual differences and do not realize themselves either as men or as women. Continuing the planned line, it should be noted that the Decorator from the work of the same name and the protagonist of the book "Sulazhin" appear to be the third variant of androgynous: those who are in superposition with respect to gender, and the reader does not yet have sufficient data to identify the creature as a man or as a woman. The technique tested in The Decorator as part of a detective riddle and a game with the reader turned into a text-forming one in the book "Sulazhin". This, in turn, allows us to talk about the inter-cycle interaction of texts by the same author. The difficulty of gender identification as an element of the game with the reader becomes a cyclical staple not only of the "Fandorin corpus", but also in the text "Akunin's universe".

Linguistically, it is interesting to use the present tense form in the meaning of the past not only as a means of neutralizing gender opposition, but also as a means of distancing the "speaker-object of observation" from the "speaker-subject of observation", in accordance with the interpretation of this species-time form by E.V. Paducheva. The speaker-subject definitely knows what gender he is, but as an object does not inform the reader of this information – thus, the verb form begins to function as a tool for differentiating certainty/uncertainty. In this case, the use of words in the present tense is similar to pronouns with the prefix "someone" - "someone, something", etc.: the use of such words ("Someone told me ...") implies that the speaker knows the specified person, but the addressee should not know about him. This is partly the detective's communicative intention: the author of the text knows from the very beginning who exactly is the criminal, but the reader should not know about it, which is the essence of the detective intrigue and the game with the reader.