Fiction Space and Time in Victor Kolupaev's Fantastic Story "Dzyapiki" (1989)

Morozova Inna Viktorovna ORCID: 0000-0001-8955-6504 Postgraduate student of the Department of Roman-Germanic and Classical Philology, Tomsk State University 634050, Russia, Tomsk region, Tomsk, Lenin Ave., 36 miv96@inbox.ru

The relevance of the research topic is determined by the high interest of modern philological science in the ways of representing the categories of space and time in works of art and identifying their features through literary analysis. In the last decade, the study of these categories has been carried out on the material of the works of such Soviet science fiction writers as A. Belyaev ^[1], I. Efremov ^[2], K. Bulychev ^[3], etc. The appeal to the work of the Siberian author, a member of the Union of Writers of the USSR (1976) Viktor Dmitrievich Kolupaev (1936-2001) is not accidental. The spatial-temporal organization of the text of his prose is a rich material for literary analysis; V. D. Kolupaev himself identified the categories of space and time as key in his work: "In general, almost all my stories and novels are about Space and Time, and also about a Person" ^{[4, p. 5]}.

The story "Dzyapiki" did not become the subject of scientific research. In general, there is little study of the prose of the Tomsk writer. Previously, only his later works were considered, for example, the novel "Socrates of Siberian Athens" (2001) ^[5-9]. In the aspect of studying artistic space and time, we analyzed the cycles "Life as a Year" ^[10] and "Captain of the Thunderer" ^[11], the story "The Hermit's Swing" ^[12] and the story "Newsstand" ^[13].

Achieving this goal involves solving the following tasks: to study for the first time the novel "Dzyapiki" (1989) from the point of view of the realization of the concept of artistic space and time; to analyze the specifics of the individual author's picture of the writer's world in this perspective.

The practical significance of the article is that its materials, results and general conclusions can be used in the study of the history of Russian literature and Soviet fiction, regional literature in the framework of special courses. The obtained data can be used in the process of educational and methodological activities in the creation of textbooks on the history of Soviet fiction, as well as literary studies (in particular, the analysis of the spatial and temporal organization of a literary text).

In methodological terms, to understand the artistic embodiment of the categories of space and time in the work under study, V. D. Kolupaev used the principles of comparative historical analysis, the cultural-historical method, the method of holistic analysis of a work of art.

The theoretical basis of the research is literary works in which the categories of space and time are comprehended through the prism of the artistic consciousness of the authors of science fiction literature ^[14-16].

Within the framework of this study, the fundamental concept for the study of artistic space and time is the category of M. M. Bakhtin's chronotope, implying "an essential relationship between temporal and spatial relations artistically mastered in literature" ^{[17, p. 234]}. As you know, the researcher emphasized the correlation of chronotope and genre, which is also confirmed in the genre of fiction. Thus, the Ukrainian writer O. A. Chigirinskaya writes: "Following Bakhtin, I prefer to call fiction a genre and define its main genre-forming poetic feature as an "impossible" chronotope created by three main methods: utopia (an impossible place), ukhronia (an impossible time) and usequia (an impossible thing in an emphatically real chronotope)"^[18]. ­­­­

The history of the creation of the fantastic story "Dzyapiki" stands out against the background of other works of the writer's short prose. The idea of heroes-dzyapiks and kapiks appeared in V. Kolupaev a few years before the beginning of literary activity. In 1961, when the writer's daughter, Olga, was only nine or ten months old, she unexpectedly uttered the phrase "Kapiki, dzyapiki, pharmacy" to everyone present. V. Kolupaev recalled: "I immediately "guessed" that "Dzyapiki" is us, the pharmacy means that we all need to be treated, but Kapiki, apparently, is the place where everything happens to us. And at that moment I already knew for sure that I would write fiction and write a novel "Dziapiki"" ^[19]. As a result, the story "Dzyapiki" was written in 1974, and published 15 years later in the Novosibirsk literary magazine "Siberian Lights". V. Kolupaev mentioned the impossibility of publishing the work in the 1970s in an interview with the Tomsk newspaper "Camp Garden" (1990); he linked the current situation with the problem of "writer and power" in the Soviet Union: "Correspondent (bold here and hereafter mine – I. M.) Viktor Dmitrievich, have you ever faced a problem: a writer and power? // V. K. Had to repeatedly. I should note that the government in this case has always been some kind of anonymous force. A story or a novella is declared an anti-Soviet work, and nothing could be done here, no evidence was taken into account. Sometimes, after a few years, these stories and novellas suddenly slipped through, then were attacked again. It all sounds like some kind of schizophrenic delirium. For fifteen years the novel "Dzyapiki", recently published in the magazine "Siberian Lights", has been lying in the table. <...> This has happened and is still happening with many writers. There are many wonderful science fiction writers in Tomsk, about whom no one knows anything yet. This is a tragedy for them, for literature, and for our country. Literature is still under the monstrous pressure of ideology and politics" ^[20].

The refusal to publish the story "Dzyapiki" seems logical, since in it the author directly criticizes modern society through the classic plot for science fiction literature - time travel. Thanks to the transtaym or time transformer, the employees of the special design bureau of Space and Time are sent to the past, namely to the 12th millennium BC. As a result, the researchers discovered a previously unknown to science civilization of Dziapiks living in a village called Kapiki. The leader of the tribe is Ehrazescheraz. The more the expedition observed the dziapiks, the more they resembled modern human characters. Thus, the problem of time leakage was discovered. This was reflected in the surrounding space of the heroes: "The village itself, consisting of several hundred huts, seemed to have been built according to a standard project, such order was felt in it. The streets intersected only at right angles, and at the intersections there were stone bollards with signs stamped on them, very similar to signs of traffic rules" ^{[21, p. 200]}.

In the story of V. Kolupaev, three chronotopes are realized. Firstly, there is a real space from which the characters go on a journey through time. The exact date of the start of the expedition is given: "On June 6, 1974, at eleven o'clock local time, Transtime penetrated and made a stop in the twelfth millennium BC." ^{[21, p. 217]}. The details of the description of the city represent the real space as a Siberian city, first of all this is reflected in the description of the frosty weather: "A closed passage was built between the garage where trantime was installed and the engineering building of the SKB. This transition was probably planned to be warm, but it blew from all the cracks. Ten degrees of frost. Still not forty, as on the street." ^{[21, p. 198]}. Unlike other works where the writer's native Tomsk, which is the main urban image, is not mentioned directly, but is called Ust-Mansk or Fomsk, in the story "Dzyapiki" there is no name of the city where the main characters live. Nevertheless, the toponyms of the Tomsk region are mentioned: "... last summer," continued the Doctor of Historical Sciences, "who conducted excavations near the village of Kaftanchikovo, discovered the remains of a man who lived about fourteen thousand years ago. <...> But the main thing is in civilization itself. If it existed, then it is one of the oldest civilizations known to us in the area of the West Siberian Lowland." ^{[21, p. 219]}.  

The second chronotope is represented in the time and space of the Dziapik civilization. At the same time, if time, as mentioned earlier, is clearly defined, then the space of the past physically correlates with the real, i.e. with the territory of Western Siberia, but the geographical landscape is different. The temperate climate is changing into a tropical one: "Hot humid air rushed into the car. Bright and juicy grass spread out below. Fancy huge flowers shimmered with yellow, blue and purple colors. Red flowers with white veins, wrinkled, withered before my eyes. Thousands of insects were flying in the air. It smelled spicy and tart. If there was an exotic anywhere, it was here. The Tropics! The twelfth millennium BC! Great civilizations have not yet arisen on Earth. People wear skins and loincloths and have barely mastered the stone axe." ^{[21, p. 190]}.

The third chronotope is determined by the interaction between the other two due to the implementation of the time leak plot. On the one hand, this is emphasized by the change in space, in particular the climate: it is getting cooler, birch trees appear instead of palm trees: "– It's cold, – Tonya said. // – Yes, – Yuri agreed. – It's colder than usual today. And the forest became different." ^{[21, p. 344]}; "– And palm trees turn into birches, – said dziapik." ^{[21, p. 285]}. On the other hand, the realities of time and space of Soviet society of the 1970s are seeping into the Stone Age. The change is also evident in the social life of the Dzyapik tribe, who have their own SKB, business trips, document management, etc. At the same time, there is a change of religion: instead of pagan gods, the tribe began to worship the All-encompassing Holy Immaculate Virgin Mary and her divine son Paragraph. Thus, the author sneers at the Soviet bureaucratic system: "The cult of the All-Encompassing Immaculate Virgin of Instruction was established everywhere, quickly and without much protest. Behind her, behind this stone, eternal, ponderous Instruction, it was much calmer to live than behind the broad back of a formidable, but hardly existing God. There was no need to puzzle over her, there was no need to take responsibility for her. There was no need to think!" ^{[21, p. 286]}.

The passage of time is also reflected in the portrait of one of the main characters, the leader of Ehrazescheraz: at first he resembles a real savage, later he leads a meeting of the tribe, dressed in a modern way - in jeans. Cf.: "The gray hair of the leader, tied with a narrow strip of dried snake, was decorated with a mop of colorful feathers. A necklace of mastodon fangs hung on his bare chest. A short skirt of vine branches encircled her hips. The face was decorated with an ornament. In his left hand, the leader held a heavy spear with a sharp stone tip" ^{[21, p. 202]}; "Well, what are you yelling, Silly," Ehrazescheraz said in a penetrating but authoritative voice. "I'm wearing your jeans." Yes, on me. The head of the SKB cannot walk without pants. We can't go without pants!" ^{[21, p. 228]}. Thus, the rapidly evolving civilization of the Dziapiks becomes so much like modern people that it is sometimes difficult to determine whether it is a dziapik or not. This is also expressed in the dual system of the characters of the story: the director of the Research Institute of Space and Time, Nikolai Vasilyevich Razov and the leader of Ehrazescheraz, two Tonys in the past and present, the leading engineer of the SKB, Yuri Petrovich Velsky, and the Incompetent u dzyapikov, etc.

As a result of the conducted research, the following conclusions can be drawn. V. D. Kolupaev's novella "Dzyapiki" is an original material from the point of view of studying the categories of artistic space and time as key elements for understanding the poetics of the writer's short prose. With the help of a fantastic plot of time travel, the author draws attention to current social problems: blind submission to the system, incompetence, indifference, unwillingness and inability to take responsibility for themselves. The three-part chronotope system (the era of the Dziapiks, real time and their mixing), the characteristic features of which are represented in landscape sketches, portraits of the main characters, allows us to identify the shortcomings of the human system, in particular his indifference and unquestioning obedience. As A.V. Gorshenin rightly noted in the article "An Ordinary Miracle" (2001), "the concept of dzyapik in the story acts not only as a kind of real subject of the work, but also as a kind of metaphor for the very obsequiously obedient, indifferent cog of a slave, whom, I remember, Chekhov called to squeeze out in himself drop by drop" ^[22]. The prospect of further research is seen in the appeal to the spatial and temporal images of his legacy in general and the story "Dzyapiki" in particular.