To the question of the boundaries of the fictionality of the narrated event. "Every hundred years. A novel with a diary" by A. Matveeva

Ageeva Natalia PhD in Philology Associate Professor, Department of Russian and Foreign Literature, Theory of Literature and Methods of Teaching Literature; Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University 630028, Russia, Novosibirsk region, Novosibirsk, Vilyuiskaya str., 28, building 3 jcl@ngs.ru Other publications by this author

The problem of fictionality, identified at the beginning of the XX century in G. Feichinger's monograph "The Philosophy of "as if"" ^[1] and developed in the works of K. Hamburger ^[2] and in the theory of speech acts by J. Serle ^[3], arouses the keen interest not only of philosophers and linguists, but also of literary critics. To the greatest extent, this issue began to attract the attention of researchers after the publication in the 1990s of three significant theoretical works devoted to the nature of fiction at once - "The Truth of Fiction" by M. Riffater ^[4], "Fictional and Imaginary. A sketch of literary anthropology" by V. Yser ^[5] and "Fiction and Syllable" by J. Genette ^[6]. M. Riffater, as, vroch, and J. Genette, established the boundary between falsehood and fiction, pointing out the strong connection of the latter with artistic genres. V. Yser, describing the relationship in the triad "real/fictional/imaginary" highlighted by him as the main feature of the fictional text, insists that "the elements of the text he adopted from the surrounding world are not fictitious by themselves only the choice itself is a fiction" ^{[7, p. 188]}. Modern researchers, starting from the above-mentioned and already classical works or generally agreeing with them, note the need to clarify the status of fictionality in ontological, semantic, pragmatic and many other aspects. The concept of fictionality is interpreted either as broadly as possible, as a general property of mental and speech activity ^[8-11], or narrowly – as the alignment in a text (usually artistic, but partially in texts of a different functional nature) of some special reality that does not have a denotation ^[12]. There is also a third approach proposed by foreign researchers ^[13], where this concept is associated not with the objective properties of the text itself, but with the discursive intention, i.e. the communicative intentions of the subject of speech. In any case, researchers invariably note the need to describe this category in its relations with related concepts. So, in particular, fictionality is compared with reality / reality in the articles by E. V. Zolotukhina-Abolina, V. Y. Kleimenova ^[9-11]. No less attention is paid to the dilution of the concepts of fiction and nonfiction, i.e. fictionality is determined through its relationship with factuality ^{[12, 14-16]}. The subject of research in such works becomes the boundary between fiction and a lot of non-fiction, non-aesthetic texts. So, for example, V. Schmid in his work "Narratalogy" points out: "One of the signs of a narrative literary text is its fictionality, i.e. the fact that the world depicted in the text is fictitious, fictitious. While the term "fictitious" characterizes the specifics of the text, the concept of "fictitious" (or "fictitious") refers to the ontological status of what is depicted in a fictitious text" ^{[17, p. 22]}. Of course, the mere presence of fictionality in a text cannot be considered the only criterion of its literariness, but it plays a significant or even leading role.

Interestingly, with regard to the fictionality of ego documents, the opinions of researchers are divided into almost opposite ones. Some ^[8-10] argue that such texts do not possess this property due to the author's attitude to factuality, the identity of the author and the subject of speech and the reader's perception as texts that do not construct a fictional world, but relate directly to real reality. So, for example, O. S. Gilyazova notes: "If the words of the author as a character completely oblige the author, then we have an unfictional text (diary, letter, political or scientific treatise – what M. Bakhtin brings under the general heading of non–aesthetic texts), if not, then fictitious" ^{[8, p. 17]}. We should note, however, that M. M. Bakhtin in the monograph "The author and the hero in aesthetic activity" nevertheless notes that the texts "in the first person" assume in the creative act an element of bifurcation into the author and the hero, realized in the aesthetic activity itself ^[20], which means a certain share of the author's "irresponsibility". Taking this fact into account, A. A. Faustov suggests classifying autobiographies, memoirs and diaries as a prototypical form of fiction ^[12] and, accordingly, as texts occupying a borderline position between fiction and nonfiction or even entering the periphery of fiction. Other researchers of autobiographical works join a similar point of view ^{[16, 18, 19]}.

It is interesting, in our opinion, to consider from this position the work of A. Matveeva "Every Hundred Years" published in 2022 and became a finalist of the "Big Book", which has the author's definition of the genre – a novel with a diary, obviously indicating that it is not meant a diary novel, known in world literature since the XVIII century and involving the construction of an artistic text based on the model of the hero's personal diary. However, in the novel by A. Matveeva, the parallel developing stories of two heroines, one of whom was born into an impoverished noble family at the end of the XIX century, and the second was born at the end of the XX century, are mostly presented in the form of diary entries. It is noteworthy that the authors of the two diaries at first glance have little in common: the name Xenia (however, most often the heroine, who lives at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries, is called Xenichka, while our contemporary is called Ksana), knowledge of foreign languages and, accordingly, translation and teaching activities, which allowed Ksana to be in some of those places where Xenichka had been a century earlier: "A hundred years ago, Xenichka Levshina walked along the same Rue du Grand-Pont; how strange that their destinies coincided again, merged into one, as streets merge, temporarily turning into a single avenue, and then run away again, each on their own business. The streets of Lausanne were like those threads of floss from childhood – it is unclear where which originates from and where it decides to tighten into a knot-a dead end" ^{[21, p. 181]}. And, of course, the most significant similarity is the keeping of a diary, to which they both return every now and then throughout their life history: "I also think that Ksenichka's life is so tightly connected with mine that now it does not matter at all whether she is related to me or not. We became related while I was reading her diaries, sitting over documents in the St. Petersburg archive. What we have in common is not blood, but ink – purple, with which Xenichka wrote, and blue, with which I write myself" ^{[21, p. 402]}.

Two factors will be a significant difference between the stories unfolding in parallel in front of the reader. The first of them is discussed directly in the quote given earlier: Xana begins to write herself only after she accidentally discovered a nettle bag with a stack of scribbled notebooks in her parents' closet and, having started reading, decided that these were her grandmother's diaries. In her diary, the heroine constantly reflects, correlates her own life with the story of Ksenichka, her manner of writing with hers: "A Buddhist acquaintance (over the years, everyone acquires familiar Buddhists) once remarked: if you live for a long time, then over time you begin to see a pattern in your life, and it is symmetrical. My life refutes this observation, it is asymmetrical, like an elm leaf. Maybe that's why I grabbed Xenia's diaries with such passion that I noticed a common pattern with them? We have the same names, initials, profession, misfortunes and the habit of keeping a diary, which is irrevocable, like everyday life, reduced, as it seems to me in a sad moment, almost to a hygienic procedure. However, there are also enough differences, and they, in turn, add up to an ornament. Ksenia became a wife (albeit not married) and mother early. I have never been married and cannot be considered a mother in the traditional sense of the word. Nevertheless, I have a child who desperately needs me, despite his own assurances to the contrary" ^{[21, p. 459]}. Moreover, it is worth noting that the very process of the heroine's comprehension of her own life in the refraction of someone else's life leads her to the desire to fill in the gaps in the history of Xenichka, to build a chronology, to restore or at least to think out, to deserve what remains beyond what she has read: "The story of a stranger fascinated almost more than in childhood, when she secretly climbed for a new portion of impressions in a nettle bag. Alas, one can only dream of a strict chronology – or invent a continuation herself, filling in the gaps, as they insert the missing letters in notebooks for elementary school students. Many notebooks, and therefore many years were missing – Xana had no doubt that Xenichka continued to keep diaries from year to year, just some did not survive. Or they got into another nettle bag..." ^{[21, p. 327]}.

The second factor lies beyond the limits of textual reality. Undoubtedly, in the part of the novel where the story of Xana is presented, a deliberately fictional world is constructed, even despite fairly accurate and detailed descriptions of the space where the heroine lives (for example, the very recognizable Sverdlovsk of the eighties). One can even say that the events taking place in her life are deliberately fictitious. They are more reminiscent of the plot twists typical of action-packed TV series and films: here is the search for a maniac who turned out to be the father of her classmate, and the sudden discovery that the father of the heroine herself lives in two families, and the complicated love relationships of her brother, including incestuous ones, which eventually led to his suicide, and the nephew's schizophrenia, manifestation which entails Disaster and Debt (both of these words in the text are written exclusively with a capital letter, since these are events that destroy the life of the heroine herself first of all). Secondary characters, rich and at the same time very lonely ladies, who so easily and quickly trust Xana with their innermost secrets, look no less detached from reality.

In contrast, the line of the second heroine tends to the maximum possible authenticity in the literary text. On the one hand, this is supported by the storyline of Xana, running from the vicissitudes of her life into reading Xenichka's diaries. At the same time, it is not enough for the heroine to immerse herself in the text of the written notebooks. She begins to search for archival information about Ksenichka, her relatives and people mentioned in the diary of a century ago, making sure of the authenticity and reality of what was written ("That's a miracle – they really existed, the Lacombe sisters, their mother and brother Frederick, who lived right up to 1955! Nell got married in Germany, Marguerite also went there… All this was real" ^{[21, p. 267]}) or, on the contrary, finding confirmation that Ksenichka could be mistaken in her judgments or not have complete information about those with whom she was dealing ("Peter and Vlada went to the bedroom, didn't want to walk, didn't want anything at all. Xana turned on her laptop again and typed in the search engine: “Nina is the niece of P. I. Tchaikovsky.” I looked through the family tree, I didn't meet any names, except for the only one I needed. It seems that the mother of Nina Tchaikovsky, that girl from Lausanne, was an impostor – Ksenichkin's friend had nothing to do with the author of the "Queen of Spades" or was a very distant relative" ^{[21, p. 311]}).

The novel literally quotes a number of real-life archival documents concerning both Ksenichka and her husband and brother. An interview with a woman familiar with her is introduced. The heroine, known to Xana only by her scribbled notebooks, acquires flesh, a place in the world, authenticity.

On the other hand, the novel itself has a dedication from the author – to my grandmother Ksenia Mikhailovna Levshina. That is the full name of Xenichka. And in the words of gratitude printed after the epilogue, it says that the book describes a lot of really happening events. Moreover, in her interviews, A. Matveeva repeatedly repeats that the novel itself was conceived as a description of her grandmother's life story, and the material was not only various documents and conversations with those who knew her, but also personal diaries that Ksenia Mikhailovna kept until her death in 1965. Moreover, what is most significant in this case, part of the text of the novel is the unprocessed fragments from those diaries. That is, a personal, intimate ego-document, originally not intended for outside eyes and falling, according to the definition of the researchers we mentioned earlier, into the class of non-aesthetic, non-fictional texts, turns out to be not just embedded in an artistic text, it is he who gives birth to a fictional text. It is curious that at the same time there is no increase in the reliability of Xana's story. On the contrary, the very image of Xenichka and what she wrote begins to lose any connection with real reality. This is evidenced, in particular, by readers' reviews on the websites of online bookstores, e-book services and electronic libraries (Labyrinth, LitRes, Livelib.ru , Mybook, etc.), in which the claim is made that Xenichka, unlike Xana, the author turned out to be some kind of boring: global events are taking place in the country changes, and she doesn't seem to notice them. She is more concerned that she does not know what to do with an unemboweled goose, which she miraculously managed to get. In her diary there is almost nothing concerning the cataclysms that the country is going through, but there is too much talk about her husband's infidelities and children's illnesses. Readers also note some discrepancy between the age of Ksenichka and her writing style, which is found in early diaries, which is interpreted by them as insufficient verification of the author's style. And at the same time, the mention in one of the fragments of Anton Denikin's real diary simply as a young man who was helped by Xenichka's father, readers perceive not as events that took place in real reality, but as a successful author's move by A. Matveeva.

In our opinion, such an obvious blurring of the conventional boundary between nonfiction and fiction is primarily due to the fact that the novel establishes a kind of hierarchy of authors of the texts present in it. There is Ksenichka, who writes her own intimate diary, but she is also a character in the story being built by Ksana, who in turn "writes" her own life, literally and figuratively, since in some chapters she speaks about herself in the third person, which the reader does not immediately know: "It would be better to keep a diary like Xana herself. You write a couple of pages about your sorrows, and it becomes easier. However, lately Xana has been writing in her diary in a different way than before. Rinat's words that she “needed to write books” really excited her, and now she tried to keep records remotely. She spoke about herself in the third person – not “I”, but “Xana". Not the author, but the character. It was interesting to hide behind a third person, like behind a column in the House of Culture of some workers, and watch what was happening from the side" ^{[21, p. 331]}. Such a substitution of the self-narrative with a text allegedly generated by a completely different subject of speech, at first glance separated from the hero not only by a time distance, but at the same time omniscient and able to penetrate with his eyes into the most secret corners of his soul, suggests that the central event of the work is not the vital collisions of the characters of the novel, but the process of text generation itself, allowing in this case to switch registers and types of focalization quite freely. Moreover, Anna, the granddaughter of Ksenia Mikhailovna Levshina, appears in the epilogue, who says that she was going to write a book about her grandmother, but now she no longer sees the point, since the novel has already been written by Ksana. Real-life people and fictional heroes seem to constantly face each other in various guises and configurations. It is interesting to note that at the same time, Xana herself perceives herself not so much as a writer, but as a translator: "My dream is to translate good books from French into Russian. A translator is also essentially a writer, even though he translates other people's thoughts like blind old ladies across the street" ^{[21, p. 348]}. In this perspective, the writer's work itself can be interpreted as a kind of "translation" of actual reality into aesthetic reality.

It is also noteworthy that Xenichka's diaries are also not always a self-narrative. In the second part of the novel, a certain omniscient narrator appears, and she becomes, albeit the main one, but still the hero of the events described. And in this sense, Ksenichka is no more like Ksenia Levshina, who really lived once, than Napoleon and Kutuzov in Leo Tolstoy's epic are similar to historical figures. Fictionality translates the objects that actually exist into a fiction that has a very distant relation to the real referent. In our opinion, the same thing happens with the text of the real diaries of K. M. Levshina. Once in the context of a fictitious world, they practically lose touch with factuality and acquire the status of an object of comprehension: "The most interesting reading in the world is diaries. No matter how hard you try to compose something similar, it will still not be the same. Mom says it's because truth always wins over fiction. <...> Any diary – like any life – can become a book that has at least one reader. <...> There comes a moment in every life after which nothing will change. But texts can be edited forever. The only exception is diaries, they are immediately written in full. In literature, you can hide details and hide yourself. In the diary you are always naked, like at a doctor's appointment" ^{[21, pp. 345-346]}. Note that these words of Ksana rhyme with the thoughts expressed by Xenichka herself: "I do not know how I would live if it were not for my diary… Here I write about everything honestly, without fear of being misunderstood and undeservedly punished" ^{[21, p. 143]}.

The narrated event in the novel thus becomes not only and not so much the life stories of the two heroines, but also the interaction of the factual and fictional, intimate ego-document and novel, the very writing of any text, both artistic and documentary, and the understanding of life as an aesthetic object. The novel with the diary, the subtitle given by the author, in this case can be interpreted not only as a fixation of the presence of two heterogeneous and multifunctional genres, but also their interaction, relationships that develop within a single text.