Andrei Boguen

ON THE SPECIFICITY OF THE NARRATIVE STRUCTURE (WITH THE CASE OF DOSTOEVSKY’S WORK. PROBLEM OF THE ‘AUTHORITY’ OF POINT OF VIEW THEORY).

The article considers relations between different points of view in a text in respect of their position to the problem of semantic field on example of Dostoevsky's novel "The Brother Karamazovs".

The point of view is understood in according to conceptions of Uspenskij-Schmid as a component of text's structure, which can belong to either a narrator or to different characters and can be displayed on the temporal, spatial, ideological, perceptual and linguistic levels.

Relations between different points of view in a text are at the first place relations between a narratorial and a character's points of view, these relations are historically conditioned and depend on the artistic mode of a text.

The author of article proceed from the assumption that Realism as an artistic school assumed an existence of reality, which exists for both an author and a reader and can be considered and depicted with technique of art and literature. This reality is the subject of a realistic work of art and its hypothetical existence determines the particular role of an authorial narrator in a realistic text.

It is the realistic authorial narrator who finally motivates not only temporal and spatial sequence of plot, stylistic deviation from the standard language norm, and evaluation of character’s speech and actions. He also motivates causality of events. I would like to emphasize the word "finally". Of course there can be different points of view presented in a realistic text and different motivations can be given from each of them. But all of these motivations need another motivations and only the motivation given from the point of view of the authorial narrator need no motivation more.

Therefore a narratorial point of view possesses a high degree of the narrative competence, which consists in a possibility to present an event taking into account its conditions and circumstances. All other points of view are subordinate to it, and the hierarchy of points of view is a distinctive feature of the realistic discourse. The narratorial point of view is the guarantee of text’s coherence and the unity of the narration conducted by this point of view corresponds to the hypothetical unity of the world, which is to be reflected by the realistic discourse.

A classical model of such relations between points of view is the work of Leo Tolstoy, particularly his novel Anna Karenina. In this novel the omniscient and omnipresent narrator defines the general circumstances of the plot from his point of view and leads the narration from the general to the particular. Figural point of view is submitted to narratorial point of view by, and an implied reader has to perceive the information presented from the figural point of view taking into account the information presented by the narratorial point of view, which has the strongest position on the all levels of perceptivity.
Observing diachronic development of the point of view in the Russian literature of the second part of the 19th and the first part of the 20th century we can claim a decline in the role of the narratorial perspective:  the strong omniscient and omnipresent position in the realistic text becomes a weak one in the modernistic text.

Dostoevsky’s work takes a particular place in this process.

His work is realistic but it is a new variant of realistic discourse and at the same time a deviation from strong realistic rules.

In the novel Brother Karamazovs we can see two narrators. The first one appearing in the introduction to the novel is closed to the author and defined the main theme of the work as a biography of the main character Aleksej Karamazov. In the first part of the Novel "The history of one family" he is however removed from the second rather personified narrator, who presents the members of Karamazov's family. 

On the one hand this second narrator (chroniker) can be considered as an omniscient narrator. He determines temporal and spatial relations of the story. He can penetrate in a consciousness of characters and inform of many facts and details, which he could not realize as a person.

On the other hand many Dostoevsky’s researchers point out a limitation of his competence. On the face of it this limitation develops on the spatial and the ideological levels: he makes a number of speech and linguistic mistakes and his commentaries are often inadequate.  It was noticed that thus the author compromises the chroniker.  But what is the aim of this compromising?
The analysis of the first parts of the novel shows that the chroniker is compromised also in another way: he can penetrate in the consciousness of characters and he can motivate appearance and structure of their points of view but he does not use this possibility in the proper way. For example he shows not only a consciousness of Alesha Karamazov, the main character of the novel, but also a consciousness of Petr Miusov, a secondary character, who does not play an important role in the plot. The point of view of Alesha takes the same place in the first parts of the novel like the point of view of Miusov. Therefore the system of motivations built by chroniker can be found as illogical and comic.

Thus Dostoevsky compromised not only the narrator but also the mode of psychological Realism provided by Tolstoy and opposes it another mode of narration based on the monologue's traditions of the Old Russian literature. This mode of narration is presented in the novel by another narrator closed to the author. He appears in the introduction to the novel and in the other parts of the text and leads a narration taking into account that the main character is Alesha Karamazov: the point of view of Alesha plays a leading role in the parts of text presented by the narrator closed to the author and appears there often as a mixed point of view of the character and narrator. But Alesha's point of view is pushed into the background in the parts of novel presented by chroniker. 
A difference between two narrators consists in different grades of narrative authority, which consists in a possibility to

present the main event of story.

According to Lotman the main event of text is crossing a border between semantic fields shaped in this text. The point of view possessing a high degree of narrative authority has to understand a nature of semantic fields and lead a narration proceeding from this understanding.

Therefore there are two systems of points of view and two systems of motivations in Dostoevsky’s novel. They contradict one another; struggle against each other, but finally one of them bends another to its will. 

Full text of the article in Russian (960 KB)