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- Title
ACQUAINTANCE AND ABSENCE: MINOR CHARACTERS AND INDEXICAL CHARACTERIZATION IN YURI TRIFONOV.
- Authors
Parker, David
- Abstract
Despite a near-universal acknowledgement of the mimetic power of Yuri Trifonov's writing, both Soviet and contemporary criticism read tends to read his characters allegorically, as representatives for moral, historical, or ethnographic categories. Taking inspiration from a 1972 essay by Trifonov himself that insists on the equal treatment of literary and living persons, this paper examines the peculiar ways in which minor characters are depicted across Trifonov's oeuvre precisely because of the author's commitment to treating his characters as representations of living individuals. Starting with Alexander Woloch's concept of the "character-space," the first section of the article looks at the ways in which the fates of minor characters are consistently given account no matter their significance to the narrative, arguing that Trifonov's character system is one built upon the principle of acquaintance and not. The second half of the article looks at the prominence of physical objects in Trifonov's works that serve as indexes for absent characters, marking a shift from representation through depiction towards a novel technique of the "indexical characterization" in Another Life (1975) and The Old Man (1980).
- Subjects
TRIFONOV, Yuri; LITERARY characters; LITERARY criticism; ANOTHER Life (Book : Trifonov); OLD Man, The (Book)
- Publication
Slavic & East European Journal, 2024, Vol 68, Issue 2, p215
- ISSN
0037-6752
- Publication type
Article