Humanities & Social Sciences, Vol 9, No 5 (2016)

Art and Reality in Post-Modernistic Paradigm of Abraham Terts: “life situations” and “art situations”

G. Shomanova

Abstract


In the creative work of A. Terts (A.D. Sinyavsky) of the 60-s, post-modernistic representation of the issue of art and attitude to reality developed, it was preceded by literary-and-critical works.

The article educes the peculiarities of post-modernistic paradigm of “art and reality”, and its impact on the genre strategy of Terts. The egresses of cut-through citationality are reviewed from “The Voice from Choir” book to the poetics of “The Walk with Pushkin” and “In the shadow of Gogol” books.

The subject of the article is the impact of “fantastic realism” of the writer on pieces of work dedicated to art. As principles of “fantastic realism”, or poetics of “schizo-discourse” the duality of the hero, esthetics of the scary and the horrible, gothic, detective genre tactics, adventurous plots are analyzed. The typology of a “small person” of the 60-s is brought to light. The influence of jail experience of Terts on understanding and representation of art is shown.

The author established the technique of creating a secondary reality (parodying the concepts of post-structuralism); the peculiarity of author’s mystification and methods of imitating high style are characterized. The relation between the idea of aridness of art and standard poetics is identified which explains the domination of grotesque physiology.   

The essence of duality in Terts’ poetics is studied in the aspect of aberration and auto-biographism. As symbols of genre transformation, the fragmentary nature of writing, technique of arrangement are studied characterized by belonging to prison prose. The poetics of post-modernism with its receptive nature is analyzed in the context of literary game.