著者

杉本 一直

出版者

日本ロシア文学会

雑誌

ロシア語ロシア文学研究 (ISSN:03873277)

巻号頁・発行日

no.26, pp.82-94, 1994-10-01

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In treating the style of E. Zamyatin, no critic can forget to refer to his elaborate use of imagery. Zamyatin's imagery shows a great variety and is constructed systematically, so we have to describe the examples as precisely as possible before offering any interpretation. It is also important, especially when comparring Zamyatin's imagery with that of his contemporary poets, to examine how his imagery functions in the narrative work, not in poetry. These crucial points have been often slighted by critics. No better material for analyzing Zamyatin's elaborate imagery could be found than in his short story The Cave (1920). In this work, metaphors, similes and metonymies are used systematically, or "integrally" as Zamyatin says in one of his essays, and construct an entire system of related images. The first example of "integral" use of imagery in The Cave can be found in the manner of description which superimposes two different images. In describing a certain scene or certain object, Zamyatin often presents a series of metaphors which the reader can naturally connect with one another. As a result of such association of metahphors, another scene or another object comes out, independent of the described scene or object. For example, a piece of scenery of a modern city is described by a series of connected metaphors which compel us to construct in our mind a scene in ancient times. Then, the two inconsistent scenes, modern and ancient, are superimposed on the same page, on the same lines. It must also be pointed out that Zamyatin places more stress on the association of metaphors than on the described things, so the former becomes the foreground and the latter the background. We can see such a manner of description slso in other works of Zamyatin. The second example of Zamyatin's elaborate imagery is a more dynamic one,the realization of metaphor. Mayakovsky and Khlebnikov, the poets contemporary with Zamyatin, often let metaphors be "realized" in their poetry, which means metaphors obtain bodids,bocome substantial and come to exist among other described objects. In general, realization of metaphor cannot be adopted in narrarive works, because it disturbs the consistency and order of the story. However, Zamyatin adopted it in his short stories, making it one of the major features of his works. IN The Cave we recognize Zamyatin's original process of realization of metaphor. The metaphor which has been realized cannot be a metaphor any longer, and becomes a neighboring object to the protagonist. Zamyatin then uses this object as a metonymy for the protagonist's wavering state of mind by making the object transform or move in an eccentric way. This process of realization of metaphor, on one hand, shows the function of promoting the principle of equivalence to the device of contiguity, which R. Jakobson calls "the poetic function," and on the other hand, it demonstrates a possibility of dynamic use of imagery in the third-person narratives. In The Cave, which is narrated in the third-person style, the metaphors produced in the course of interior monologue by the protagonist become realized and promoted to metonymies in the discoutse by the narrator. This process means that pieces of imagery are handed over from the protagonist to the narrator. In this way Zamyatin has adopted and evolved the realization of metaphor in his narrative work. These are the examples of analysis of Zamyatin`s use of imagery. The points of view presented above will surely help us when comparing his use of imagery with that of his contemporary poets more closely, or when comparing his style with another writer's.