Poetics of the Epic Image in Works by Ivan Goncharov

Abstract

Ivan Goncharov’s poetics is distinguished by a special kind of organicity (according to N. I. Prutskov’s terminology, Goncharov’s ‘organic novel’). It allows one to consider a person in extremely close unity not only with the social environment but also with the natural-cosmic, religious and other aspects of life. An artist, in fact, depicts a person as part of concepts such as nature, space, national mentality, etc., taken and represented in an organic unity of simultaneous and joint manifestations in the human psyche (the coincidence of the psycho-biological rhythm of a person with small and large rhythms of the surrounding life and the universe). The writer shows these connections using the poetics of depicting a single rhythmic ‘pulsation’ of a person and the surrounding life, the poetics of depicting ‘organic repetitions’ (natural cycles of the seasons, morally significant toponymy, etc.) with the obligatory exit from cyclical repetition at the moment of ‘transformation’, a qualitative change toward spiritualization. Rhythmic repetitions are so obvious and artistically accentuated, and spiritual ‘breakthroughs’ are so microscopic (and by no means always obvious even to researchers) that it gives the impression of an epically unhurried, almost protracted narration. In this case, Goncharov, as an artist, is trying to base his poetics on the Parable of the Sower (‘A man scatters seed on the ground. <…> whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how’). This is how Goncharov sets and develops one of his main themes: God’s Mystery in man and the world.