THE IMPOSSIBLE NARRATOR

Authors

  • Jasmina Ahmetagić Institute for Serbian Culture, Prishtina - Leposavic

Keywords:

objective narration, omniscient narrator, focalization, focalizer, dramatized narrator, irony

Abstract

The article concerns the so-called objective, third-person narration in Dostoevsky’s novel The Doppelganger, a matter deemed unquestionable by literary science and thought to be the most demanding of tasks overcome by the writer when composing a novel about the ‘split personality’ phenomenon. By means of studying nuances of the narrative voice – which is to say, disrupting the objectivity and functionality of the act – we demonstrate that the focus is not on authoritative position in the narration, which significantly diversifies the former attitude on the value of The Doppelganger, as well as its identification merely with the psychological study of the case. The understanding of the relationship between the protagonist and narrator is of utmost importance for the complete significance and meaning of The Doppelganger, which was, in accordance with his theory on polyphony in Dostoevsky’s work, primarily indicated by M. Bachtin, accentuating the intrusion of the narrator’s voice into the protagonist’s awareness. However, that hardly concludes the elaboration of the complex relationship between the narrator and protagonist, so in denoting the changes in the narrator’s attitude towards the protagonist, we also unveil a reverse process which Bachtin has not mentioned: the intrusion of the protagonist’s awareness into narration, a process which has only been developed in the modern novel. Even though Dostoevsky’s ”doppelganger” represents a heroic figure, the impossible narrator of the novel (its impossibility stemming from the simultaneous usage of omniscience and dramatized voice, and by identification with the main protagonist’s perspective, the focalization gradually transferring from zero value to variable, while the distance in regard to the protagonist continually shifts) is a distant ancestor of the ”doppelganger” as the author figure, a phenomenon only to be developed in the 20th century.

References

Bahtin 2000: M. Bahtin, Problemi poetike Dostojevskog, prevela Milica Nikolić, Beograd: Zepter Book World.

Chizhevsky 1962: D. Chizhevsky, „The Theme of the Double in Dostoevskyˮ, Dostevsky: a collection of critical essays, edited by Rene Wellek, New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Dostojevski 1933: F. M. Dostojevski, Dvojnik, Izabrana dela, knj. 15, s ruskog prevela Ljudmila Mihailović, Beograd: Narodna prosveta.

Girard 1992: R. Girard, Ressurection from the Underground: Feodor Dostoevsky, edited and translated by James G. Williams, Michigan: Michigan State University Press.

Laing 1977: R. Laing, Podeljeno ja, Politika doživljaja, prevele Milica Mint, Jelena Stakić, Beograd: Nolit.

Paradis 2007: K. Paradis, Sex, Paranoia, and Modern Masculinity, New York: State University of New York Press.

Rank 1958: O. Rank, Beyond Psychology, New York: Dover Publication Inc.

Tymms 1949: R. Tymms, Doubles in Literary Psychology, Cambridge: Bowes & Bowes.

Published

06-30-2014

How to Cite

Ahmetagić Ј. (2014). THE IMPOSSIBLE NARRATOR. Nasleđe, 11(27), 33–44. Retrieved from http://nasledje.kg.ac.rs/index.php/nasledje/article/view/598