Tolstaian times

traversals and transfers

Helena Goscilo

pp. 36-62

in: Sheelagh Duffin Graham (ed), New directions in Soviet literature, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1992

Abstract

During one of his habitual meditations on history, Yuri Trifonov reportedly stated, "Time imposes its frame on a man, but it is within a man's power to widen the frame, if only slightly."¹ In her fiction Tat"iana Tolstaia not only widens the frame, but packs within it an assortment of experiences that insistently push against the restraining contours and, on occasion, actually extend our vision beyond the frame. The multi-layered apperception of time in Tolstaia's fictional universe assimilates manifold temporal concepts, variously designated as folk-loric or mythic; "monumental" (Ricoeur);² "pure" or "experienced" (Bergson);³ and "great" (Bakhtin).⁴ Tolstaia's highly complex handling of time originates in her syncretism — her propensity to condense elements from disparate sources into maximally compressed texts that usually narrate metonymical lives illustrative of timeless configurations.

Cited authors

Bergson Henri

Ricoeur Paul

Bachtin Michajl