The short story The Prisoner of the Caucasus by Vladimir Makanin represents a great endeavor to reconstruct the geographical space of the Caucasus within Russian literature.Within this story,Makanin fictionalizes a Caucasian conflict that consumes humanity,serving not only as a prophecy of the First Chechen War in reality,but also as a ruthless deconstruction of the romanticized image of the Caucasus in Russian literary tradition.This paper interprets the alienation of individuals due to an absurd war as the outermost narrative track of the novel,i.e.,its overt plot,and seeks to unveil two covert progressions that unfold in parallel from beginning to end.These hidden narratives focus on the will to survive displayed by Russian soldiers Vovka and Rubakhin who rebel against an absurd war in their own distinctive ways.Through the triple narrative movement,Makanin constructs a narrative space characterized by"conquering beauty—pursuing beauty",thereby expressing dual authorial position on whether"beauty saves the world".Furthermore,Makanin extends the horizon of Caucasian literary space to"being responsible for beauty"in his novel Asan,moulding the war-tom Caucasus into a figure of the Other with an unfortunate face while issuing a command of responsibility to the Russian as"me".
关键词
马卡宁/《高加索俘虏》/隐性进程/文学地理学/他者
Key words
Vladimir Makanin/The Prisoner of the Caucasus/covert progression/literary geography/the Other
维普
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