Вне и внутри спичечной коробки: вопросы поэтики «Истории Давида» в романе «Жизнь и судьба»

Kalavszky, Zsófia (2016) Вне и внутри спичечной коробки: вопросы поэтики «Истории Давида» в романе «Жизнь и судьба». In: Grossman Studies / Grossmanovskii sbornik. EDUCatt, Milano, pp. 107-119. ISBN 978-88-9335-095-2

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Abstract

The part of Vasily Grossman’s novel Life and Fate dedicated to the depor - tation of Ukrainian Jews and their execution in gas chambers is one of the most important sections of the novel. The section I call David’s story is the most semantically dense part of the novel. In this story - within - the - story we can observe how Grossman’s novel discourse functions at an al - most poetic level . In the story of David and the pupa / puppet (куколка , кукла) he is saving in a matchbox, the word pupa and its variants become a complex theme ( a motif ) through repetition, which el evates the individual story of the Jew - ish boy’s being rounded up in a ghetto, getting entrained and finally gassed to a mythical level. In the narrative structure and semantic world of the “story - within - the - story” the gradual isolation of the boy and his s lowly being killed, i.e. his deportation and death, take place multiple times before his death, his becoming a puppet (кукла) in the gas chamber actually takes place in the story. At the same time, the pupa (куколка) never appears on its own in the world o f the novel, only in the enclosed space of the matchbox . This space keeps symbolically repeating the world of truck, wagon, ghetto, concentration camp, gas chamber, grave, coffin traversed by David and appearing in the story ( line of equivalence ) , while at the same time this enclosed space also denotes hiding place, cradle, womb , which have a positive connotation, of - fering refuge. Based on the above, the other member of the semantic pair, pupa (куколка) , becomes a symbol of dead bodies, persecuted/outcast/d eported people, newborns, and ultimately a symbol of the foetus. In the image of the matchbox and the immobile pupa lying in it, and in the way this complex reference also chronologically unfolds in the story, the states of being alive and dead , as well as being real and imaginary , and ultimately the mo - ment of birth and death and the metamorphosis between one and the A BSTRACTS 432 other are projected onto each other. In other words, the above - men - tioned multiplication of meanings in this story - within - the - story also ap - pear s as a course of life that appears as a linearly, chronologically unfolding s tory.

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