Intertextuality in Yu. Dombrovsky’s novel The Birth of a Mouse

Abstract

The article examines the features of intertextual references in Yu. Dombrovsky’s The Birth of a Mouse. The purpose of the research is to study the intertextual connections of the novel with the works of Russian and foreign classical literature. The objective is to interpret the sources of references. The work is based on the method of comparing the text of a novel with pre-texts, elements of conceptual and contextual analyses. Among the various pre-texts, the works of Shakespeare, Zhukovsky, Venevitinov, Pushkin, Lermontov, Blok, Khodasevich, Merezhkovsky, Utkin, and Pasternak can be mentioned. The story “The Swan Princess,” which is an integral part of the novel, clearly reflects the influence of Ivan Turgenev’s novel First Love. The similarities are noted at the level of the narrative plot organization, the means of creating the main characters’ images, and individual motifs. The conclusion is made about the imitative nature of the story, which does not prevent it from remaining an important compositional part of the genre that is unusual for Dombrovsky. It may also suggest a period of literary apprenticeship of the author. A conclusion is drawn based on the results of the conducted research that literary allusions to the works of the world and Russian literature classics create a special associative field, the main elements of which are epigraphs, quotations in the title of a part of a literary work, and the introduction of direct and indirect quotations into the speech and inner monologues of characters. Literary allusions have such functions as characterological, referential, and evaluative, each of which elaborates the structure of a work and contributes to the disclosure of the author’s intention. In addition, the theoretical significance of the research lies in the opportunity to expand our understanding of the poetics of the novel and the peculiarities of Yu. Dombrovsky’s idiostyle.