Colonial discourse in the debut novel of ChingizAitmatov «Face to face» ..

Аннотация

This article explores a debut novel of Chingiz Aitmatov «Face to Face» regarding the semantic layers encoded in the text. In the foreground is the fate of a main character of the novel – Seyde. A young woman from a small village heroically withstands all the hardships of the war: separation from her beloved husband six months after the wedding, the birth of a son, hard male labor, hunger, caring for her old mother in law. Moreover, fate tosses her another test – responsibility for Ismail, her deserter husband. Seyde’s storyline is built according to the laws of socialist realism, because a woman at some point embarks on the path of «correction» – surrenders her husband to the authorities and helps to catch him in a very pathetic way: «And he did not recognize the former Seyde. That was another woman unfamiliar to him: a gray-haired woman with uncovered head, she stood fearlessly in front of him, holding son in her arms, she suddenly showed herself standing high, very high, inaccessible in her mournful greatness, and he became powerless and miserable.» In contrary, in the background is the fate of an old woman Beksaat, and actually this storyline represents one more semantic layer of Aitmatov’s novel and reveals the essence of a brutal colonial system. The author encodes a colonial discourse in the biography of the secondary character, the title of the story also refers to the family drama of Beksaat and her son and only figuratively reflects the final scene of the novel. The writer narrates about the consequences of repressions for a family, about the suffering and grief that continue to destroy generational succession, plunging the closest people into feuds – forcing Ismail to face not only himself, but also personal and collective traumas of the era. The writer’s personal tragedy also serves as an invisible background of the novel: fatherlessness, the fate of the son of the enemy, the difficult fate of the mother, who alone raised four children, the difficult years of the war. The debut novel of Chingiz Aitmatov is considered in the article from the colonial point of view, the semantic layers of the work are analyzed in line with literary psychoanalysis, intertextuality and taking into account general scientific interdisciplinarity. Thus, the article traces how the writer realizes his idea using the symbols and metaphors of the Kyrgyz culture, revealing the significance of generational succession for the family. According to the article authors, allusions to the biblical Ismail, which has gained even greater significance in the Quran, are also symbolic for the disclosure of the semantic layers of the novel. The aim of the study, therefore, is to identify the semantics and functions of poetics that implements the theme in the text of the writer.