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Topical Issues of the Theory of Supertext: Literary Aspect. Text Unity as Supertext

Kur'yanov Sergei Olegovich

ORCID: 0000-0002-7299-9568

Doctor of Philology

Head of the Department of Russian and Foreign Literature, V. I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University

295007, Russia, Republic of Crimea, Simferopol, Vernadsky ave., 2

so_k@inbox.ru
Other publications by this author
 

 
Aleksandrova Irina Viktorovna

ORCID: 0000-0003-3739-2493

Doctor of Philology

Professor of the Department of Russian and Foreign Literature, V. I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University

295007, Russia, Republic of Crimea, Simferopol, Vernadsky ave., 2, room 213

iva-510@mail.ru
Ivanova Natal'ya Pavlovna

ORCID: 0000-0001-8330-2669

Doctor of Philology

Professor of the Department of Russian and Foreign Literature, V. I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University

295007, Russia, Republic of Crimea, Simferopol, Vernadsky Ave., 2

n-p-ivanova@yandex.ru
Other publications by this author
 

 
Kur'yanova Valeriya Viktorovna

ORCID: 0000-0001-7570-1926

PhD in Philology

Associate Professor of the Department of Russian and Foreign Literature, V. I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University

295007, Russia, Republic of Crimea, Simferopol, Vernadsky ave., 2

kuryanova_v@mail.ru
Other publications by this author
 

 

DOI:

10.25136/2409-8698.2022.12.39384

EDN:

ZSXJRO

Received:

12-12-2022


Published:

30-12-2022


Abstract: In this article, the subject of research is a system of integrated texts (supertext) as textual unity. The purpose of the study is to specify the terminology and clarify the features of some aspects of textual unity, in particular, to clarify the concepts of the core and its structural components, as well as to solve some other theoretical questions, the answers to which today determine clarity in the identification, classification and interpretation of supertexts. In questions of the theory of supertext, the methodological basis of the study was the work of V. N. Toporov, N. A. Kupina and G. V. Bitenskaya, N. E. Mednis, A. G. Loshakov, in questions of the theory of the literary cycle — the work of M. M. Girshman, I. V. Fomenko, V. V. Vinogradov, A. A. Slyusar, Yu. V. Lebedev, V. G. Odinokov, A. S. Yanushkevich, M. N. Darwin, V. I. Tyupa, L. E. Lyapina, E. Yu. Afonina, O. G. Egorova, and others, in questions of the theory of collective-author text unity — the work of Yu. M. Lotman. The study clarifies the concept of the core of text unity, describes the components of different forms of text unity, based on their classification proposed by A. G. Loshakov, and refined by this scientific work. All this speaks of the novelty of the study, which continues the general theory of supertext. The development of the theory of such a variety of supertext as text unity not only contributes to the further study of its various aspects, clarification of their functions, but also indicates new approaches to large text formations, since, generated by creative writers, they not only recreate the world, but also form a picture world assimilated by the perceiving consciousness.


Keywords:

supertext, textual unity, core of textual unity, components of textual unity, individual-author's supertext, collective-author's supertext, cycle, author's collection, journal, almanac

This article is automatically translated.

This study is a logical continuation of the previous article, which was devoted to identifying the specific features of the associative-semantic supertext [9]. In this case, the subject of the study is a supertext based on other principles — textual unity. The purpose of the study is to delineate the boundaries and clarify the features of some aspects of textual unity, to specify terminology, to clarify the concepts of the core of textual unity and its structural components, as well as to solve some other theoretical questions related to textual unity, on the answers to which clarity in the identification, classification and interpretation of supertexts depends today.

 

Textual unity: general remarks and boundary issues. "The typology of supertexts," writes A. G. Loshakov, "... cannot be built on the basis of homogeneous features" [14, p. 236]. Making this statement, the researcher sagaciously emphasizes the difference between the associative-semantic type of the supertext and such a kind of supertext as textual unity, but for some reason does not distinguish between them.

Considering "the same sets of texts in different aspects, combinations and ratios" [12, p. 51] and undertaking the classification of supertexts, A. G. Loshakov began this classification with the author's supertexts, while highlighting "the author's own supertexts" (among which "1) individually-authored; 2) collectively-authored; 3) anonymous-authorial" [12, p. 52], and quasi-authorial supertexts.

"The author's own supertexts," the researcher writes, "are combinations of texts by one or more authors, including cases when the author is a generalized person, the people as the author" [12, p. 52]. That is why, according to A.G. Loshakov, this includes individually authored texts ("all texts of a particular author(s); texts written by him (them) during a certain period of creativity, on a certain topic, dedicated to a particular person") [12, p. 52], collectively -the author's ("supertexts-magazines, supertexts-newspapers, supertexts-collections <...> the integrity of many such supertexts is motivated by the common ideological position of the collective author (or team of authors, editorial staff), a kind of engagement (the Moscow Telegraph of the Field brothers, the collection "Milestones", Tvardovsky's "New World")" [12, p. 52]) and anonymous-authorial ones, which he singles out after N.A. Kupina and G.V. Bitenskaya ("supertexts with a generalized anonymous author's position (as examples, researchers call supertexts about Stirlitz and Muller, about Vasily Ivanovich; supertexts-slogans), as well as supertexts with a generalized characterized image the author (as an example, the camp poetry of the Stalin era is called)" [12, pp. 52-53]). "Quasi—authorial supertexts," the researcher writes, "... can be called those that arise in publishing practice. These are so-called compiled supertexts: various collections, almanacs, collections, periodicals, the layout of which was not made by the author" [12, p. 53]. It should also be said that A.G. Loshakov rightly writes about the "diffuseness" of the "boundaries between collective authorial and quasi-authorial supertexts" [12, p. 53], since, indeed, it is difficult to draw a line between those journals in which the editorial position is certainly noticeable, and those where this position is less noticeable, unless, of course, it is not Nekrasov's "Contemporary" (1846-1863) and A. T. Tvardovsky's "New World" (1958-1970) (about the latter, we note that the poet was the editor-in-chief of this magazine in 1950-1954, but when they talk about Tvardovsky's "New World", they mean precisely the second period of his editorship consequently, the editorial position is not always pronounced).

The logic of the modern view of the type of supertext that is associated with the personality of the author requires, apparently, to abandon the division into collective authorial and quasi-authorial supertexts, since there are no clear boundaries between the concepts and there are no criteria by which it would be possible to determine how one phenomenon "flows" into another and vice versa, and also, to abandon the allocation of anonymous authorial supertexts, which are (if we continue the logic of the cited researcher) only a special case of collective authorial supertexts.

It should be noted that all these types of supertexts are an example of textual unity. In modern research , the concept of supertext unity is usually used [3] [6] [18] [21], but it seems to us more correct to speak specifically about textual unity, since a supertext unity is a unity of supertexts.

So, we can talk about individually-authored and collectively-authored textual units as variants of the author's own supertext. Moreover, in the polemic with A. G. Loshakov, it seems to us that if it is possible to comprehend everything written by the author (or co-authors who have become inseparable in the reader's consciousness: brothers Ya. and V. Grimm, Kozma Prutkov, brothers J. and E. Goncourt, I. A. Ilf and E.P. Petrov, brothers A. A. and G. A. Weiners, brothers A. N. and B. N. Strugatsky, etc.) as a single supertext, which includes not only artistic works, but also journalism, memoiristics, epistolary, scientific works (in the case, for example, with M. V. Lomonosov or — albeit to a lesser extent! — with V. A. Obruchev, Umberto Eco, E. G. Vodolazkin, etc.), — this is how, in fact, we perceive the writer's (and not only writer's) heritage, — in this case, the boundaries of the supertext are so blurred, and the supertext itself is seen as so extensive that all sense of its identification and statement disappears. The more blurred will be the boundaries, "when the author is a generalized person, the people as the author" [12, p. 52]. If we take folklore, then despite the fact that its layer in the perceiving consciousness is always a kind of unified whole, it is hardly possible to perceive this phenomenon as a special supertext due to its vastness.

It is another matter if we are talking about a number of works by the author(s), which are cycles or genre groups — the latter is especially important for folklore, which reflects the clusters of worldview characteristic of archaic consciousness (see the article by M. A. Novikova [17], whose position we share only partially), as for example, Kiev or Novgorod epics (which are cycles), ritual or historical songs, conspiracies (which are genre formations), etc.

Turning to literary works, we can hardly say about the romantic or tragic overtext. Yes, in the reader's mind, the novel as a genre is something generalized and evokes almost the entire set of works read from Long and Apuleius to M. Houellebecq and J. E. Franzen. Everything, of course, is caused not so much by the transformation of the genres themselves (which is certainly happening), but by the transformation of public consciousness, which, changing, loses its former archaic attitudes, nevertheless glimpsing in genre forms, which, in fact, speaking of the "memory of the genre", M. M. Bakhtin wrote: "The literary genre by itself by its nature, it reflects the most stable, “age-old” trends in the development of literature. The undying elements of the archaic are always preserved in the genre. However, this archaic, so to speak, is preserved in it only thanks to its constant updating, modernization. The genre is always the same and not the same, always old and new at the same time. The genre is revived and updated at each new stage of the development of literature, in each individual work of this genre. This is the life of the genre. Therefore, the archaic that persists in the genre is not dead, but eternally alive, i.e. capable of being updated. The genre lives in the present, but it always remembers its past, its beginning. Genre is a representative of creative memory in the process of literary development. That is why, in order to properly understand the genre, it is necessary to rise to its origins" [1, pp. 178-179]. As M. N. Lipovetsky correctly noted, "the solution to the phenomenon of "genre memory" is located on the border of life and art, at the point of transition of life into art" [10, p. 7]. M. Ya. Polyakov concretizes: "Genre memory is a recollection of the types of collisions of various epochs, foundations and their expression in everyday and psychological depiction of human behavior, about the very types of building an artistic image of this behavior. But these types of images of interhuman connections at the same time retain residual phenomena of previous periods, moreover, in the work there is a comparison of what was (as an ideal or anti-ideal) and what is" [19, p. 252].

M. A. Novikova states: "Genres are significant situations of "life" fixed in the ritual, then whole chains of such situations (scenarios, proto-plots). From the plastic “theater of life” (where there could be no verbal text at all or it could be minimal), from the exclamations-“cries” of the presenter and “responses” of the other participants, dramatic and lyrical genres were born. The retelling of the situational chain when teaching ritual behavior gave rise to myths — later, epic genres" [17, p. 75].

It seems quite logical to us that considering the works of O. M. Freudenberg [24], a representative of the Soviet "paleontological" school, and G. N. Fry [25] [26], a representative of the Canadian school of "ritualists", devoted to the origins of the formation of literary genres, M. N. Lipovetsky naturally writes that "the developed by them, the concept of the primitive worldview model, the original artistic, and in particular genre semantics, characterized by such fundamental features as integrity, universality and harmony of world perception, forms an essential link in the very foundation of the theory of “genre memory", revealing the unique essence of archaic genre semantics, largely explaining the functional significance of subsequent literary returns to archetypes genre" [10, p. 13], but (we will add from ourselves) only returns, since genre forms were modified as they developed. And it is quite obvious that the genre, despite its formal and substantive nature, has been losing and losing its content component in the process of evolution, which has gradually become largely formalized. That is why today there is a convergence of texts not on their content side, but on the formal side. At the same time, any text is primarily a meaningful category. And since the supertext arises in the perceiving consciousness as a unity of various heterogeneous texts according to their content properties, therefore, unlike folklore and ancient (storing archaic meanings), literary genre forms cannot form a supertext.

Therefore, it is necessary, apparently, to formulate the definition of a supertext — textual unity as follows: textual unity is an author's (individual author's or collective author's) system of integrated texts, which is characterized by a clearly expressed single modal attitude and is perceived identically by the author's and reader's consciousness due to the commonality of the cultural code.The core of textual unity.

 

Just like an associative semantic supertext, textual unity is built around the center (core). But in this case it is impossible to talk about a "figuratively and thematically designated center" [16]. As already mentioned, in the associative-semantic supertext, such a center is a nationally (globally, culturally) significant concept. In textual unity, this is not the case. The genesis of textual unity is different and significantly differs from the genesis of associative semantic supertext. The associative-semantic supertext is born in the perceiving consciousness and only then is fixed by the interpreter. Textual unity as a supertext is a product of the author's consciousness (individual or collective, but author's), so here the researcher only fixes and only partially interprets the explicit or implicit author's intention. That is, the author deliberately emphasizes (even if unconsciously) the intertextual connections in textual unity, thanks to which this kind of supertext is born.

Thus, it turns out that the core of textual unity is the author's idea, which materializes in its final form into the author's idea, which, using the structural properties of textual unity and artistic means, forms a supertext.

It is important that this happens not only with the author's collection or cycle of works (novels, short stories, lyrical cycle, etc.), but also if the writer did not set himself the goal of collecting certain works into a single whole (the supertext of the writer's heritage, the so-called unassembled cycles). In the latter case, the supertext is formed around the author's ideological and artistic vector (there is no author's idea here, but there is an author's idea) and is perceived by the reader as a textual unity. Let us recall the Denisiev cycle of F. I. Tyutchev, the works of A. S. Green, who formed their fictional topos — Greenland, the "Great Pentateuch" by F. M. Dostoevsky, etc. In the case of referring to the textual unity of the author's heritage, it seems necessary to clarify: not the author's idea, but the evolution of the author's ideas is in this case the core of the supertext.

In collective-authorial supertexts (textual units), the core is the collective-author's position — an aesthetic and ideological attitude, most often expressed in the program documents of the collective (the program of the magazine, almanac, collection, literary manifesto, etc.) or not documented, but accepted in the community. The latter also applies to anonymous collective authorial supertexts (textual units), since they are formed and mostly exist within a certain community that has its own views and artistic attitudes, its own aesthetics and ideology, its own cultural principles (subculture). In this case, the role of the researcher-interpreter increases, whose task becomes to identify this position.

So, for example, starting the publication, the editorial board of the magazine "Satyricon" (1908-1914) under the heading "Dialogue with the reader" clearly outlined its program: "We will whip and mercilessly scourge all the lawlessness, lies and vulgarity that reign in our political and public life… Laughter, a terrible poisonous laughter, like the stings of scorpions, will be our weapon" [see: 7, p. 38]. But more often, due to political reasons, the collective author's position was not documented (the exception is the journals of the Silver Age and the early Soviet era), and in this case the publisher or editor of the journal (almanac) acted as the bearer of this position - in fact, the bearer of this program. Such, for example, was M. P. Pogodin in "Moskvityanin" (1841-1856), N. A. Nekrasov in "Sovremennik" (1846-1863), M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in "Domestic Notes" (1878-1884), A. T. Tvardovsky in "New World" 1958-1971.

 

Structural components of textual unity. It is much more difficult to distinguish the structural components of the textual unity than the components of the associative-semantic supertext, since the textual unity depends to a lesser extent on the perceiving consciousness, and is formed primarily in the consciousness of the creator and reproducer, that is, in the consciousness of the author, editor, compiler.

Therefore, here, apparently, we should talk about the structural components of different variants of textual units (implying, of course, the possibility of their similarity), no matter how difficult it may be to distinguish them.

We should also keep in mind that, unlike associative-semantic supertext, textual unity always (or, if I may say so, conditionally always) has a closed structure: it is impossible to add new texts to its composition, since their circle is defined and fixed by the author. Some exception is the so-called unassembled loop, which is detected and collected by interpreters, so there are possible options here. The author's collection, which is not completely structured, belongs to the same type of textual unity, which is most often associated with the physical death of the author, as a result of which work on the collection is continued either by one of his close associates, or by an editor-interpreter, to whom the manuscript falls after a while.

 

Structural components of the author's own textual unity. About the "extremely minimal form" of textual unity.

Without going into details, but considering this phenomenon to be certainly important for understanding the features of textual unity, we will briefly state the thoughts of A. G. Loshakov on the issue of the "extremely minimal form" of this type of supertext, referring the interested reader to the scientist's doctoral dissertation [14, pp. 240-341].

According to the scientist, the "parody bitext" represents the extremely minimal form of textual unity (A. G. Loshakov's supertext). And we can agree with this, since the parodied literary object and the parody really are an example of a strong, if we use the terminology of the researcher, textual unity, are in close relationship. A. G. Loshakov, analyzing a number of parody texts in their relationship with the objects of parody and especially focusing on D. D. Minaev's feuilleton "Diary of a dark man", where his parody of A. A. Fet's poem "Whisper, timid breathing ..." — "Cold, dirty villages ..." was included, draws attention to the paratextual nature of this phenomenon, in particular, characterizing Minaev's feuilleton as an epitext (paratext elements that exist separately from the text itself: "preamble, notes, afterword, creating for parody a kind of hypertext structure — a system of explicit references; as well as a literary feuilleton, review, review, letter" [14, p. 340]), since Minaev not only parades the text of Fet, but also builds his ideological judgments and conclusions on it. As a result, A. G. Loshakov comes to the conclusion that "a parody text is an example of a strong synthetic supertext, the integrity of which is due to the incorporation of one semantic structure into another. The centering factor of meaning generation in a parody text is the genre comic modality, as well as the way of entering the verbal material imposed by the concept of the genre, in which the evaluation and status attitude of the parodist to both the prototext and the structural components of the discourse of which this prototext is a part is put forward, accentuated in its units. A parody text is a totality of integrated two or more texts that is subordinate to the communicative and pragmatic attitudes of the parody genre and, in each specific, unique case, to the pragmatic attitudes of its author.

The degree of connectivity of heterogeneous components within the framework of a single super-textual parody formation is enhanced by imitativeness, which makes the parody sign at least bitextual, as well as comic textual modality, which is realized through associative interaction, internal conflict of components, mostly bitextual, ambivalent, which simultaneously represent both the parodied text and the parodying text"[14, pp. 338-339].

A. G. Loshakov naturally writes about the subordination of the parody textual unity to a "single semantic installation (idea)" [14, p. 340], and this, of course, is the installation of the parodist-interpreter, since "at least two heterogeneous semantic structures are found at the basis of the parody text, one of which contains information about the primary act of literary communication — protodiscourse, prototext (parodied text), proto-author, which allows us to consider it as a kind of metonymized, collapsed prototext, the second, being a product of the parodist's meta-creative evaluative reflection, contains information about his system of values and normative representations and contains figurative-speech means evaluatively directed at the prototext" [14, pp. 340-341].

Thus, the core of such a parody bi (poly)the text is not so much the author's idea of the parodist (as it is clear, he could express it without resorting to parody), as the prototext (the parodied text), refracted by the critical view of the author-parodist. The components of such a supertext (textual unity) become the entire set of visual and expressive means, subordinate to the evaluative reflection of the parodist.

It is also necessary to pay attention to the fact that as a special variant of the "extremely minimal form" of textual unity, a bitext of a parodic nature, not a parody, should also be singled out. According to the observations of Yu. N. Tynyanov, parody is "the use of parodic forms in a non—parodic function. The use of a work as a layout for a new work is a very frequent phenomenon" [22, p. 290]. Russian Russian poet K. N. Batyushkov's poem "The Singer, or Singers in the Conversation of Lovers of the Russian Word" (1813) and the famous "Singer in the Camp of Russian warriors" (1812) by V. A. Zhukovsky, which served as the initial model (Batyushkov used genre, composition, poetic size, some episodes and images, down to individual expressions). The parodic form does not imply a parody-comic focus on the primary text, since the author's intention is far from ridiculing it, discrediting it. Such a bitext can be conditionally called one-sided, perceived as such only when taking into account the basic text. The task of the creator of a secondary work is an associative reference to a well—known text, and the fact of its recognition by readers is important for the author. This orientation to another work allows the author of a parodic text to operate "two semantic systems given on the same sign at once" [22, p. 290], which brings additional semantic connotations to the new text. The core of the emerging textual unity in this case, as in the case of parody, is the parodied text given through the prism of perception of another author, and the structural elements are a complex of artistic means that are related to both works, but placed in a different ideological and aesthetic context.

Cycle. Among the variety of analyzed textotypological systems, A. G. Loshakov also distinguishes cyclic textual unities, "cycloid formations" [12, p. 50]. Proceeding from the definition of the supertext as "a set of independent works of verbal art, perceived in textual activity as a holistic, unified conceptual and semantic formation" [15, p. 58] and relying on the classification of supertexts proposed by N. A. Kupina and G. V. Bitenskaya, A. G. Loshakov discovers the "typological identity of the phenomena of the supertext and the cycle" [12, p. 51]. However, if numerous semantic variants of the associative-semantic supertext (topical, nominal, event) are actively and thoroughly investigated by scientists, then the cycle in this sense was much less lucky. Thus, A. G. Loshakov's monograph "Supertext as a verbal and conceptual phenomenon" contains a very lapidary paragraph "Cycle as a kind of supertext" [13, pp. 189-194], while the author's conclusions about the nature of textual connections in a cyclic structure are far from indisputable.

The cycle as a result of the author's unification of individual works is a phenomenon found in all kinds of literature (N. V. Gogol's Mirgorod, M. Proust's In Search of Lost Time in epic, A. S. Pushkin's Little Tragedies, L. Petrushevskaya's Apartment in drama, G. Heine's Lyrical Intermezzo, "Snow Mask" by A. Blok — in the lyrics).

The artistic integrity and unity of the cycle are ensured by the kind-genre, aesthetic and problem-thematic community, the presence of a cross-cutting author's idea.

From the point of view of the ways of organizing textual unity, it is necessary to distinguish between collected and unassembled cycles. The first ones are created by the authors themselves, who determine the composition, structure and composition of the text unity of the cyclic type. They are characterized by the presence of a common title chosen by the author, the relative constancy of structural components in a number of publications. The composition of the unassembled cycles is determined by publishers, interpreters, and therefore it should be borne in mind the conditional variability and lack of strict composition of such textual units (the "Kamennoostrovsky" cycle of A. S. Pushkin, "Denisievsky" — F. I. Tyutchev, "Panaevsky" — N. A. Nekrasov, the cycle of "Little Russian" stories of O. M. Somov, etc.).

Lyrical cycle. The special ontological status of a lyrical work determines the greatest prevalence of the phenomenon of cyclization in this literary genus.

The collected cycle presupposes the purposeful unification of individual poems by the poet into a cyclic structure, marked by the commonality of ideological-aesthetic and motif-thematic dominants, the presence of the logic of compositional construction. Speaking of lyrical cycles, one should also take into account the cycle-forming role of vocabulary. In addition, M. M. Girshman emphasizes the unifying function of rhythm: "of course, the lyric cycle has a kind of rhythmic unity integrating metrically diverse heterogeneous poems, and this unity <...> can be considered as a kind of "poetic analogue" to the coverage of different "languages", styles, speech genres, voices and consciousnesses in a single prose integrity" [4, p. 305].

Thus, the core of the lyrical cycle as a textual unity is the author's idea. I. V. Fomenko notes that "the relationship between an individual poem and a cycle can ... be considered as the relationship between an element and a system" [23, p. 28]. Each separate component of the lyrical cycle (poem), without losing its independence, but at the same time, in the neighborhood of other poems, acquiring additional semantic connotations, is "embedded" in a single idea, crystallized as a result into a whole author's concept, which, through the structural properties of textual unity and a complex of visual and expressive means, is formed into a supertext. The whole set of lyrical works of the cycle forms a single internal plot.

The so-called unassembled cycles, perceived by interpreters as a textual unity, are not characterized by a rigid connection of poems with each other, a certain fragmentarity is characteristic. The formation of the supertext here is carried out not by the implementation of the author's idea, but, as already mentioned, along the line of identifying the author's ideological and artistic vector. With the exception of this circumstance, the same factors as in the author's lyric cycle serve as the basis for combining poems into a cycle. It is the author's cumulative intentionality that becomes the basis for identifying internal connections between individual poems and modeling textual unity.

A cycle of short stories (novellas).In literary studies, there is a significant number of works covering the theory and history of cyclization of small epic genres (V. V. Vinogradov, Yu. V. Lebedev, V. G. Odinokov, A. S. Yanushkevich, M. N. Darwin, V. I. Tyupa, L. E. Lyapina, E. Yu. Afonina, O. G. Egorova, etc.). However, from the perspective of the theory of supertext, such cycles as individual author's textual unities and their variants have relatively recently come into the focus of modern philological science.

A cycle with the author's textual fixation implies, on the one hand, a certain integrity, the strength of the "structure", the commonality of its elements, and on the other — relative independence, potential autonomy of its components. The relative "emancipation" of the texts included in the cycles as a textual unity is confirmed primarily by the fact that their authors often published these stories and stories in magazines and almanacs as independent works, without indicating involvement in certain cyclic formations. However, after a while, these texts were collected by their creators into a single structure, an ordering (unifying) function in which framing (if available) and general subordination to the author's end-to-end idea played.

The basic quality of the cyclic structure is the repeatability of phenomena or situations, their variation. In the case of a cycle, we are dealing with a two-vector orientation of writer's creativity: with the creation, firstly, of individual works and, secondly, of a model common to all of them. This feature gave rise to A. A. Slyusar concluded that "a cycle is a set of variants in which their invariant is revealed" [20, p. 228]. The validity of this observation is confirmed by the analysis of specific cycles. Thus, in A. S. Pushkin's "Belkin's Stories" (1830), the theme of belonging of the older and younger generations to different worlds varies, turning into a conflict of "fathers" and "children" and actualizing at its highest point the motif of the "prodigal daughter". In Gogol's "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka", the motif of the loss of harmony by the world gets artistic expression in the confrontation of generations, and on the other hand — in the internal conflict of personality, which takes on a fantastic form of a person's struggle with dark forces.

The nature of the relationship in cyclic-type textual units differs from the relationships in the topical, nominal or event-based supertext. Two types of connections are established between the works in the structure of the cycle: synonymy and antonymy, similarity and contrast. So, in A. Pogorelsky's cycle "The Double, or My Evenings in Little Russia" (1828), the stories told by Anthony can be perceived semantically identical, they are in obvious semantic opposition to the stories of the Double, in turn, internally synonymous. The variation of similar phenomena forms an idea of their regularity, and their opposition to phenomena of the opposite order — about the complexity and diversity of the world. The artistic integrity of the cycle, therefore, is connected not only with likeness, but also with difference, likeness. This is how dialogicity is organized within the cycle, the dialectical principle of communication (attraction — repulsion) is formed. A similar system of internal connections is also demonstrated by M. N. Zagoskin's cycle "Evening on the Hopra" (1834). The stories that make up his story, on the one hand, vary the idea of the presence of the supernatural in the real world ("Unexpected Guests", "Two Daughters—in-law", "Concert of Demons"), and on the other hand, call it into question (for example, the plot of the story "White Ghost" is based on an obvious hoax). However, these relations are not so straightforward: in the stories telling about the collision of a person with evil spirits, with the infernal world ("Pan Tvardovsky", "Night Train"), one can see an attempt at a dual interpretation of the events taking place — mysterious and rationalistic, which is characteristic of the "veiled" fiction of the time of Romanticism.  The complex interaction of similarity and contrast is also characteristic of the structural components of "Motley Fairy Tales with a Red Word" (1833) by V. F. Odoevsky, demonstrating an oxymoronic combination of fantastic and social-everyday principles, humor and didacticism.

When analyzing the cycles of small epic genres as an artistic phenomenon, it is logical to ask the question: in what relations are the part (component) and the whole in the cycle? As it seems, the simultaneous centrifugal and centripetal orientation of the phenomena depicted is established here: the first is associated with the localization of the point of view in the figure of the "author", "narrator", "publisher"; the second is with its fragmentation, provided by the presence of several narrators (the mentioned cycles of M. N. Zagoskin and A. S. Pushkin, "Russian Nights" V. F. Odoevsky, "Evenings on Karpovka" by M. S. Zhukova, etc.). Thus, the externally fragmentary nature of individual structural elements of the "Russian Nights" by V. F. Odoevsky, including philosophical disputes of friends Viktor, Vyacheslav and Rostislav about the problems of being, is overcome by the presence of Faust — the alter ego of the author, which provides a deep connection of the components of the formed textual community. In Belkin's Novels, the cyclical role of a dummy author, a reteller of other people's stories, is also extremely important, but, as follows from the preface "From the publisher", each of the stories has its own source, its own "author" (the girl K. I. T., titular adviser A. G. N., etc.), whose personality is manifested in the choice the plot and its emotional tone. At the same time, the analyticity of each particular story (story) of a particular cycle does not contradict the cumulative aspiration of its texts to synthesis, which allows writers to give a more complete, holistic view of reality compared to that provided by the meaning of individual structural components of cyclic education. The unifying principle, constituting the integrity of the entire work, is the subjective author's position, which permeates the entire artistic fabric of the cycle.

A strong integrating principle can be observed in the cycle (cycles of A. Pogorelsky, M. N. Zagoskin, "Russian Nights" V. F. Odoevsky, "Evenings on Karpovka" by M. S. Zhukova, etc.). This integration is carried out by strengthening the role of framing: it motivates the inclusion of plot—independent texts into a single artistic system, significantly increases in volume (for example, in A. Pogorelsky - a third of the entire volume of the cycle) and performs by no means a service function, often becoming equal from the initial auxiliary component, equivalent in relation to the stories that make up the cycle. Without this quality of the "frame", the cycle would gravitate towards the form of a collection: it would have its own structure, composition, internal logic, but the connections between its constituent parts would be largely weakened. The synthesizing principle in the cycle is one or another author's idea, which is embodied in his artistic whole.

Along with cycles with a rigid structure, the literature also knows cyclical formations of a less strict structural organization. Thus, the structural components of the "Motley Fairy Tales" by V. F. Odoevsky is "stitched" together by a common narrator — a "little man", an eccentric scientist, writer and collector of stories Irinej Modestovich Homozeyka. However, this image appears only in two preliminaries sent to the stories — "From the publisher" and "The writer's Preface", appearing only once on the pages of the cycle; there are no external "staples" between the individual stories of the cycle, and the order of their arrangement in textual unity is not so significant for the realization of the author's concept of reality.

Thus, narrative cycles are variants of individually authored textual units. Their integrity is initially set by the writer's idea, the thematic community of the components of cyclic education, their common subordination to the author's end-to-end idea, stylistic unity and aggregate modality. Consequently, the core for cyclic education is a certain author's idea, which, with the help of structural properties of textual unity and a complex of artistic means, is finally formed into a concept, serving as a unifying, "collecting" factor. The functions of the structural components are individual stories or stories that develop specific plots, realizing in their synthesis the author's point of view on the problem posed in the cycle. The type of connection of the components of the cycle has a dialectical character, is complicated by the interaction of variation and antithesis, the presence of centrifugal and centripetal impulses. Only the integrity, the totality of structural components, and not any of the components reflects the individual author's picture of the world. The individual, specific character of each particular cycle is formed by the author's value, pragmaesthetic intentions, features of the individual-figurative system, its appeal to certain elements of the linguistic and textual conceptual spheres, stylistic unity.

That is also why, contrary to the ideas of A. G. Loshakov, the category of "supertext unity" is hardly applicable to the cycle as such: the supertext is characterized by such a quality as openness ("a complex system of integrated texts having a common extra-textual orientation, forming an open unity marked by semantic and linguistic integrity" [16, p. 9]).  "... the "collected" supertext is, as a rule, a closed—type supertext (its texts are known, their number is determined and they have a compact form of representation)" (highlighted by A. G. Loshakov. — Authors) [12, p. 54]. The openness of the so-called unassembled cycle is very relative (especially if it means the unification of the works of the deceased author by interpreters into a whole). With regard to the cycle, it is more logical to talk about textual unity, rather than a supertext structural formation.

Author's collection. An author's collection is a collection of works by one author, compiled by himself or by third—party compilers. If compiled by the author himself, the structure of the collection acquires the property of closure: its composition is determined, the incorporation of new texts into it is impossible. On the other hand, individual works of such a collection can be previously published in magazines, almanacs, newspapers, as well as introduced into a later textual unity prepared for publication by the author himself (various kinds of "favorites" containing poems, essays, stories created by the author in different years, but after a while brought together under one cover). In any case, the writer /poet, combining his works, has in mind some kind of "common denominator", a certain semantic unity, the main idea, which is embodied in the whole collection with the help of a system of visual and expressive means.

The collection of works by one author compiled by the publisher, unlike the cycle (which, by the way, can be included in the collection), assumes an open series of works: it is able to change, be supplemented and continued. The presence of a certain number of texts in the collection, their association under any heading and arrangement in a strictly fixed order is not mandatory. The connections between the parts — the structural components of the collection are unstable, marked by variability. Often in such publications, the thematic or chronological principle prevails.

Collections of poems published by poets differ in the uniformity of their composition, if, for example, only lyrics are included there ("Magic Mountains" (1978), "Be Yourself" (1987) by A. Tarkovsky; "Casket and Key" (1994), "Contemplation of a Glass Ball" (1997) by B. Akhmadulina, "Wild rosehip" (1978), "Gates, windows, arches" (1986) by O. Sedakova and many others). The texts that make up them are homogeneous in generic, and often in genre terms. However, the collection may, along with poems, contain lyrical works and essays. Thus, O. Chukhontsev includes poems in the book "Wind and Ashes" (1989), but at the same time they are related to the complex of poems by the commonality of themes: man and history, his place in the tragic historical events of recent decades.

The attraction to experiment, characteristic of a number of authors, can give rise to such forms that we find, for example, in the works of A. Voznesensky. In his collections "Videoms" (1992), "Divination by the Book" (1994), including poems and prose, not only the text plays a significant role, but also the visual series, which contributes to the realization of the idea of the synthesis of arts. However, in any case, the author's intention turns out to be primary.

Speaking about the phenomenon of collections, A. G. Loshakov notes the following property as significant: "... In such supertexts, several vectors of semantic centering can be detected, between which various kinds of semantic relations, including polemical ones, will be created" [12, p. 53].

Interesting in this regard is N. V. Gogol's collection "Arabesques" (1835), which combined heterogeneous — artistic and non—artistic - works (novellas, fragments of an unfinished historical novel, articles on history, geography, Ukrainian folklore). In the collection, on the one hand, they oppose each other, and on the other hand, scientific and artistic, historical and modern, creative and everyday are built into a single system. Individual works can be perceived as fragments of the author's picture of the world, from which the whole is composed.  "Arabesques" fit perfectly into the romantic concept of the artist-scientist's book [for more details, see: 5, p. 272]. The formation of textual unity is carried out here on the basis of the author's idea and the subjective ideological position of the creator.

"Three Stories" (1835) and "New Stories" (1839) by N. F. Pavlova is also not just a sum of works. The plot basis of the collections is the clash of the heroes of all the stories with the secular environment rejecting him. The common property of all the structural components of both collections is their romantic poetics (intense plot, rapid action, unexpected denouements, passionate characters), associated with realistic content (attraction to a detailed depiction of reality, elements of the poetics of a physiological essay), the presence of semantic dialogue between texts, their "mirroring". However, the compositional arrangement of individual texts does not play a significant role here.

Thus, the collection, as a textual unity formed by the author himself, consciously, and sometimes unconsciously, emphasizes intertextual connections that allow articulating the main idea. She is the core of this variant of textual integrity. The author's attitude — to embody in the collection his attitude to certain phenomena of the external world, his own internal movements — determines the degree of coherence of disparate texts into a single whole. The formed textual community reveals the confrontation and unity of the particular and general plans, mosaic and synthesis, while the connections between the structural elements of the collection are weaker than in the cycle.

 

Structural components of the collective author's textual unity. Variants of collective author's text units are literary magazines, almanacs, collections. The fundamental difference between almanacs and journals is seen only in the absence of periodicity of their publication.

According to the typological classification of N. A. Kupina and G. V. Bitenskaya, there are uniformly and heterogeneously structured supertexts. The construction of the first involves texts that are homogeneous in generic, genre, functional and stylistic terms, and the second - texts that are heterogeneous [8, pp. 214-233]. This quality of the supertexts should be taken into account when analyzing the variants of the collective author's textual unity.

Thus, Yu. M. Lotman, describing the "Moscow Magazine" (1791-1792) by N. M. Karamzin, who published not only works of fiction of different genres, but also reviews, critical articles, theatrical analyses, notes: "the variety of materials <...> does not contradict the perception of the entire magazine as a whole as a single text — the publisher's monologue" [11, p. 211].

The almanac of the "natural school" "Physiology of Petersburg" (1845) also includes works that differ in genre and form: the analytical "Introduction" by V. G. Belinsky, his articles "Petersburg and Moscow", "Alexandrinsky Theater", physiological essays by D. V. Grigorovich, V. I. Dahl, E. P. Grebenki, I. I. Panaev, a poem by N. A. Nekrasov "The Official", a dramatic scene "Omnibus" by A. Ya. Kulchitsky (Govorilin), etc. The basis for combining works of various generic and genre nature under one cover is the attitude towards sociality and the study of morals, proclaimed by the ideological inspirer of the almanac V. G. Belinsky: "The content of our book ... is not a description of St. Petersburg in any respect, but its characteristic mainly from the side of the mores and peculiarities of its population" [2, p. 40] (highlighted by V. G. Belinsky. — Authors).

A. G. Loshakov identifies centralization, i.e. concentration of the author's attention on certain semantic points, as a mandatory principle of modeling of the supertext. In the space of the mentioned almanac, the allocation of a single semantic center turns out to be impossible. The centering of the supertext is carried out in two ways: on the basis of the concepts "Petersburg" and "physiology"; they have equivalent text—generating capabilities, and the choice of one or the other of them as a supertext (and, accordingly, the second - in the function of the subtext) is determined only by the research "optics" of the interpreter. In the first case, we get a variant of the "Petersburg text" of Russian literature, i.e. topical (in the works of A. G. Loshakov it is called local). The semantic attitude is no less determined by the second factor of centralization — the concept of "physiology", which determines the thematic content of the texts of the almanac associated with the image of the lower Petersburg, in which the authors see not just the habitat of the "humiliated and insulted", but the embodiment of their picture of the world. The commonality of themes and life material, the democratic and humanistic tendency, similar methods of everyday writing, the dominant dramatic modality form the integrity of this textual education. A similar situation is typical for the almanac "Petersburg Collection" (1846).

Heterogeneity and polyvector semantic centering distinguishes both almanacs and magazines of the twentieth century. For example, the literary, artistic, historical and cultural almanac "Laterna Magika" (1990) brings together poems and prose by contemporary writers, publications of works by A. Bely and M. Sabashnikova, translations from German and Latin by S. Averintsev, religious and philosophical article by Archpriest A. Me, journalism by D. Orwell. In the program "Forewarning", the editorial board formulated its aesthetic and ideological orientation (orientation to the traditions of the Silver Age), which ensures the integrity of the structure: "We are building a bridge to the highest civilization that Russia was at the beginning of this century <...> We gather under the banner of the Union of Arts all those who cherish the traditions of spirituality and humanism, whose gaze is hopefully directed to the past — a life-giving source of continuity of culture" [27, p. 3].

Thus, almanacs and journals are variants of the collective author's textual unity, organized according to the laws of cyclization. These are closed (with the exception of continuing editions) heterogeneously structured supertexts, the core of which is found in the aesthetic and ideological attitude of the authors' collective, and the structural components are texts of various genre-generic nature and degree of fictionality included in the publication. In their totality and connection, they form an integral literary and journalistic image of the reality of a particular period, comprehensively reflect the specifics of the spiritual quest of a certain community united around a particular publication.

 

Summing up, we note that textual unity, being one of two types of supertexts built on different principles and existing differently in the author's and reader's consciousness, is an author's (individually-author's or collectively-author's) system of integrated texts, which is characterized by a clearly expressed single modal attitude and is perceived identically by the author's and reader's consciousness thanks to the common cultural code.

The core of textual unity is the author's (editorial, interpretive) idea, which materializes in its final form into the author's (editorial, interpretive) idea, which, using the structural properties of textual unity and artistic means, forms a supertext.

Depending on the author's (editorial, interpretive) task, textual unity can take various forms. Individual author's textual units (a cycle of works, an author's collection, etc.) are integral and closed textual formations, which is initially set by the writer's idea, the thematic community of the components, the general subordination to the author's idea, stylistic unity and aggregate modality. Collective author's textual unities (an unassembled cycle, a collection compiled after the writer's death, an almanac, a magazine, etc.) are distinguished by heterogeneity and polyvector semantic centering. These are closed (with the exception of ongoing publications) heterogeneously structured supertexts, the core of which is found in the aesthetic and ideological attitude of the editor-interpreter or the team of authors.

The development of the theory of such a kind of supertext as textual unity contributes not only to the further study of its various aspects, clarifying their functions, but also indicates new approaches to large textual formations, since, generated by creative writers, they not only recreate the world, but also form a picture of the world, assimilated by the perceiving consciousness.

References
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2. Belinsky, V. G. (1984) Introduction. Physiology of St. Petersburg. Moscow, Soviet Russia, 31—41.
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Theoretical works are very useful for modern science. The authors, sometimes, do not address this facet, apparently due to the small systematization of sources. Therefore, the reviewed material is both an innovation, a form of opposition, and the so-called impulse for new strategically correct developments in the field of studying the text space. At the beginning of his work, the author is precise in his formulations, which is a sign of professionalism. In particular, it is noted that the subject of the study is a supertext based on other principles — textual unity. The purpose of the study is to delineate the boundaries and clarify the features of some aspects of textual unity, specify terminology, clarify the concepts of the core of textual unity and its structural components...". The focus on data verification, in my opinion, is quite justified, especially since "the logic of the modern view of the type of supertext that is associated with the personality of the author requires, apparently, to abandon the division into collective authorial and quasi-authorial supertexts, since there are no clear boundaries between the concepts and there are no criteria by which it would be possible to determine how one phenomenon "flows" into another and vice versa...". The introduced large data layer is attracted to the work, which is competently structured, it has been given the necessary critical assessment. The sources included in the work are relevant, modern, in demand – these are the works of M.M. Bakhtin, Y.M. Lotman, N.E. Mednis, M.M. Girshman, M.N. Lipovetsky, N.A. Kupina, I.V. Fomenko and other researchers. The article is differentiated into so-called semantic blocks, this allows the reader to move after the author, follow the internal logic of the development of thoughts. Judgments in the course of work are consistent, verified: for example, "thus it turns out that the core of textual unity is the author's idea, materializing in its final form into the author's idea, which, using the structural properties of textual unity and artistic means, forms a supertext," or "in collectively authorial supertexts (textual units), the core acts collectively-the author's position is an aesthetic and ideological attitude, most often expressed in the program documents of the collective (the program of the magazine, almanac, collection, literary manifesto, etc.) or not documented, but accepted in the community. The latter also applies to anonymous collective authorial supertexts (textual units), since they are formed and mostly exist within a certain community that has its own views and artistic attitudes...", or "thus, the core of such a parody bi (poly)The text is not so much the author's idea of the parodist (as it is clear, he could have expressed it without resorting to parody), as the proto-text (the parodied text), refracted by the critical view of the parodist author. The components of such a supertext (textual unity) become the entire set of visual and expressive means, subordinate to the evaluative reflection of the parodist," etc. The work is interesting, I believe that this material can be used in the development of a number of theoretical disciplines, a certain range of developments can be expanded in the format of new research projects. The examples that are introduced into the article as arguments and illustrations are quite appropriate, and they are different, which gives these elements texture. The main purpose of this essay has been achieved, the author managed to concretize a number of points concerning the concept of "supertext", clarify the principle of evaluation / analysis of this phenomenon, demonstrate the correctness of operations to establish the functional of "textual unity". In the final part, the author notes that "textual unity, being one of two types of supertexts built on different principles and existing differently in the author's and reader's minds, is an author's (individually authored or collectively authored) system of integrated texts, which is characterized by a clearly expressed single modal attitude and is identically perceived by the author and the reader's consciousness due to the common cultural code. The core of textual unity is the author's (editorial, interpretative) idea, which materializes in its final form into the author's (editorial, interpretative) idea, which, using the structural properties of textual unity and artistic means, forms a supertext." The result does not contradict the main part, it even outlines a new round of consideration of this category. The main requirements of the publication are taken into account, the work is independent, interesting, conceptual. I recommend the article "Current issues of the theory of supertext: a literary aspect. Textual unity as a supertext" for publication in the scientific journal "Litera".