The Inserted Novella in the Artistic Structure of the Novel “Gantenbein” by M. Frisch

Abstract

The article raises the problem of achieving artistic integrity of a literary work in the transition situation of the European prose from modernism to postmodernism. The features of the poetics of the M. Frisch’s novel “Gantenbein”, in particular the organization of the narrative, the composition of the plot and characters, are being discussed. Special attention is paid to stressed minor elements of art structure (inserted short stories, characters beyond the plot, peripheral details), which play a decisive role in the artistic whole of the experimental novel. It is with them that the author interprets the product, the original tips that allow the author's intention to be reconstructed. From this point of view the center and periphery change places, accentuating the invertedness of modern ideas about man, the world, the meaning of life.

The material of the novel “Gantenbein” analyzes the concept of man, proposed by the artistic discourse of the second half of the twentieth century. The study shows that the actualization of a lost value system, functionally provided with peripheral elements of art structure, is linked in the novel with a return to artistic integrity and correction of errors at the level of the artistic conception of the person. Such actualization, return and correction give new meaning not only to the problem of the quality of a literary work, but also to the concept of literary and artistic creativity.