This paper analyzes Trifonov's allusions in the finale of
There are many thematic, structural, compositional, and lexical
similarities between I have died, but you are still among the
living
Ja kon&chachek;ilsja, a ty
&zhachek;iva
). Trifonov introduces the first meeting of the
hero with his widow in the traditional form of the dream. The
symbolical meaning of this dream has been interpreted in different
ways. Reinhard Baumgard and Carolina De Maegd-Soep emphasize the
psychological aspect of the dream (De Maegd-Soep 1990:140; Baumgard
1976). David Gillespie focuses on the dream's social meaning and
implies that Trifonov is attacking the falsity of official Soviet
ideology through the dream's symbolism (Gillespie 1992:95). Natalia
Ivanova interprets the dream on a philosophical level (Ivanova
1984:208).
My contention is that the protagonist's widow, Ol&soft;ga, adopts a
new attitude toward life, which allows her to accept the tragedy of
the death of her husband, Sergej, peacefully, all because she finds
religious faith in immortality. Her jump,
as Ivanova
terms it, from the deadness and darkness of materialism to the light
of religious faith is expressed by Trifonov's strikingly different
approaches to the same metaphors and symbols in the two parts of the
novella's finale.
In the first part of the finale which describes Ol&soft;ga's dream, her meeting with Sergej takes place in a forest somewhere outside Moscow. The forest is dark and frightening. Ol&soft;ga and Sergej are desperately trying to find their way toward the light. In the second part of the finale, we learn that Ol&soft;ga often goes for a stroll to a pine forest outside Moscow, near the village of Spasskoe-Lykovo. The two parts of the finale are set in the same surroundings: a coniferous forest outside Moscow. However, the moods in which the forest is described differ drastically. In the first part of the finale the forest is a dark green, grim, oppressively humid fir thicket. These elements create an atmosphere of oppression and fear. In the second part, it is a bright green pine forest, growing in an open space; it is depicted in a calm, peaceful, and easy tone.
I argue that the transformation of the fearful uneasiness in the
first part of the finale into the enlightened tranquility of the
second results from the heroine's spiritual regeneration. Although the
world around her remains physically the same, she sees it in a
different manner. The motifs of deepening darkness, fear of
loneliness, and the anxiety of suffocation associate the fir forest in
her dream with death. In the dream, Ol&soft;ga and Sergej are
desperately trying to get out of the fearful darkness of death and
reach the brightness ahead,
another life
(Trifonov II: 358). They are hindered by many obstructions: a thicket
of conifers, numerous gullies and ravines, an endless fence, and a bog
(Trifonov II: 358-59). In the epilogue that describes Ol&soft;ga's new
life, the obstructions disappear, and she sees clearly what was hidden
from her sight earlier. The metaphorical use of the sentence &ellipsis; High on a hilltop over the river and above the pines floated the
bell tower of the old Spasskoe-Lykovo church, visible from far away on
every side,
allows Trifonov to connect the concept of
immortality with its natural source, Christianity.
Pasternak's poem also consists of two contrasting parts. The tone of the poem changes from unease and sadness in the first part to a calming one of the second. According to Aleksandr Zholkovsky, this poem is a monologue of a deceased lyrical hero who associates himself with the wind that transports his lullaby to his mournful beloved (Zholkovsky 1983:249).
The two parts of the finale in Trifonov's novella are connected by
a transitional paragraph, set off in the text with two spaces before
and after it. In this paragraph, Trifonov tells how Ol&soft;ga is
resurrected from the deadness of her existence into a new, enlightened
life: The alarm clock rang at seven, wrenching her out of
clinging, enervating oblivion. So it continued for many days, each one
like the other, although at times it was sunny, at times it rained or
snowed. One day, though, she woke up before the alarm. She walked
barefoot over to the window, pulled back the draperies and looked out
toward the park: there, above the treetops, above the jagged horizon
of roofs and chimneys, the red globe of the sun was sliding up into
the faintly glowing sky. She opened the sliding window. The wind
blowing from across the park caressed her tired skin, and her breasts
tautened with the cold. Through her bare feet she felt the floor
quiver from some vague, subterranean rumble.
(
The significance of something that happened one day
is emphasized through the break in the monotonous recurrence of the
identical mornings. The contrast between one day and the monotony of
the others is created not only by the use of the contrasting
conjunction no
(though
in translation),
but also through the unexpected change in verbal aspect. The
imperfective verbs denoting a chain of uniform actions are suddenly
succeeded by perfective verbs that stress the uniqueness of that
particular event. Before, during the period of clinging
oblivion,
Ol&soft;ga paid no attention to the park, or sun, or
rain, or snow. Today she looks at the park and watches the sunrise.
The transitional paragraph, one day,
describes a
certain event that changed Ol&soft;ga. Evidence of this lies in the
wind's caress: The wind blowing from across the park caressed
her tired skin, and her breasts tautened with the cold
(veter
is employed by Trifonov here as a metonymic
citation; that is, as a reference to this particular poem and an
allusion to the entire text of Pasternak's novel of which this poem is
a part. Both the two parts of the finale of Trifonov's story and the
poem by Pasternak describe the same landscape—a coniferous
forest outside Moscow—using identical lexical items. The two
texts are also united by images of an expanse of open water, a river
in one day,
Trifonov, like Pasternak, employs a
natural metonymically-metaphorical mediator between the
deceased &ellipsis; and the woman who mourns for him
—the wind
(Zholkovsky 1983:249).
In the poem, the I,
the lyrical hero, overcomes
death through his inseparateness from the world
in
space and through continuation of life
in time
(Zholkovsky 1983:246). Similarly, Trifonov's hero strives for the same
expansion of the boundaries of his I
in space and time
when he explains his obsession with parapsychology and history to his
widow, something she recalls just before her meaningful dream. He
hopes that parapsychology will help him to transcend the spatial
boundaries of the human mind. Parapsychology is a visionary
attempt to get inside another person's mind, to surrender oneself to
another person
(History is a magic mirror in which one might foretell the
future
(