THE IMAGE OF THE CITY IN THE PROSE OF D. DANILOV (THE NOVELS “DESCRIPTION OF THE CITY” AND “SASHA, HELLO!”)

Abstract

The article analyzes the ways of creating the image of city in the prose of D. Danilov. It is noted that the narrator plays a major role in the unfolding of the text, who also acquires the role of an observer. The function of observation in its turn actualizes the visual aspect of the text. Thanks to this, the representation of the city as a space turns out to be connected with the act of observation itself, which not only reduces the city to a set of visual images, but also constructs a specific montage of them. At the same time, observation itself takes the form of “naïve” fixation of typical images and details, which emphasizes attention to ordinary, banal images. Thanks to this, the city in the analyzed works by D. Danilov is deprived of its definiteness associated with a specific name. The city is shown as a conventional space, at the same time filled with details characterized by concreteness. This allows the novelist to include the reader in the unfolding of the image of the city not only through an interactive game, consisting in attempts to guess the city itself, but also through the actualization of the reader's experience of living in the spaces of his own city.