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Контингентность события в высказывании героя: «Кроткая» Ф.М. Достоевского и «Крейцерова соната» Л.Н. Толстого
This article analyzes the utterances of two protagonists—the Pawnbroker (from Fyodor Dostoevsky's fantasy story A Gentle Creature) and Pozdnyshev (from Leo Tolstoy's novella The Kreutzer Sonata)—through the lens of contingency (as interpreted by Q. Meillassoux). These protagonists construct their monologues based on notions of strict causality and the orderliness of past events, but this assumption is undermined as they speak. The Pawnbroker encounters imperfect composition and incoherence in his speech, which becomes a tragedy for the protagonist who strives for order. Pozdnyshev, in turn, discovers internal contradictions in his formally logical utterance, which prevent him from fully comprehending the murder he committed. Both protagonists attempt to control the future through careful planning or moral teachings, but the traumatic event (suicide or murder) reveals the contingency and the impossibility of mastering another person's will. Contingency, as a characteristic of an event and a structural principle of utterance organization, manifests itself at the lexical, syntactic, and temporal levels and defines the boundaries of the protagonists' rational understanding of their experience. Thus, the differences in the characters' narrative strategies lie in the ways they problematize coherent utterances. Furthermore, contingency also acquires an ethical dimension, depriving the characters of the illusion of control and authority over their future.