О текстообразующем потенциале паремического оборота ‘тесто топором не разрубишь’ в рассказе Н. С. Лескова "Железная воля"

Новый филологический вестник. 2018. Т. 45. № 2. С. 84–93.

Botchkarev A.

The article is devoted to exploring the paremic locution one cannot cut the dough with an axe as a rolled-up narrative program in Nikolai Leskov’s story “An Iron Will” (1876). In this way, different images of dough and iron become particularly important as soon as they begin to be perceived as symbolic analogues of some notable properties of national character: a German will (‘iron’) and a Russian lack of will (‘dough’). First of all, this is the pie with carrots as well as the pancakes that killed Hugo Karlovich Pectoralis, “a man of iron will”, at Safronych’s funeral. One can disclose their content only within the context of the specified paremic locution in a serial analogy German : Russian :: will : lack of will :: iron : dough. Technically, there is no valid analogy between ‘iron’ and ‘will’, ‘dough’ and ‘lack of will’, as well as the resulting “standoff” between a German will and a Russian lack of will, but in fact this is not necessary. No matter how parodoxically it may seem, but as an argument in favor of the Russian lack of will paroemia reveals the property of dough to resist to an ax; as an illustrative contribution to the status of a regrettable precedent, a “real” story, told over tea, about Hugo Karlovich Pectoralis choking to death while eating pancakes. Therefore, in Nikolai Leskov’s story the specified paremic locution operates as a sort of “text-in-the-text”, as well as its potential narrative program or its summary.

Keywords: forecasting, интерпретация, номинация, паремия, интерпретант, текст в тексте, interpretation, interpretant, text-in-the-text, paroemia, nomination, прогнозирование