A Study Of The Spatial Narrative Of Andrei Bely’s The Sliver Dove

Andrei Bely is one of the most representative writers of the Russian Symbolists,a poet,novelist,memoirist and critic.In The Silver Dove,the first of a trilogy of symbolist novels entitled East or West,Bely combines personal experience with historical and cultural issues,and uses the folk journey of the intellectual Peter Daryalsky as a vehicle to explore such important themes of Russian literature since the 19 th century as the path of the Russian nation and the relationship between intellectuals and the people.The Silver Dove has received attention from scholars at home and abroad for its abstract and varied artistic style and complex themes,this thesis will take the novel’s distinctive spatial narrative art as an entry point for an in-depth interpretation and analysis of the work’s spatial artistic connotations and spatial themes.The Silver Dove was created during a period of change in Bely’s cognition and artistic theory.Artistically,Bely combines symbolic art with stream of consciousness,visual narrative and other modernist art techniques,downplaying the role of time sequence in the narrative and highlighting the spatiality of the text,constructing a complex textual world that combines real space,psychological space and unreal space.Thematically,the novel continues the concern and reflection on the spiritual world of human beings in the earlier works and combines it with the real problems of Russian society at the beginning of the 20 th century,uniting the important events of Russian society at the beginning of the 20 th century on both historical and symbolic levels,including the 1905 Revolution,the Russo-Japanese War,the“Go to the People” movement and the spread of the Khlysts among the people.The current domestic research on The Silver Dove focuses on the interpretation of symbolic art and the exploration of the theme of East and West,there are no research results that interpret the novel from the perspective of spatial narrative.Based on the existing research,this paper takes the spatial narrative theory that emerged in the 1960 s as an entry point,and takes the spatial theories of Lotman,Bakhtin,Bashara and Lefebvre as a theoretical perspective,while taking into account the domestic spatial narrative research,to explore the presentation of textual space in The Silver Dove,the problem of spatial conflict and the construction of intellectual subject consciousness,and examine the artistic value and ideological implications of the novel from the new perspective of spatial narrative,and conduct a deeper study.The thesis is divided into three parts.The first chapter explores how the textual space in The Silver Dove is presented from two aspects: the shaping of spatial structure and the artistic connotation of space,taking into account the spatial structure theory of Lotman and Zoran.Based on the perception of the duality of the world,Bely breaks through the limits of geographical space,and constructs a three-dimensional spatial structure through a series of symbolic imagery and symbols that prefigure the surreal world,in which he depicts the real space,the inner psychological space and the unreal spiritual space,and presents a comprehensive historical and symbolic picture of Russian society at the beginning of the 20 th century.The second chapter reveals the conflict of different spaces.In the novel,Bely shows the conflict between the East and the West in the form of spatial interaction and the resulting inner conflict of the protagonist,revealing the spiritual crisis of the intellectuals in the face of the East-West problem.Bely reflects on the question of “East or West” and believes that neither the East nor the West is the path Russia should choose,and that Russia should explore its own path,which is also the intention of his trilogy.The third chapter explores the relationship between the intellectuals and the people through the exploration of the subject’s consciousness in space.In the space of The Silver Dove,Bely reveals the nature of the relationship between the intellectuals and the people through the experience of the main character,Daryalsky,who is lonely and helpless in the space and constantly struggles against it,and the many incompatibilities between them,thus leading to the contradiction and disconnection between them.On this basis,Bely envisions a path for intellectuals,namely,renewal through a spiritual return,pointing to Russia’s search for a new path for itself in crisis through a return to tradition.The spatial narrative art of The Silver Dove is a key element of the novel’s content presentation and artistic form innovation,which deserves in-depth analysis and interpretation.In the novel,there is a complex relationship between man and self,man and others,and man and space.This relationship is not expressed through nebulous words,but is truly embodied through the interaction of artistic space.Bely stands at the turning point at the turn of the century,like intellectuals standing between East and West,who share the fate of Russia,the question of its path,its traditions and where its people will go,and who together perceive themselves and life in space,exploring the path of the nation’s future in the struggle between reason and emotion,spirit and flesh.