Toward a Poetics of Documentary Prose: From the Perspective of Gulag Testimonies

This essay offers an alternative to the view of documentary literature as intermediate between artistic and nonartistic discourse: works of documentary prose are multifunction objects whose different functions become marked in different periods of communal and individual reception. The approach is based on the theory of Jan Mukařovský of the Prague Linguistic Circle and on the remarks scattered throughout the work of the writer Varlam Shalamov. In order to place documentary genres such as the autobiography and the memoir into a nonmarginalizing perspective, a paradigm of narrative modes is constructed on the basis of the ontological status of the fabula. Concepts associated with this paradigm are also used in singling out such generic features of retrospective documentary prose as (a) incorporation of three types of material-the public domain, the private domain, and the domain of privileged access; (b) lack of self-sufficiency; (c) presence of areas of hesitation; and (d) reflection of different mnemonic processes. Several issues raised by this survey, as well as by the discussion of the clash between the rhetorical principles of "defamiliarization" and the "economy of effort" in documentary prose, are illustrated by a brief analysis of Shalamov's story "Berries." The essay suggests that the reader's hesitation, whether about the force of the factographic pact with the author or about the aesthetic value of nonfictional records of experience, is an integral part of the aesthetic effect of documentary prose; documentary narratives have the power to destabilize or modify not only our view of history but also our habitual literary and cultural schemata.