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The plot-forming motive of fault as the basis for the “Anna Karenina’s” code in O. Pamuk’s novel “Museum of Innocence” // Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin. 2024. Issue 6 (236). P. 152-162

The usage of literary code is one of the basic techniques in creating fiction. Turkish writer and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk in interviews and public speeches has repeatedly pointed out that in the process of working, including during the creation of the novel “Museum of Innocence”, he was in dialogue with the oeuvre of L. N. Tolstoy. Calling the Russian classic “a model of a historical writer”, Pamuk uses artistic techniques inherent in Tolstoy’s prose in his work on a novel about Istanbul life in the mid-1975’s. In the course of a comparative analysis, the interaction of the creative principles of the Turkish writer with the artistic system of the Russian novelist was examined and it was revealed that this connection is of a systemic nature. As the starting point of coding, the authors of the article identified the motive of guilt, which is key for the problematic organization of Pamuk’s work, as Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina. Particular attention in the research is paid to the nature of the implementation of the motive of fault in epigraphs to novels, where its plot-forming role is already planned. Next, several aspects of the functioning of the motive of fault in the works in question are revealed: public condemnation, denial of their fault and a desire to shift it to another, self-judgment. Based on the value guidelines shown in the code, Pamuk creates in the “Museum of Innocence” a conflict between the characters’ own fault and the predestination of their actions. In the course of the research, it becomes obvious that the historical conditioning of the fate of the characters in Tolstoy’s novel as understood by Pamuk is transformed into a plot model. As a result, coding as a technique does not just program various levels of the artistic organization of Pamuk’s novel, but determines the logic of the development of the plot and prejudges its ending. The plot-forming motive of guilt in the “Museum of Innocence” under the influence of the Tolstoy code used by the postmodern author develops according to a specific script, going beyond the conditioning of the cultural and historical situation in which the novel takes place.

Keywords: motive, plot, novel, literary code, Tolstoy, Pamuk