Интертекстуальный хронотоп в романе Джойс Кэрол Оутс «Бельфлёр»

Роман американской писательницы Джойс Кэрол Оутс «Бельфлёр» был опубликован в 1980 году и по своей жанровой форме является готическим романом с элементами семейной саги. Роман описывает жизнь и судьбу семи поколений американской семьи Бельфлер с середины XVIII до середины XX века. Главными героями романа являются глава семьи Гидеон Бельфлер и его красивая, загадочная и одержимая жаждой власти жена Ли, а также их дети – Жермена и Бромвель. Кроме главных героев, в романе много других персонажей: представители семьи Бельфлер разных поколений, слуги, друзья и враги, жители окружающей местности. Роман «Бельфлер» – это история об изменчивости мира, о времени и вечности, пространстве и душе, преградах на пути к любви и миру. Роман писательницы полон мистических событий, тайн, семейных мифов и историй, которые создают многоуровневый образ богатой американской семьи, давая читателю повод задуматься о собственной судьбе, смысле и месте человека в жизни.
Данное художественное произведение характеризуется сложной структурой, включающей множество взаимопроникающих сюжетных линий, и пространственно-временных планов. Времена, места, события в книге то динамично меняются, то на время застывают и рассматриваются более пристально. Не последнее место в достижении подобного эффекта занимает богатая интертекстуальность произведения, вплетенная в общую образно-символическую ткань романа. Многообразные интертексты произведения органично выявляют всю ширину и глубину его пространственно-временных координат.
В создании хронотопа готического романа принимали участие различные виды как внешней, так и внутренней интертекстуальности.
Рассмотрим примеры внешней интертекстуальности (взаимосвязи хронотопа текста произведения с текстами из внешних источников):
1) Синкретическая интертекстуальность (соотнесенность текста с нетекстовыми источниками из мира классического искусства: живописи, архитектуры, музыки и т.п.).
К примеру, об исторической эпохе хорошо говорят названия военных маршей и песен тех лет (начала XIX века):
They were also powerfully moved by military music: "The Star-Spangled Banner," "Buchanan's Union Grand March," "The Tars from Tripoly," "Brother Soldiers All Hail!" [c. 86]
A pity her lover was late. A pity he couldn't hear Yolande singing the rousing "When the Boys Come Home" with which the music hall program had ended [c. 183].
One of the rolls gave out, at various speeds, English minuets and rondos and dainty tinkling tunes, another bellowed hymns accompanied by a wheezing organ, still another – Garth's favorite – sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "General Harrison's Grand March" and the "St. Louis Light Guard Polka and Schottisch" [c. 177].
В тесте можно видеть некоторые примеры связи с искусствами, характерными для описываемой эпохи:
…there were, on the walls, paintings attributed to Montecelli, Thomas Faed, and Jan Anthonisz van Ravestyn; and the furniture and ornamentation were finished predominately in turquoise and gold [c. 191].
…on one wall was a large plate-glass mirror, approximately six by ten feet, enclosed in a bower supported by two pairs of highly ornate columns from Pisa, of Italian Renaissance design [c. 191].
She hurried downstairs without glancing at the old tapestries, which hung in spent, faded folds, and the niches in the stone wall where marble busts – of Adonis, Athena, Persephone, Cupid – had been accumulating masks of grime for decades, and now rather resembled mulattoes of indeterminate sex [c. 11].
Weather-stained remains of statuary imported from Italy by great-great-grandfather Raphael: a startled and chagrined Hebe, the size of a mortal woman, her hooded eyes downcast and her slender arms weakly shielding her body; a crouching marble Cupid with bulging eyes and a sweet leering smile and wings whose curly feathers had been fashioned, with great care, by an anonymous sculptor enamored of detail; a comely Adonis whose right cheek was discolored, as if by inky tears, and whose base was overgrown with briars [c. 144].
Из данных отрывков романа видно, что подобные бюсты вполне вписываются во временной отрезок событий романа.
Еще одним моментом придания произведению элемента адекватной историчности является искусство верховой езды, особенно популярное в ту эпоху:
Jean-Pierre began a rhapsodic memoir of his experiences with horses, The Art of the Equestrian, which, though never completed, was to appear in serial form in the small upstate newspaper he would acquire in the early 1800's [с. 83].
Стоит отметить также упоминание в тексте романа «Альманаха бедного Ричарда», написанного Бенджамином Франклином:
The only likeness of Jean-Pierre Bellefleur the family had was a poor engraving that had been the frontispiece of The Almanack of Riches, a paperbound book published in 1813 by Jean-Pierre and a printer friend, in shameless imitation of Ben Franklin's Almanack…
The Almanack of Riches (which, despite its derivative nature, went through three hundred printings!); the scheme to bring Napoleon to the Chautauquas; the old Cockagne Club; the timber-razing projects; the Arctic elk manure scandal; the innumerable women or tales of women. . . . Noel chattered away happily. His own children had never cared to hear these tales, except for the story – necessarily abbreviated—of the Bushkill's Ferry massacre [c. 117].

2) Аллюзии (включения из прецедентных текстов с нулевой или имплицитной маркированностью, референция к реалиям мира, информация о предшествующем тексте, событии или факте с помощью упоминания какого-нибудь известного топонима, антропонима, исторической даты):

а) аллюзии на исторические персонажи и события:
She passed the curious old Civil War drum on the first-floor landing, which Raphael Bellefleur had had covered with his own skin, after his death, and edged with brass, gold, and mother-of-pearl (poor Grandfather Raphael! – he had anticipated homage for generations, and now not even the idlest of the children took notice of him) [c.10].
Упоминание об не очень давних исторических событиях, соотнесенных со временем романа, еще раз фиксирует внимание читателя в необходимой исторической эпохе. При этом в произведении упоминаются даты и соотнесенные с ними известные исторические события:
Emmanuel's reverence for the Indians and the local Indian culture (which could hardly be said to exist any longer since the treaties of 1787 had banished all Indians from the mountains and the fertile farmland along the river, and a few thousand of them lived in a single reservation north of Paie-des-Sables) was mocked by most of the family, who did not know quite how to interpret it [с. 32].
….won at cards with British officers not three weeks before the Golden Hill riot in January— that Jean-Pierre Bellefleur, looking, with his smart three-cornered hat of black velvet, and his costly new leather boots, somewhat older than his twenty-six years, first saw Sarah Ann Chatham: at that time a girl of no more than eleven or twelve [c. 82].
В следующем отрывке даты пересекаются с историческими персонажами (кличка лошади дана в честь Наполеона Бонопарта):
Then there was an ugly scrappy creature of uneasily mixed blood – Arabian, Belgian, saddle horse – Louis's stallion Bonaparte, later called Old Bones. He was named not for the megalomaniac emperor but for his older brother Joseph who, traveling incognito as the mellifluous Count de Survilliers, acquired through Jean-Pierre's Compagnie de New York some 160,260 acres of uninhabitable and unfarmable wilderness land under the mistaken impression that, as part of New France, it would prove a reasonable and even idyllic retreat for the defeated emperor himself, once he escaped Saint Helena. (Unfortunately, Napoleon was closely guarded on Saint Helena and his escape was never a possibility. And the 160,260 acres were uninhabitable, despite Jean-Pierre Bellefleur's hearty enthusiasm, and his dreams of roads, railroads, and even canals to come.)
It was the roan stallion Bonaparte Louis was riding that April afternoon in 1822 when he pursued the noisy hooting mob out of the settlement on the south shore of Lake Noir (not to be called Bellefleur for some years) [с. 84].
Хорошим примером косвенного указания на исторический персонаж является следующая цитата:
The beautiful drumming rain! The ceaseless rain! Egg-sized, fist-sized drops of rain! Mesmerizing. Blinding. (For he could not even see the edge of the bank, he could barely see the doorway of the cabin behind him.) [c. 123]
Слово «mesmerizing» на известного в конце 18 – начале 19 века Фридриха Антона Месмера (1734 – 1815) – австрийского врача, создателя учения о "животном магнетизме" ("месмеризм").
Вот еще примеры ссылок на определенные исторические события:
It was characteristic of Raphael's studied generosity that, in 1861, he would hire to take his place in the 14th Regiment of the Seventh Corps of the Union Army of the Potomac not one but two bounty soldiers, and that though he contracted to pay them a fairly small, fixed price, he in fact paid them far more, on the condition that they tell no one – no one at all – exactly how much he was paying [191].
…decades earlier, a young Petrie soldier and a young Bellefleur soldier had gone off together on the Big Horn Expedition of 1876, the Petrie boy under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Custer and the Bellefleur boy under the command of General Terry, and one had perished and the other had survived; the judge who heard the first appeal, Osborne Lane, had been rejected by a beautiful young woman who later became involved with Samuel Bellefleur, and so naturally he detested the very name Bellefleur; and the judge who heard the second appeal, and who dismissed it so rudely, was an old political rival of Senator Washington Payne's – the senator having been financed generously by Bellefleur money, or so rumor had it.) [c. 146]

б) аллюзии и цитаты из священных книг (Библия, Коран и т.п.):
Герои романа часто носят имена персонажей из Библии. К примеру, имя «Jedediah» происходит от древнееврейского «Yididyah», что означает «возлюбленный Господа». Имена «Mahalaleel» и «Hiram» тоже имеют библейские корни и неоднократно встречаются в Ветхом Завете. Имя Hiram, в придачу, является именем главного архитектора Храма царя Соломона, который был убит тремя нечестивцами, во время неудачной попытки заставить его раскрыть тайный пароль мастера масона. Имя «Gedeon» означает на древнееврейском «разрушитель», «могучий воин», «дровосек», «рубака». В Библии Гедеон был судьей евреев. У Пушкина в «Сказке о царе Салтане» это имя приводится как «Гвидон». Имя «Samuel» также присутствует в Библии. Так звали одного из древнееврейских вождей. Упоминается данное слово и в Коране, как имя одного предсказателя (пророка). Интересное происхождение имеет имя «Noel», которое упоминается в английском языке впервые в Средневековье в качестве синонима слова «Christmas», происходя от старофранцузского «noёl», которое, в свою очередь, имеет корень от латинского слова «nātālis (diēs)» – «день рождения».
Интересно, что писательница не отрицает, что имена имеют связь с библейскими:
'Mahalaleel," Leah said, naming him at once, snatching at a sound she had never heard before – but somehow it was exactly right, it was exactly right – as if an imp had whispered it in her ear. (Later she was told Mahalaleel was out of the Bible, and she halfway wondered if the name was appropriate: for Leah was one of the Bellefleurs who prided themselves on their contempt for the Bible.) "Mahalaleel," she whispered, "aren't you a beauty..."[c. 15].
Особенно много библейских мотивов в описании жизни Джедедиа, отшельника семьи Бефлёр:
Jedediah. In his saddlebag, along with his bedding and other light provisions, he had a leather-bound Bible that had belonged to his mother. In it, in the Gospels, he might read of the casting-out of devils; he might read once again of the powers promised to those who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and who sought to come unto the Father by way of Him.
Had he hidden himself up in the mountains like one of those Old Testament prophets who hid themselves in the desert, maddened with God, touched by God's fire, ruined forever for the world of man? —though he forced himself to glance at the opened pages, in case they held a message he must decipher. (The Bible was open to Psalms 91-97. He that dwelleth in the secret plate of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in Him will 1 trust ... He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust.) [с. 70]
Отрывки из Библии органично вплетаются в текст произведения, делая его более глубоким, как эта цитата из «Экклезиаста 3.1» (Ветхий Завет):
He growled that they should leave him alone. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time t to die. A time to kill and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up. A time to laugh, and a time to weep [c. 115].
А вот цитата, взятая из Евангелия от Матвея:
Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body more than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air… Consider the lilies of the field… Therefore take no thought, saying What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day [с. 166].
Используются цитаты и из Псалтыря, вложенные в уста Джедедиа:
Hear my prayer, О Lord, Jedediah whispered, and let my cry come unto thee. Hide not thy face from me . . . For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned [c. 119-120].
В некоторых местах произведения, слова Библии перефразируются устами персонажей произведения:
I talking about God, God speaking in us ... in some of us. . . . There is a place, Father, there is a home, but it isn't here, but it isn't lost either and we shouldn't despair, poetry is a way of getting back, of coming home"[c. 155].

в) аллюзии и цитаты из литературных источников
В тексте произведения встречаются и включения из других литературных источников. К примеру произведение, относящееся к народным песням Вермонта. (Источник: Folkways Records Album No. FH 5314, © 1963 Folkways Records & Service Corp., 701 Seventh Ave., N.Y.C., USA)
The needle's eye that does supply
The thread that runs so truly
It has caught many a smiling lass
And now it has caught you.
Oh, it has caught one and it has caught two.
/It has caught many a smiling lass
And now it has caught you [с. 40].
Или стихи из произведения Вильяма Блейка (1757 – 1827) «Auguries of Innocence», которые соответствуют хронотопу романа:
…even Vernon with his eager shy smile and his hopeful gaze and the reverent, melodic dipping of his voice as he read, or recited, God appears and God is tight / To those poor souls who dwell in night / But does a human form display / To those who dwell in realms of day [с. 57].
В романе присутствует и старинная народная колыбельная, которая вполне могла быть известна в описываемую в книге историческую эпоху:
Sleep, baby, sleep,
Thy father watches the sheep,
Thy mother shakes the dreamland tree,
And down falls a little dream on thee. . . .
Есть в романе и такая народная песня, популярная в 30-х годах 19 века:
He thought it wonderfully charming, if simple-minded, and wondered if it was a popular tune of the day down below:
I'll be no submissive wife No, not I; no, not
I'll not be a slave for life No, not I; no, not I
Think you on our wedding day
That I said, as others say Love and honor
and obey Love and honor and obey
No no no no no no No no no, not I
I to dullness don't incline No, not I; no, not
I Go to bed at half-past nine No, not I; no, not
No no no no no no No no no, not I [c. 168-169].

г) аллюзии и цитаты из мифов, сказок
Замковый хронотоп является отсылкой ко многим сказкам и готическим произведениям других авторов. Касается это и той части, в которой описывается зловещее запустение и увядание, говорящее о летающем в воздухе проклятье и мрачных временах семейства:
By the time Mahalaleel came to the manor, however, it was much changed. All but a very few of the staff of thirty-five servants had been dismissed over the decades, and a number of the rooms were closed off, and the wine cellar was badly depleted, and the marble statues in the garden were crudely weather-stained. As the delicate Japanese trees sickened and died they were replaced by sturdier North American trees – oak, cypress, silver birch, ash: some of the most beautiful pieces of furniture bad been seriously scarred and battered by children, though they were, of course, traditionally forbidden to play in most of the rooms. The slate roof leaked in a dozen places, the turrets were storm-damaged, weeds grew where an outdoor swimming pool had been planned, the parquetry floor of the entrance hall was badly injured when Noel Bellefleur, as a young man, rode one of his horses into the house, for reasons never explained. Sparrow hawks and pigeons and other birds nested in the open towers (and the stone floors of these crude structures were strewn with the skeletons of tiny creatures); there were termites, mice, even rats, even squirrels and skunks and raccoons and snakes in the house; there were, everywhere, warped doors that would not quite close, and warped windows that could not be forced open. Tulip trees badly damaged by porcupine and starving deer were not adequately treated, nor was a magnificent wychelm whose topmost limbs had been struck by lightning. The roof of the east wing had been only superficially repaired after a bad spring storm, and on the very night Mahalaleel arrived at the manor the highest chimney of this roof would be damaged. But what was to be done? What could possibly be done? To sell Bellefleur Manor was unthinkable (and perhaps impossible), to acquire another mortgage was out of the question [c. 5-6].
Есть в книге и соотнесенность со сказкой о Красной Шапочке:
Tales of girls alone in the forest many years ago: someone named Hepatica, a distant aunt or cousin, who had walked alone in this very woods, evidently, and had met... or been confronted by ... by whom, by what? Yolande did not recall. There were hints that something had happened or almost happened to aunt Veronica, long ago (but it would have to be long ago, Yolande giggled, for poor thick-waisted homely aunt Veronica was hardly the type of woman to drive men into a frenzy of lust), and something had almost happened to Aveline as well. . . . Cautionary tales, frankly silly tales that Yolande only pretended to listen to: she knew very well how foolish the older women were being [c. 181].
Можно провести также параллель между котом по имени «Mahalaleel» и Чеширским котом из сказки Льюиса Кэрролла «Алиса в Стране чудес», которых объединяет загадочная манера появляться и исчезать:
He quickly became something of a household puzzle. How was it possible, the children asked, that Mahalaleel could be sleeping soundly by the fireplace in the parlor, but when you left the room or only turned your head he was gone—simply gone? Albert and Jasper swore they had seen Mahalaleel up a tall pine back of one of the logging roads, a mile and a half away. It was one of those pines with no branches or limbs for a considerable distance – seventy-five feet or more – and there was Mahalaleel perched on the lowest limb, absolutely motionless, his hair gray and indistinct, his enormous tail curved about to cover his paws, his wide staring intelligent; face terrible as that of a great horned owl about to swoop down upon its prey. They wondered – how could a cat so large manage to climb that tree? – and was he trapped there, would he need help getting down? They called him but he did no more than glance down at them, as if he'd never seen them before. They tried to shake the tree, without success. "Mahalaleel, you'll starve up there!" they shouted. "Mahalaleel, you'd better come home with us!"
It was getting dark, so the boys ran home, intending to bring a flashlight back and some food with which to tempt him – but as soon as I they burst noisily into the kitchen they saw that Mahalaleel was already there, washing his oversized paws daintily on the hearth. When did he come back, they wanted to know [p. 44-45].
д) Аллюзии на другие мистические и готические произведения.
Тема родового проклятья семьи Бельфлер – одна из ведущих тем романа, которая обыгрывается в семейных преданиях, легендах, воспоминаниях героев романа:
It cannot be helped, any of this, these evil days that have befallen us, he seemed to be saying, it's the Bellefleur fate, it's our curse, there is no escaping it in this life… The Bellefleurs had always been distinguished from their neighbors in the Valley, not only by their comparative wealth, and their controversial behavior, but by their remarkable history of misfortune. Vernon Bellefleur thought; are we beset by tragedy, or merely farce? – or melodrama? – or pranks of fate, sheer happenstance, that cannot be deciphered? Even the Bellefleurs' innumerable enemies considered them exceptional people [c. 6].
According to mountain legend there was a curse on Germaine's family. (But it wasn't merely a local legend: it was freely alluded to in the state capital five hundred miles away, and in Washington, D.C.; and when Bellefleur men fought in the Great War they claimed to encounter soldiers who knew them by name, by reputation, and who shrank away in superstitious dread – You'll bring misfortune on all of us, they were told.)
But no one knew what the curse was. There's a curse on us, Yolande said listlessly on the eve of her running away. There's a curse on us and now I know what it is, she said [c. 29].
Bellefleur men die interesting deaths, rarely die in bed. They never die in bed! Ewan said with a boastful laugh. (For he led not to die – however and whenever he died – in any sort of bed.) Bellefleur men die absurd deaths grandmother Delia said flatly. (She thinking, perhaps, of her husband Stanton's death, one Christmas long ago: and of her own father's death; and there was great-grandfather Raphael, who died of natural causes, but had determined by the s of his will that his body be grotesquely mutilated after his death) men die absurd deaths, Delia said [c. 30].
Отсылкой к другим мистическим произведениям является и описание особых сверхъестественных, демонических состояний духа, которые издавна оказывали влияние на судьбы членов семьи Бельфлер:
It was certainly as a consequence of a demonic black mood, and nothing else. And when great-great-great-grand father Jedediah retreated to the side of Mount Blanc, there to seek God in His living essence, surely it was a surrender to a curious mood, a treacherous mood . . . one which might have obliterated the entire Bellefleur line at the start. A cousin of grandfather Noel's, in a temper over the family's plans for his life, threw himself into the revolving blades of a thirty-six-inch saw at one of the family's Fort Hanna sawmills, and it was said of him, contemptuously, that he had given himself up to a mood…
It must have been a mood, on that unnaturally warm September night, that provoked her into a quarrel with her husband: it must have been a mood that led her into running downstairs and giving refuge to Mahalaleel at all. She knew, everyone speculated, that Mahalaleel's presence would madden poor Gideon [c. 7].
Одной из таких аллюзий, помимо темы семейного проклятья и темы демонических наваждений, является тема самоубийства:
Germaine's grandfather Noel Bellefleur carried with him, in secret, for more than fifty years, a vial of about two inches in length, encrusted with tiny cheap-cut rubies and diamonds (or perhaps they were colored glass and rhinestones), filled with cyanide (In the family there were legends of odd "suicides." Noel's grandmother, for instance, who drowned in Lake Noir . . . and his own father, perhaps, Lamentations of Jeremiah (здесь можно увидеть и отсылку на «Плачь Иеремии – книгу Ветхого Завета, описывающую разрушение Иерусалима халдеями), who insisted upon going out in a murderous storm though everyone in the family tried to stop him: wasn't that a kind of suicide, really? Strangest of all was the contrived death, the "assassination" of President Lincoln, an intimate friend of grandfather Raphael's – or so family legend would have it, and Noel, being skeptical, did have his doubts. But it was generally believed in the family that ' Lincoln had arranged for his own "assassination," so that he could retire [c. 59].
е) Цитаты, иллюстрирующие и подчеркивающие суждения автора:
Everything that transpires in this universe transpires out of necessity, however brutal [c. 30].
The Bellefleurs' oldest son Samuel—who was to say shortly before his tragic disappearance, though the remark has been attributed, over the years, to various members of the family – Time is clocks, not a clock: you can't do more than try to contain it, like carrying water in a sieve – was given, for his twentieth birthday, one of his father's finest English Thoroughbreds, a deep-chested, rather angular, leggy bay named Herod [c. 86].
В рамках внутренней интертекстуальности в романе можно рассматривать следующие элементы:
1) Слова и фразы, которые полностью или частично взяты из других языков.
Особенно разнообразно выглядят в романе имена собственные. Топонимия романа включает географические названия с лексическими единицами из разных языков, причем одни названия выбирались автором так, чтобы соответствовать готическому стилю романа (к примеру, Черное Озеро), другие – для подчеркивания загадочности окружающей природы, напоминания о былых европейских корнях, сложностях завоевания индейских земель и покорения Америки:
La Tour, Lake Noir, Chautauqua Light Guard, Mount Blanc, Nautauga, Nautaugamaggonautaugaunagaungawauggataunauta.
Разноязычная смесь, состоящая из французских, индейских и английских географических названий, придает произведению достоверность (такое явление очень распространено, особенно на территории Новой Англии и в Штатах, граничащих с Канадой).
Так же разнообразно выглядят имена героев романа, большое число которых имеет еврейское или французское происхождение:
Bellefleur, Hiram, Mahalaleel, Gideon, Raphael, Jedediah, Noel, Jean-Pierre.
Данное разнообразие имен тоже имеет двойственное значение. Оно отсылает читателя к догадкам о происхождении рода Бельфлер, а также накладывает свой отпечаток на восприятие характеров героев произведения. К примеру, имя «Jedediah» выбрано не случайно, и вызывает стойкие ассоциации с «божьим человеком».

2) Включения в книгу элементов текста, окрашенных в другом стиле (кодовая интертекстуальность).
Джойс Кэрол Оутс очень широко использует данный вид интертекстуальности при создании хронотопа романа. В ее романе нашли свое отражение различные литературные жанры: сказка, фэнтези, семейная хроника, роман тайн и ужасов, остросюжетные произведения. Используя элементы различных жанров, писательница постоянно включает в текст различные дополнительные комментарии и отсылки, которые приводит в скобках.
Примеры кодовой интертекстуальности:
It was many years ago in that dark, chaotic, unfathomable pool of time before Germaine's birth (nearly twelve months before her birth), on a night in late September stirred by innumerable frenzied winds, like spirits contending with one another – now plaintively, now angrily, now with a subtle cellolike delicacy capable of making the flesh rise on one's arms and neck – a night so sulfurous, so restless, so swollen with inarticulate longing that Leah and Gideon Bellefleur in their enor¬mous bed quarreled once again, brought to tears because their love was too ravenous to be contained by their mere mortal bodies… it was on this tumultuous rain-lashed night that Mahalaleel came to Bellefleur Manor on the western shore of the great Lake Noir, where he was to stay for nearly five years [c. 3].
В данном отрывке, взятом из самого начала романа видно, что за основу берется сказочный стиль повествования, которому присуща особая атмосфера и фантастическая образность. Использование подобного приема на протяжении всего произведения позволило Дж. К. Оутс объединить различные временные и пространственные структуры. Условность сказки позволяет максимально сконцентрировать действие романа на наиболее значимых его эпизодах.
Bellefleur Manor was known locally as Bellefleur Castle, though the family disliked that name: even Raphael Bellefleur, who built the extraordinary house many decades ago, at an estimated cost of more than $ 1,5 million, partly for his wife Violet and partly as a strategic step in his campaign for political power, grew vexed and embarrassed when he heard the word "castle" – for castles called to mind the Old World, the past, that rotting graveyard Europe (so Raphael frequently said, in his dipped, formal, nasal voice, which sounded as if it might be addressed to a large audience), and when Raphael's grandfather Jean-Pierre Bellefleur was banished from France and repudiated by his own father, the Duс de Bellefleur, the past simply ceased to exist. "We are all Americans now," Raphael said. "We have no choice but to be Americans now" [c. 3-4].
Далее мы видим, как жанровые доминанты сказки уступают место жанровым особенностям семейной хроники, элементы которой будут явно присутствовать на протяжении всего романа.
Готические образы романа тесно связаны с историей замка – родового поместья семейства Бельфлер:
Its grandeur as well as its battlemented towers and walls proclaimed it a castle: English Gothic in general design, with some Moorish influence [c. 4].
При этом сразу чувствуется мрачность атмосферы романа:
The heavy, even funereal effect of the walls and columns and battlements and steep-sloping roofs dissolved across the distance so that Bellefleur Manor looked airy and insubstantial as a rainbow's quivering colors [c. 4].
Иногда, писательница ведет рассказ, обращаясь к читателю через образы снов персонажей своей книги:
Great-grandmother Elvira stirred in her sleep but was unable to wake: the cruel winds pitched her about, she saw clearly the waters of the Nautauga rising (as indeed they did that night, some twenty inches an hour during the worst of the storm), and reasoned angrily once again with her husband Jeremiah not to try to save the horses, as he did nineteen years ago [p. 12].
Одним из видов внутренней интертекстуальности является повторение некоторых событий устами самих героев произведения:
Vernon read in his tremulous, reedy, rather oracular voice, which was his special "poetry voice" Jon family legend of dubious authenticity: the meaning of the Bellefleur curse; how Samuel Bellefleur was seduced by spirits that dwelled in the very stone walls and foundations of the manor; how Raphael really died; why he had insisted – not only perversely, but uncharacteristically, for throughout his lifetime he had scorned unconventional behavior – that his cadaver be skinned, and the skin tanned, and stretched across a drum; why the house was haunted (and Leah had to admit that it probably was haunted, but like the rest of the family she simply stayed out of the most troublesome rooms, and saw to it that the most dangerous room of all was kept locked, even padlocked, against the inquisitive children who would nose out any secret, however terrifying) and in what odd ways, throughout the generations, it had been haunted; what Gideon's brother Raoul's fate would be (though in Gideon's presence Vernon would certainly not dare to approach that painful subject); why Abraham Lincoln had chosen to spend his last years in seclusion, on the Bellefleur estate; what had really happened to great-grandfather "Lamentations of Jeremiah"; why his own mother Eliza had disappeared without warning; why the family was doomed unless – but on this point the poetry drifted into an even more puzzling obscurity [с. 59].
Приведенные примеры показывают глубокую интертекстуальность хронотопа в романе американской писательницы. Присутствует множество отсылок к искусству, музыке, литературе, историческим событиям всех временных отрезков, представленных в романе. Кроме того, писательница активно использует в качестве прецедентного текста Библию, что позволяет ей заострить внимание читателя на отдельных моментах романа, чтобы он смог задуматься над смыслом собственной жизни.
Многоуровневость и сложность пространственно-временной организации романа Д. К. Оутс на поминает таковую в романе К. К. Маркеса «Сто лет одиночества». Оба романа описывают жизнь разных поколений конкретной семьи, в обоих романах прошлое активно взаимодействует с настоящим и будущим.
В произведении представлены история и вымысел, психология человеческих страхов и стремлений, величие дикой природы. Время и пространство тесно переплетаются, теряя точки отсчета, что достигается порой хаотичными, а порой последовательными «прыжками» в разные пространственные и временные планы. Для создания этих «прыжков» писательница применяет многочисленные приемы: это и использование в каждой главе основного пространственно-временного плана, связанного с конкретными периодами жизни различных героев романа, и постоянные «флэшбэки» в прошлое, которые объясняют поступки и действия героев повествования, глубже раскрывая их мысли, идеи. Активно применяются как описания воспоминаний героев романа, так и вставки всевозможных комментариев. С одной стороны, читатель отдает себе отчет, что время в романе принадлежит к определенному отрезку исторической эпохи, с другой стороны – все существует вне времени и пространства, так как в романе нет четкой и достоверной хронологии, нет строгого порядка событий. Писательница дает нам понять, что мир – это хаос, в котором каждый человек может легко потеряться, если у него нет определенной «точки отсчета», жизненных ценностей и ориентиров.
Синкретическая интертекстуальность, отсылки к историческим событиям и персонажам придают роману историческую достоверность, в то время как отсылки к мифам и сказкам дают читателю понять условность описываемых событий. В итоге, правда и вымысел переплетаются также тесно, как время и пространство.
Интертекстуальность позволяет писательнице дополнять роман информацией, которая читается «между строк», вызывать у читателей непроизвольные воспоминания, ассоциации и эмоции.