“MÅRBACKA” BY S. LAGERLÖF: SPECIFICITY OF THE GENRE AND THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL “I”

Abstract

The article is devoted to the question of the genre specificity and features of the artistic representation of the autobiographical “I” in the work of the famous Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf “Mårbacka”. The study notes that this text presents an intra-generic genre synthesis. It is pointed out that “Mårbacka” is not a typical autobiographical novel or memoir: the work is structured as a series of separate stories, each of which has its own genre nature. The first part of the work (“A Trip to Strömståd”) has features of autobiography and “travel”; the second part (“Stories of the Old Housekeeper”) is a family legend with features of horror, fairy tale, short story, romantic novella; the third part (“Old Buildings and Old People”) is a realistic everyday essay; the fourth (“New Mårbacka”) and fifth (“Weekdays and Holidays”) parts contain many comic stories, similar to comedies; the sixth part (“August Seventeenth”) is a typical idyll. The genre diversity is complemented and largely determined by narrative polyphony. In this regard, the question of the specificity of the autobiographical “I” of “Mårbacka” deserves special attention. The “real” or historical “I” of “Mårbacka” is the famous Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf.The narrating “I” is complex and multi-voiced. First, the narrator tells about little Selma in the third person, deliberately emphasizing detachment, although he colors the story with his own emotions (irony, sadness, etc.). Second, when it comes to Selma’s inner world, the narrating “I” speaks not in the voice of an adult woman, but in the voice of a child, authentically conveying children’s thoughts and feelings. Third, the narrator’s voice also changes when he has to retell stories heard from others (the “naive” voice of the old housekeeper, the cheerful voice of Mr. Lagerlöf). Fourth, in the last part of the work, the epilogue, the narrating “I” allows herself a first-person narrative: there is a return to the world of modernity, to herself – an adult woman. The narrated “I” in this work is a happy child in the main part of the work and a woman overcome with memories and quiet sadness, an “exile from paradise” in the epilogue. The ideological “I” can be characterized as a “girl from a fairy tale”.