NARRATIVE SEMIOSIS AS A FORM OF INTERMEDIALITY IN LITERARY TEXT (BASED ON E.-E. SCHMITT’S FRENCH NOVEL «LA PART DE L’AUTRE»

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the phenomenon of narrative semiotization as a form of intermediality in a literary text, based on the French novel «La Part de l’Autre» by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt. The research focuses on the mechanisms of creating an intermedial space in which the literary narrative functions as a semiotic system integrating verbal, visual, and ideological codes. It demonstrates that narrative semiotization emerges as a process of encoding and decoding the sign systems of different arts within the text, ensuring the formation of a multilayered semiotic space and the polyphonic organization of the narrative. The purpose of the article is to identify the ways of aesthetic encoding and decoding of reality through which the modeling of a multilayered artistic world takes place. The object of the research is the intermediality of the literary text, while the subject is the mechanisms of narrative semiotization in Schmitt’s prose. The theoretical and methodological foundation relies on works in semiotics, intermedial studies, and narratology (J. Kristeva, W. Wolf, I. Rajewsky, M. McLuhan, J. Müller). In Schmitt’s novel, the literary text is interpreted as an intermedial model of reality, where visual art performs the function of a semiotic mediator. In the alternative storyline, where Hitler appears as an artist, aesthetic semiotization is realized ‒ an attempt to comprehend existence through the harmony of signs and images. In the «real» storyline, by contrast, art undergoes a process of decoding: it loses its aesthetic function and becomes a sign of ideology. This intermedial contrast reveals the tension between aesthetic and ideological codes, between art as a means of cognition and art as an instrument of power. It has been proven that narrative semiotization in «La Part de l’Autre» functions as a dynamic process of transforming sign systems, ensuring the polyphony of the artistic world. It unites verbal, visual, and philosophical elements, creating an intermedial space of dialogue between the arts. Thus, intermediality appears not only as a form of artistic representation within the text but also as a way of modeling artistic reality, where each sign acts as a carrier of interartistic meaning.