NARRATOR I NARRACJA W POWIEŚCI JURIJA OLESZY ZAWIŚĆ
NARRATOR AND NARRATION IN JURIJ OLESHA’S NOVEL ENVY

Summary/Abstract: The present article is an attempt at the analysis of the category of narrator and narration in J. Olesha’s novel Envy (1927). The novel is constructed of two parts each of which is distinguished by the separate structure of a narrator and forms of presentation. The creator of the world presented in part one is Nikolai Kavalerov, a narrator and at the same time its main hero, an oversensitive man with the strongly developed complex of his own uselessness. This intellectual-dreamer “demented” by the feeling of envy towards “new people” and “new times” is the first person narrator. The choice of just such narrative medium brings with it definite structural consequences: an extreme subjectivism of the narrator-hero causes significant deformation of the reality. Whereas in the second part of the work the world presented is created by the abstract third person narrator. According to the general assumption of the creative method of the writer both kinds of narrator, after all so different as for their construction, were provided with a number of common features. An exceptional insight in the perception of the surrounding reality through the inspection of its particular elements, extremely vivid, almost “orna­ mental” language, a distance full of irony towards the created world — these are only some of these features which combine both types of the narrator. An attempt at an analysis presented in the article has as its goal the visualization of the unusual precision with which Olesha applied various solutions on the plane of narration of the work. Cummulation of various narrative forms (apart from simple ones there are also complex forms here: letters, built-in short story, documentary materials, poetic texts, etc.) has not been for Olesha only a formal experiment. The writer when creat­ing the work presenting such a variety of narrative forms and so complex a construction of a narrator, he designed for his novel a thoughtful and sensitive reader, an active co creator of the work. Means of artistic expression in the field of stylistics or composition were also subordinated to this goal.

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