Open AccessTIME AND THE OTHERS. ‘BILLIARDS AT HALF-PAST NINE’ [‘BILLARD UM HALB ZEHN’] BY H. BÖLL
Author(s) -
S. Fomin
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
voprosy literatury
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 1
ISSN - 0042-8795
DOI - 10.31425/0042-8795-2018-2-247-271
Subject(s) - poetics , narrative , theme (computing) , surprise , timeline , repetition (rhetorical device) , literature , composition (language) , plot (graphics) , character (mathematics) , history , space (punctuation) , art , linguistics , philosophy , poetry , sociology , computer science , mathematics , communication , statistics , geometry , archaeology , operating system
The article deals with the image of time of Heinrich Böll’s Billiards at Half-Past Nine . Undergoing transformation as the novel progresses from beginning to end, time is promoted beyond the formal meanings of the word to the book’s theme, key driver of its plot, and one of the novel’s main characters. The author examines the artistic techniques, composition, timeline, and topography related to this metamorphosis, as well as the writer’s typical stylistic methods. To mention just a few, its dramaturgical substitution (whereby the role of the narrator is passed on from one character to another, and the scene moves across time); semantic surprise (an unexpected use of a word, or change of the topic of narration); spiral composition (description of past and present events in a cyclical rather than linear narration); the poetics of repetition and artistic laconicism. In addition, the research looks at the novel’s position in time and space in accordance with M. Bakhtin’s classification.