UNIVERSALITY AND INDIVIDUALITY IN THE USE OF RETARDATION IN THE STYLES OF CHINGIZ AITMATOV AND NORMUROD NORKOBILOV

Abstract

The article analyzes retardation as one of the expressive methods of the chronotope. Retardation is a literary device antithecial to climax, in which the development of the plot is deliberately delayed through the inclusion of extra-plot elements such as depictions of nature and setting, lyrical digressions, philosophical reflections, monologues, dream representations, or repetitive episodes. In literary studies, the term is often used as a synonym for anticlimax (from Greek ἀντί – “opposite” and κλῖμαξ – “staircase”). Retardation often appears through the introduction of secondary characters or interpolated episodes, which suspend the rhythm of the narrative. Chingiz Aitmatov’s novels “The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years”, “The Doomsday”, “Falling Mountains” and “The Brand of Cassandra” as well as Normurod Norkobilov’s “In the Steppes and Fields” and “Black Whirlwind”, are analyzed in a comparative and typological perspective using psychological, classificatory, and systemic-structural methods of analyses. The study aims to examine the intertemporal movement of plot lines resulting from the interplay of chronotopic forms; , to reveal the writers’ mastery in employing retrospection, prospection, and retardation; to explore the interaction among such literary devices as memory, dream, landscape, and portrait; and to explain the role of plot and compositional elements in conveying the chronotope through systemic-structural analysis. The semiotic realisation of the artistic aesthetics in modern novels is revealed through the writers’ skill in character creation, generalization, and typification, as well as through psychological tools such as landscape, portrait, dialogue, inner monologue, hallucination, and dream. The individuality and universality of their styles are expressed in the use of the retardation technique characteristic of epic narration. . At the same time, their shared creative approach to lyrical digressions, introductory episodes, narrative structures, epigraphs, and detailed portraits reveals poetic principles grounded in such compositional means as the hero’s past and the parallel or contrasting depiction of landscape.