TRANSITIVE LITERARY DISCOURSE IN THE MODERN NOVEL

Abst ract. The novels of W. G. Sebald, Vladimir Vertlib, Alexei Makushinsky, and many other contemporary writers around the world challenge both readers and researchers. These authors tend to have a (trans)migrant background and establish their texts at the intersection of many cultural codes, languages, and sign systems. Literary translingualism and multimodality from particular stylistic techniques are becoming dominant writing strategies for an entire corpus of outstanding fictional texts for which previous analytical approaches become irrelevant. This is new literature that needs to be addressed and discussed in a new way. This article hypothesizes that in such novels, a new – transitive – discursive practice is taking shape. The article presents the concept of transitive literary discourse and reveals some of its common features based on the three translingual novels. These are “Austerlitz” (2001) by W. G. Sebald (Germany – UK), “Way Stations” (1999) by Vladimir Vertlib (Russia – Austria), and “Steamship to Argentina” (2014) by Alexei Makushinsky (Russia – Germany). The authors of the article combine the methods of discourse analysis, historical and theoretical poetics. Mikhail Bakhtin’s works on the aesthetics of verbal creativity provide the methodological basis of the study. The intellectual toolkit of the transnational and visual methodological turns is also engaged. The study reflects a set of topical issues of modern literary theory aimed at understanding the language of literature and art at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries (the era of globalization). Transitive literary texts actualize the problem of the language of description, methodology and analysis technique of a new literary discourse.


Introduction
Both translingualism and multimodality are among the dominant features of the contemporary literary process and have been privately and independently studied under different methodological applications. Our research aims to propose a theoretical approach that allows considering these and some other properties of contemporary literature as a single phenomenon, resulting in different manifestations in the aesthetics of verbal creativity. This phenomenon can be understood as the global search for a new literary language in the era of post-information and de-territorialization. Additionally, it can be assumed that we are con-cerned here not only with an interesting literary phenomenon but also with the manifestation of deep meaningful transformations of artistic consciousness in the literary form.
We propose to introduce the category of transitive literary discourse into the theoretical apparatus of literary studies. Literary translingualism and multimodality in transitive discourse present a change in the writing type, a transition of metaphoric and poetic language traits. Transitive literary discourse is often present in the works of writers with a (trans)migrant background -this will be demonstrated. However, it can also be found in the texts of authors who biographi-cally seem to fit into the "national literature" of their home country (e. g. Olga Tokarczuk, Robert Menasse, etc.). Their texts reflect the understanding of the global world, transforming constantly and rapidly, and become their unique artistic statement (text as a statement [Bakhtin 2012]). Therefore, literary translingualism is the process of verbal formation of a non-static, cross-border -t r a n s i t i v e -picture of the world. We will examine this and some other attributes of transitive literary discourse based on the translingual novels of three European (trans) migrant writers: "Zwischenstationen" (1999) / Way Stations by Vladimir Vertlib (Russia -Austria), "Austerlitz" (2001) by Winfried Sebald (Germany -UK), and "Пароход в Аргентину" (2014) / Steamship to Argentina by Alexei Makushinsky (Russia -Germany).

Translingualism -Multimodality -Transitivity
Translingual fictional text is frequently used as research material in studies of various disciplinary fields, and this might give the impression that the phenomenon of translingual literature has already been sufficiently investigated. However, since each field (including inter-, multi-, and postdisciplinary areas of knowledge) has its problems as well as research objects, many projects involving translingual literature explore the author's linguistic personality, didactic toolkit, linguistic processes, cultural realities, and so on, rather than consider the literary text as such (that is, as an aesthetic statement). Meanwhile, the translingual fictional text is a matter of formation of a new literary practice, which requires a focused theoretical reflection.
The relatively new term translingualism has significant interpretational differences in various disciplines. This is especially important to consider when it comes to related research areas, such as linguistics and literary studies. From a linguistic perspective, literary translingualism is primarily related to the personality of authors (and not to the text) who turn to more than one language in their work or completely transition to a second language [Killman 2019]. Conceived as a fact of literature rather than language, the phenomenon of translinguality has a different meaning. According to the definition in "Handbuch Literatur und Transnationalität" (2019), the concept of translingualism describes and emphasizes the intersec-tion, interweaving, and mutual penetration of languages ("die Kreuzung, Verflechtung und wechselseitige Durchdringung von Sprachen") [Bischoff & Komfort-Hein 2019: 492]. Therefore, as a term for literature studies, translingualism conveys, first, a new kind of relationship between languages (it is no longer the sum of L1, L2, L3 …, but a constant transition from one to another) and second, a distinct linguistic hierarchy within the text (the language prevailing quantitatively is no longer dominant). This distinguishes translingual literature from multilingual, multicultural literature. Multiculturalism is understood as a juxtaposition of strictly separate cultures, in which the guiding distinctions of "one's own" and "alien" make cultural exchange (still) a special case. However, in the era of globalization, culture constitutes differently. It is "a kind of cultural hypertext" of multiple de-limitation and de-location [Han 2005: 59]. This axiological shift results both in new research optics and in new aesthetic principles of creativity.
One of the key challenges in the investigating of translingual texts is the search for a relevant method of analysis that would allow the consideration of the function of literary translingualism in the implementation of the author's architectonic task [Bakhtin 2012]. Since the early 2000s, Western literary scholars have already taken significant steps in describing the aforementioned phenomenon as a category of literary studies. Summarizing the results of these efforts, Esther Kilchmann lists the following concepts: E x op h o n i e / 'exophony' by Susan Arndt, Dirk Naguschewski, and Robert Stockhammer; L i t e r at u r e n o h n e f e s t e n W o h n s i t z / 'literatures without a permanent residence' by Ottmar Ette; and p o s t m o n o l i n g u a l c o n d i t i o n by Yasemin Yildiz [Kilchmann 2019: 85]. However, Kilchmann also notes that none of these conceptual approaches has been able to gain general and wide acceptance: "Aus Sicht von Autorinnen und Autoren scheint der Reiz mehrsprachiger Schreibweisen allerdings auch gerade darin zu bestehen, dass dadurch ein standiger Wechsel inszeniert werden kann, der sich festen Zuschreibungen entzieht" [Kilchmann 2019: 85].
In practical research, such a methodological gap may result in a contextual reduction. It occurs when the researcher considers translinguality as a feature of the poetics of a particular author without correlating it with the literary process and cultural context. Another problem is that studies often focus on interlingual insertions or cross-lingual allusions as independent artistic techniques. This perspective impedes the revelation of the differences between modern translingual practices on the one hand and past forms of literary multilingualism and bilingual creativity on the other. Consequently, it might seem that we are dealing only with a repetition of well-known literary devices rather than a new phenomenon in world literature.
In contrast, the situation with theoretical comprehension of multimodality in the modern novel -another notable trend -is relatively better. For instance, the formal distinction between multimodality and the conceptually close technique of intermediality is well established. In a literary text such as a novel, intermediality implies the "translation" of units of the non-verbal semiotic system (architecture, music, painting, and so on) into a verbal one. In contrast, the multimodal component is non-verbal and easily "separable" from the verbal fabric of the novel. These include photographs, graphically highlighted text inclusions, reproductions of printed texts from other sources, various discursive modulations (e. g. the transcript of a telephone conversation) that the author systematically introduces in the text. Furthermore, the principle of separation of multimodal insertions and illustrations in the text is also clear. The illustration is facultative and optional, but the multimodal component is directly involved in the process of meaning formation in the novel. Therefore, compared to literary translingualism, multimodal writing strategies are easier to capture, and their connection precisely with the effects of today's globalizing world is evident.
Translingualism and multimodality are striking, though not the only, features of transitive discourse. They ensure the "movement" between languages and sign systems, and thus the unsteadiness and variability of the fabric of the text, which seems to "avoid fixation". The emergence of such writing strategies and transitive imagery is associated with a qualitative shift in artistic and generally cultural consciousness, which has been actively explored over the past 20 years within the framework of the so-called transnational methodological turn: To think of literature from a transnational perspective is to put an emphasis on transit -on mobility, 1 Hereafter, the English translation and bolding are ours. migration, travel, and exchange, forms of experience that create bonds between people that, while fostering a sense of national unity, also connect people and their cultural practices across, over, and through geographic and human-made borders [Jay 2021: 10].
The transnational turn is thus based on the idea of a porous border as a space of dialogue, and translingualism and multimodality are writing strategies that recreate this new cultural "Selbstverständnis" ('self-understanding') in the literary text [Curtius 1975].

Alexei Makushinsky's translingual poetics
Alexei Makushinsky (b. 1960, Moscow) is a famous Russian-speaking writer fluent in German, English, and French, who has been living in Germany since the late 1990s. The author of four novels, one non-fiction book, and poetry and essay collections, Makushinsky is regularly in the spotlight of critics and has received various literary awards including audience prizes. However, his translingual texts are only just beginning to become objects of directed scholarly interest.
In rare cases, foreign-language fragments do not have equivalents in Russian in the text of the novel. First, when the reader can "guess" the meaning of the word from the context -«Я плыл в Аргентину по делам, disons, своей фирмы» / 'I was sailing to Argentina on business, disons, for my firm' [Makushinsky 2018: 38]. Second, when it is a precedent text: «Самой важной для него цитатой, когда он работал, было чудесное стихотворение Поля Валери о колоннах (douces colonnes, ô l'orchestre de fuseau… chacun immole son silence а l'unisson…)» / 'the most important quote for him while he was working was Paul Valéry's wonderful poem about columns (douces colonnes, ô l'orchestre de fuseau… chacun immole son silence а l'unisson…)' [Makushinsky 2018: 127]. Finally, if the Russian version of the fragment is not quite "safe", as it potentially leads to new (unwanted) meanings -"So we just did it in the car and then in the cabin, and I came three times consequently (twice with the clitoris and at the end with the uterus… it's a sort of a poem, isn't it?), screaming and biting him like a whore" [Makushinsky 2018: 259].
Since the plot of "Steamship to Argentina" is devoted to the fate of emigrant characters (the first and second waves of Russian emigration) and all the major shocks of the 20th century, there is a temptation to explain the formal multilingualism in the novel by the need to portray interlingual interference in the speech of people who have long lived outside their native language environment. However, analysis of the text points to a different function of literary multilingualism in "Steamship to Argentina". This novel is m e a n i n gf u l l y translingual: foreign-language inclusions are stylistic dominants of the text through which the author recreates certain images of the world, character, and language. This world is dynamic and escapes fixation by the boundaries of nationstates: the characters walk down a German Straße, French rue and find themselves on an Argentine avenida. This character has a multiple identity to which, as the plot develops, he adds new dimensions, and his very name changes its "nationality" from time to time: Александр Николаевич Воскобойников in Russia, Alex Vosco in France, and Alejandro in Argentina. This language is the intersection of languages, a continuous transition from one to another.
Another crucial element of the translingual poetics in this novel is the actualization of the architectural code, which can be seen as an additional language. From a semiotic perspective, architecture is a universal sign system that does not require translation and prompts certain actions (climbing stairs, looking out the window) [Eco 2006: 262]. Architect Voskoboynikov speaks this language around the world, and the recognition and demand he receives according to the plot indicate that his a r c h i t e c t u r a l s t a t e m e n t s have been heard.
Voskoboynikov's architectural constructions appear as philosophical theses that rhyme with both the plot and the semantic level of the novel, and thus are available for translation into the verbal sign system. Some of them literally correspond to the phrases from the architect's diaries, articles and interviews. For instance, the egg-shaped museum of сontemporary аrt mentioned in the quote above is one of the most important theses of the novel: «Все устроено не так, как мы думаем» / 'Everything is not arranged the way we think it is' [Makushinsky 2018: 199]. Other architectural projects of the main character can be interpreted as "Harmony of text and context", "Fighting the forces of anonymity", "Rethinking the past as an alternative to denying it". At the same time, all of them are characterized by the modality of motion: the bridge f l i e s over the bay; the university s l i d e s d o w n the slope; the new residential area d e s c e n d s in ledges and, when viewed from above, resembles the curves and loops of a river.

W. G. Sebald's Photo Narrative
Of all the authors discussed in this article, it is concerning Sebald's work that researchers often use the notion of 'transitivity' and in different contexts: poetics of transitive memory [Wollf 2009], transitive identity ], the transitive activity of construction [Williams 2019]. Thus, by proposing the concept of a transitive literary discourse, in a sense, we continue the already outlined research logic. The optic we propose makes it possible to reveal the manifestation of transitional poetics in their interrelation at all levels of the fiction text: formal and stylistic, thematic, semantic, figurative and metaphorical, and character level.
The German-British poet, novelist, essayist, and literary historian Winfried Georg Maximilian Sebald (1944Sebald ( -2001 is one of the most re-vered authors of the late twentieth century. He was born and spent his childhood in the Bavarian fairground community of Wertach. He studied German philology at universities in Germany, Switzerland, and UK, where he later moved permanently in 1970. In his fiction texts, which some researchers prefer to call books rather than novels ], Sebald developed themes of memory, forgetting, silence, and national trauma associated with the events of the Second World War and the Holocaust. The main language of Sebald's work is German. His most recognizable techniques are the documentary and, at times, encyclopedic factuality of the fiction, translingualism, and the introduction of a visual element that we will focus on in our article. In his books (both in novels and nonfiction), Sebald places images (indistinct black and white photographs, drawings, newspaper clippings, and other documents) the connection of which to the text seems contingent. The writer works hard to strip the image of its illustrative function such that the picture becomes a supplement to (and confirmation of) the written words. Thus, for instance, visual insertions are placed in the fabric of the text in seemingly inappropriate places, not at the moment of an intonation pause but often "in the middle" of a word. Simultaneously, as the researchers of the photopoetics of Sebald have pointed out, images have new functions: to unite the stories in the novel; to discover a deeper connection between the stories than the narrator shows; to fill in information that is missing in the text [Zozulia 2018]: Pic. 1. Fragment of the novel "Austerlitz", German edition The result is a photo narrative that tells a separate story and thus the reader is in constant transition between two sign systems. By breaking the narrative link between text and photographic image, Sebald manages to achieve a dialogue of two narratives. In this dialogue, images are given a "voice" and we can speak of the presence of an independent language in the novels -photography.
In the novel "Austerlitz" (2001) there are 86 visual inclusions. Comparison of the German (original), English (authorized), and Russian editions of the novel [Sebald 2019;Sebald 2011;Zebald 2019] showed that the size of the visual fragments and their place in the text coincide as much as possible given the translation and the differences in the "size" of graphic signs and semantic units in different languages.
Pic.1 shows the first elements of photopoetics that the reader of "Austerlitz" sees (except for the cover photo, which, however, at the beginning of reading the novel is not yet perceived as part of the narrative). "Austerlitz" opens with a description of the storyteller's visit to the pavilion of nocturnal animals (Nocturama) in the Belgian city of Antwerp. And then goes on: Von den in dem Nocturama behausten Tieren ist mir sonst nur in Erinnerung geblieben, daß etliche von ihnen auffallend große Augen hatten und jenen unverwandt < photo of the eyes of "animals" > forschenden Blick, wie man ihn findet bei bestimmten Malern und Philosophen, die vermittels der reinen Anschauung und des rei-< photo of human eyes> nen Denkens versuchen, das Dunkel zu durchdringen, das uns umgibt 1 [Sebald 2001: 7-8].
In Sebald's novels there are no image captions clarifying the content of the photograph, and therefore researchers and commentators are engaged in the "unraveling" of the photographs on their own. In particular, it has been established [Malikova 2008] that in the fragment in question the eyes "belong" to 1) a lemur, 2) an owl, 3) a close friend of the writer -the artist and photographer Jan Peter Tripp, 4) the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (who "appears" again a few pages later -this time in the verbal text -when portraying of Austerlitz).
The appearance of all these "eyes" in the novel (as well as other visual fragments in Sebald's work) does not seem justified through the verbal narrative. It surprises readers and, in a sense, confuses them [Hills 2012]. Examining instances of the "invasion" of the visual in Sebald's novels, Helen Hills observes that through this kind of interaction between text and image, the writer makes visible "the great difficulty and the responsibility of enunciating". The researcher goes on to explain as follows: His writing demonstrates the extremely problematic relationship between writing and speaking, images and memory, and the obliteration of other stories or other versions of the same story that his words necessarily and inevitably represent, even in their arduous task of searching to remember something and to restore something that has been willfully obliterated [Hills 2012: 63].
The "hybrid" interplay of verbal and visual codes in Sebald's novels are suspended in a relationship of compromise, and this potentially removes the problem Hills speaks of: any story told necessarily and inevitably erases other stories. The writer destroys the integrity and harmony of his artistic statement, thereby depriving it of its ability to be termed/considered a story and to claim truthfulness. In this manner, the destruction of subjectivity through the image of "text-ruin" actualizes the architectural code in W. G. Sebald's novels [Schauss 2021;Ward 2006].
The same function is inherent in the translingual component in the novel "Austerlitz". Foreignlanguage inclusions in six languages -French, English, Czech, Dutch, Valais, and Latin -can be seen as compromising literary discourse, refuting of the sustained integrity and objectivity of the artistic statement; as an attempt to ruin the mythology of a monolithic national literatures based on the idea of "national language". This is the crucial distinction between translingualism in "Steamship to Argentina" and "Austerlitz". Makushinsky's translingual narrative is a dynamic recreation of a multilingual and transitive artistic world and the image of man in it; national languages in their transition from one to another is an image of the global language. Conversely, Sebald's artistic world disintegrates into multiple worlds, and this is also a manifestation of transitivity.

'Zwischenbereich' of Vladimir Vertlib
Vladimir Vertlib was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 1966. When he was five, his family moved from the USSR to Israel. He subsequently lived in Austria, the Netherlands, the United States, Italy, and finally, in 1981, returned to Austria. Vertlib currently holds Austrian citizenship. The main language of his work is German. According to Vertlib (the essay "Spiegel im fremden Wort"), for people who emigrated, the homeland is a kind of fictitious "inter-world" since "emigration is international" [Vertlib 2012: 15]. He further adds, "It is an intensified form of experience of another existence and of loss of identity, which has become a sign of our time" and "making this global aspect of emigration visible seems to me as one of the most important tasks of contemporary art". This is the primary theme of Vertlib's creative work, which we prescribe should determine the way of studying his works. Vertlib insists, "Sincethereareno 'pure' nation-states, therearenomore national literatures" ("…da es keine reinen Nationalstaaten gibt, gibt es auch keine Nationalliteraturen mehr") [Vertlib 2012: 37].
The writer highlights that in the works of migrant writers, there is no semantic unambiguity; they refer to a special area of culture which can be termed interethnic (Zwischenbereich) [Vertlib 2012: 39]. This forms a border area where different languages of different cultures coexist and converge: "Meine schriftstellerische Heimat ist der Grenzbereich, die Gleichzeitigkeit und das Nebenein ander" ("My literary home is the border area, the simultaneity, and the juxtaposition") [Vertlib 2012: 59]. Therefore, migrant authors assume multiple identity (Mehrfachidentität), which enables them to create new forms of multilingualism. According to Vertlib, his narrative discourse has the "German surface, under which -rather unconsciously than consciously -there is an interaction of the sentence structure, the melody and the idiomatic of the Russian language" ("eine deutsche Oberfläche, unter der oft, eherunbewusstalsgewollt, Satzbau, Melodie und Idiomatik des Russischenmitschwingen") [Vertlib 2005: 59]. Hence, one can imagine the immense creative potential of this writing concept, how brightly and creative-ly the poetics of a literary text can be outlined at several levels.
In this regard, Vladimir Vertlib's novel "Zwischenstationen" (Intermediate Stations) is representative. Different countries and cities are depicted in the novel's flickering pictures. There is no single holistic image as there are no specific landscape descriptions. There are only fragments and shreds of countries and cities -a piece of a street, a corridor in a block of flats, an elevator cab, a room, or part of a room, representing a fragmentary space, however, simultaneously, a strikingly whole one. The wholeness is created by the novel's language -by languages and by the discordance of immigrants of different nationalities whose paths intersect during their endless movement.
The unique artistic transitivity penetrates the level of characters as well. In the series of events, the actions of the characters are only outlined and not described in detail. They remain quite monotonous and faceless. Their impulses and dreams do not indicate their individuality either, contrary to the traditional "monolingual" realistic prose. Therefore, in Vertlib's novel, life activity is expressed differently: each character is determined by their relation to the language (in its mental and existential frame). The characters are divided into types -those who are locked in their native language (and in once and for all a certain worldview) and those who can adopt a different viewpoint on things and thus become freer [Vertlib 2005].

Conclusions
According to Mikhail Bakhtin, the picture of the world represented in the works of various epochs is different. At the same time, Bakhtin looks at the history of the novel not chronologically in the narrow sense, but in the "great time" of poetics [Bakhtin 2010: 10-59], and hence, the novelty of each of the literary worlds appears clearly and expressively in his conceptualization. Bakhtin deploys the picture of the world in the work from a dual perspective -as "the world depicted" and "the world depicting". "The world depicting" is the writer's creative principles related to the perception of time in their epoch. "The world depicted" is "the time-space and the image of man in the novel" [Bakhtin 2010: 19]. As is well known, Mikhail Bakhtin has developed a detailed classification of spatio-temporal novel structures, but the principle of transitivity was not involved in their organization; the picture of the world was always framed within the boundaries of one national and mental language. Today, there is a new mobile chronotope, and the form of representation of the new literary worlds is translingualism and multimodality.
The concept of transitive literary discourse is a theoretical tool, sufficiently specific and yet flexible. It allows the main trends of newer literature to be considered in their potential unity from the point of view of the aesthetics of verbal creativity. Following this logic, literary translingualism and multimodality appear as ideologically close forms of representing the transitive, non-static picture of the world in the novel. To see this in practice, we propose a three-part analysis strategy for the transitive literary texts: character-world-narrative. This means that it is necessary to identify the translingual and/or multimodal component for designing the literary characters, the surrounding artistic space, and the choice of narrative strategy.