"Disgrace" by J.M. Coetzee as a postmodern variation of the novel about a musician

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"Disgrace" by J.M. Coetzee as a postmodern variation of the novel about a musician

Mariia Ps. Henychna

PhD in Philology, Associate Professor,

Department of the History of World Literature and Classical Philology,

V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University

Метою статті є дослідження жанрової специфіки роману Дж. М. Кутзее "Безчестя" (1999). Незважаючи на те, що роман не одноразово ставав об'єктом широкого наукового вивчення, передусім у його історичному, політичному та постколоніальному вимірах, всебічний аналіз його жанрової специфіки залишився поза його межами. У цій статті застосовано типологічний, герменев- тичний та інтермедіальний методи аналізу, які дозволять визначити жанрову приналежність роману "Безчестя".

Спираючись на теорії літературознавців М. Бахтіна, Р. Серет, Н. Бочкарьової, наше дослідження виявляє очевидну схожість роману з таким жанровим різновидом, як роман про митця, зокрема, з таким його інваріантом, як роман про музиканта. Головний герой роману Дж. М. Кутзее - Девід - зображується як митець протягом усієї оповіді, який переходить від початкового прагнення написати оперу про лорда Байрона та його коханку до процесу створення самої музики.

Особливу увагу приділено тричастинній сюжетно-композиційній структурі роману "Безчестя" - життєпису героя-митця, творчого процесу та роздумів про мистецтво, що віддзеркалює традиційну структуру роману про митця. Шлях Девіда до написання музичного твору стає символічною репрезентацією його особистісної трансформації та претензії на безсмертя. Крім цього, нами було виокремлено п'ять рівнів тексту (сюжетно-тематичний, метафоричний, композиційно-наративний, словесно-образний та рівень музичної цитати), на яких можна виявити "присутність" музики в романі. Це підкреслює строкату інтермедіальність твору, демонструючи, як музика пронизує кожний прошарок тексту, від сюжету й тематики до тональності оповіді та музичних цитат. Музика в романі стає єдиним можливим медіатором комунікації, оскільки її універсальна мова робить її доступною для сприйняття людьми різного походження та соціального статусу, а головному герою дає можливість бути почутим. Окремо розглядаються всі елементи змістової структури роману (конфлікт, хронотоп, образ героя-митця, лейтмотив, сюжетно-композиційну побудову), аналіз і специфіка яких також доводить той факт, що "Безчестя" є таким інваріантом роману про митця, як роману про музиканта.

Ключові слова: роман про митця, роман про музиканта, жанровий різновид, музика в літературі, інтермедіальність, Дж. М. Кутзее.

"disgrace" by j.m. coetzee as a postmodern variation of the novel about a musician

Mariia S. Pshenychna, V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (Ukraine)

Key words: the novel about an artist, the novel about a musician, subgenre, music in literature, intermediality, J.M. Coetzee.

The article is devoted to the study of the genre specificity of the novel “Disgrace" (1999) by the South African writer J.M. Coetzee. The study begins with a literature review that examines works analysing “Disgrace" to identify gaps in the understanding of genre specificity, as well as unexplored aspects of the novel's poetics. A review of existing works has shown that previous studies have mainly focused on the socio-political and postcolonial discourses, while the poetics of the novel, namely the main elements of the novel's content structure, the specificity of which is crucial for the genre identification of the work, have been neglected by scholars. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate the main elements of the content structure of the novel (the conflict, the chronotope, the protagonist's image, the motif, as well as the plot-compositional structure of the novel), which will allow us to determine the genre of J.M. Coetzee's novel “Disgrace". In our opinion, the systemic-complex approach we have chosen is the best suited for this research. The specifics of the protagonist's construction (according to M. Bakhtin), as well as the motif of creativity, which is a red thread that runs through the entire narrative of the novel, prompted us to consider J.M. Coetzee's novel in the context of the novel about an artist.

The theoretical and methodological basis of this study is the developments of M. Bakhtin, R. Seret, and N. Bochkareva on the theory of the genre of the novel about an artist, as well as the works of such literary critics as P-E. Leuschner, P. Scher, W. Wolf, A. Medvedev on the novel about a musician and the theory of intermediality.

Thus, as a result of our analysis, we have come to several key conclusions that identify “Disgrace" as a novel about an artist. According to the tendencies of the contemporary literary process (postmodern play, propensity for pastiche genres and forms), which is characterised by the existence of various genre modifications, the postmodern novel about an artist is a plastic formation capable of absorbing features of different novel types and genre forms, while all elements of the content structure of the novel about an artist, although modified under the influence of postmodern discourse, still retain their genre basis.

J.M. Coetzee's novel has a three-part plot and compositional structure: the artist's life story, his creations, and reflections on art, which corresponds to the structure of the novel about an artist. All the elements of the novel's content structure (the conflict, the chronotope, the image of the artist protagonist, the leitmotif) are considered separately, and their analysis and specificity also prove that “Disgrace" is as invariant to a novel about an artist as to a novel about a musician. We consider the novel about a musician to be one of the variations of the novel about an artist, which is based on the type of artistic activity of the protagonist-creator as music, that manifests its presence at different levels of the text. Music permeates the novel at all levels of poetics, from the plot and theme to the change in narrative tone and musical quotations, which is evidence of the novel's diverse intermediary. Music in the novel becomes the only possible mediator of communication, as its universal language makes it accessible to people of different origins and social backgrounds, and gives the protagonist the opportunity to be heard.

Thus, in the novel three forms of space (the space of the hero, his work, and culture as such) and time were distinguished, which is typical for a novel about an artist: external time (where the hero's "body" is located); internal time - the hero's psychological time, which is reflected in the depiction of the creative process and David's reflections on both his work and his life; eternal time - time that has absorbed the entire space of culture, which is reflected in the hero's work. Significantly, David's work in the novel acts as a kind of springboard in which all three forms of time and space merge: David's opera reflects both his internal evolution and external cultural and historical changes (the choice of the African banjo as an accompaniment instead of the piano). This conception of time reflects the nature of the conflict in the novel about an artist: in order to be reborn in culture, one must die in life. This insoluble contradiction is reflected in the external conflict between the artist and the world: faced with the realities of the new regime, which David does not accept and into which he does not fit, the hero turns to creativity, which can give him a "second life".

David's transformation from his initial desire to write an opera about Lord Byron to his deep involvement in the process of composing the music itself reflects the motif of creation that is central to the novel about an artist and maintains the novel's integrity.

The very image of the hero-artist in the novel (which corresponds to the aesthetics of postmodernism) is deconstructed: the artist loses his sacred significance and acquires the features of a modern man - powerless, uncertain, entangled in the chaos of life, and allusions and reminiscences of not only literary but also cultural fields add to the comicality to the image of the artist. In conclusion, this study offers a fresh perspective on the novel "Disgrace", the analysis of which proves that it belongs to the subgenre - the novel about an artist, and moreover to such its invariant as the novel about a musician. Our research also contributes to the further study of the transformation of traditional forms of contemporary literature and its interaction with various art forms at the turn of the 20^th -21^st centuries and invites both further research into the intersection of literature and music and the novel about a musician in postmodern English-language literary discourse.

The novel "Disgrace" (1999) by the English-speaking South African writer J.M. Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (2003) and Booker Prize (twice), has certainly been the subject of many literary studies. The majority of scholars have been focused on the historical and political context of the work [Attridge, 2004; Kossew, 2003; Vander, 2005]. Derek Attridge notes: "Coetzee, quite as much as any South African author, has registered for his time and for future generations the brutality, the anger, and the suffering of the apartheid era <...> It [Disgrace] explores, by means of one invented life, some of the pains and strains of a social and economic order" [Attridge, 2004, pp. 99-105]. Vander claims that "Disgrace is a rather politically endorsed novel, because in one of its key chapters the reader is witness to a hearing which reminds us of the TRC commissions at the end of apartheid" [Vander, 2005, p. 51]. Postcolonial discourse and issues of racial and gender inequality have also received research attention [Attwel, 2002; Smit-Marais, 2006]. Attwel, analysing "the novel's representation of black people", argues that Petrus (the black co-owner of Lucy's farm) "is simply reversing, or appropriating, the patriarchal lineage and linear conception of history that are intrinsic to the ideology associated with the farm novel which Coetzee elucidates in White Writing" [Attwel, 2002, p. 335]. There are a number of works devoted to the study of certain aspects of the novel's poetics in terms of intertextuality, ethics, and narratology [Beard, 2007; DelConte, 2007; Ciobanu, 2012; Cooper, 2005; Cornwell, 2002; Wiegandt, 2013], as well as to the definition of the genre specificity of "Disgrace", the authors of which, one way or another, assign J.M. Coetzee's novel to the framework of African pastoral (Afrikaans plaasroman) due to rather detailed descriptions of farm life in the Eastern Cape [Sikorska, 2006; Barnard, 2003; Smit-Marais, 2006]. O. Antsyferova defines "Disgrace" as a postcolonial modification of the Campus novel, focusing on the "type of intellectual protagonist and genre-forming conflict between the hero and the University environment against the background of sexual harassment and violation of political correctness, as a result of which the hero is ostracized" [Antsyferova, 2009, p. 278-285]. Taking into account the specifics of the above-mentioned elements of the novel, which are clearly read in the text, "Disgrace" can be considered as the Campus novel. However, even O. Antsyferova also emphasizes in her article that J.M. Coetzee's novel "may be categorized as the Campus novel very loosely", and that it is only such elements as the University topos at the beginning of the novel, the profession of the protagonist and "his motivation for breaking with his habitual way of life" (David Lurie is expelled from the University for affairs with an African student) that bring together "Disgrace" and the campus novel [Antsyferova, 2009, p. 273]. At the same time, many aspects of poetics (some features of the plot and compositional structure of the novel, the main motif, the principle of the hero's design (according to M. Bakhtin), as well as abundant intermediality), which directly fulfil the genre-forming function, have not been completely analyzed yet.

Nevertheless, this study proposes to use a systemic-complex approach, including typological and philosophical-aesthetic ones, thanks to which it is possible to fully analyze the context structure of the work and identify the main principles and features that allow us to talk about a known literary and aesthetic commonality, about the belonging of this phenomenon - the novel "Disgrace" - to a certain type, genre or subgenre. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to study the main elements of the content structure of the novel - the features of plot and composition, motif, conflict, the principle of the hero's design and the chronotope of the novel, as well as intermediality, which perform a genre-forming function and will allow us to determine the genre specificity of the work. Despite a fairly wide range of literary studies devoted to the novel "Disgrace", it should be noted that a comprehensive approach to the study of the content structure of the novel, which can contribute to the resolution of genre definition, has not been previously undertaken, which provides the novelty of this study. Moreover, as far as the postmodern modifications of the artist's novel in contemporary English-language discourse are concerned, they have been under-researched, which determines the theoretical novelty of this paper.

According to M. Bakhtin, the novel about an artist is a subgenre of the novel of ordeal (in contrast to the German literary critics' point of view, who defined Kunstlerroman as a subgenre of the novel of education) in which the idea of testing the hero has a certain ideological meaning - testing of the artist "for artistic genius and, in parallel, the artist's fitness for life" [Bakhtin, 1986, p. 16]. Roberta Seret, analyzing the novel about an artist in the context of modernism, also distinguishes the "novel about an artist" from the "Kunstlerroman", emphasizing that in the first case, the image of an already formed creative personality is given, while in the second case, its formation is depicted. Seret also identifies the leading motif of the novel about an artist - "the motif of an endless voyage", not so much literal and material, but metaphorical and spiritual (the search for inspiration, for the self, for a place in the world), thanks to which the spatial and sociostatic diversity of the world and culture is realized in novels. The artist, refusing to fulfil his social and economic duties, instead seeks solace in the sublime [Seret, 1992]. The same motif is based on a certain type of chronotope, which Bakhtin defines as Platonic, the core of which is the life path of one who seeks true knowledge [Bakhtin, 1987, p. 282].

Based on Bakhtin's theory about the novel about an artist and the experience of literature and culture of the 20^th century, N. Bochkareva develops the historical typology of the novel and defines the novel about an artist as a subgenre of the novel of creation, in which the hero-artist “creates a 'new world' in the chronotope of culture" [Bochkareva, 2001, p. 7]. According to N. Bochkareva, “the novel about the artist as a kind of novel is not defined only mechanically by the vocation (or profession) of the protagonist, but is characterized as a special artistic unity in the interaction of its components. The creativity is an aesthetic dominance of this unity as an individual goal of the hero-artist, determining his individual situation in the world, expressed in the plot, conflict and chronotope of the novel" [Bochkareva, 2001, p. 336]. N. Bochkareva argues that the main elements of the content structure are the hero-artist, the conflict between Life and Art (man and artist, artist, and reality), the plot and composition of the novel, which consists of a life story, the hero-artist's creations and reflections on art, the motif of creation, as well as a specific chronotope that “integrates all forms of time in the 'present of eternity', which is reflected in the creative act" [Bochkareva, 2001, pp. 17-18].

The modern literary process is characterized by the existence of various genre modifications, as today's “novelists are persistently searching for new artistic structures that could most fully convey both the world of the complicated reality and the inner world of the protagonist" [Tselkova, 1987, p. 9]. It is also worth mentioning the impossibility of a static definition of genre, which was mentioned by Yu. Tynyanov, who defined this problem as the 'shift' of genre, which is understood as the process of changing genre features that act as genre-forming models, which made it possible to abandon the understanding of genre as a stable type of artistic work [Tynyanov, 2000, p. 30]. Therefore, the genre in one way or another expands its boundaries due to the penetration of other genre forms, types or/and subgenres. In particular, this applies to the genre of the novel as the most 'plastic genre' according to Bakhtin, who argued that “no particular historical [type of the novel - M.P.] endures a principle in its pure form, but is characterized by the predominance of one or another principle of the hero's design", which, in turn, is associated with a certain type of plot, a concept of the world, a certain composition of the novel, since all elements mutually determine each other [Bakhtin, 1986, p. 188]. It should be noted that Bakhtin also argues that since the 19^th century, the type of the novel of ordeal has lost its purity, expanding its boundaries due to the penetration of the characteristics of the biographical novel and the novel of education, while preserving the idea of testing the hero, but changing its ideological content, which allows us to consider the genre's primary basis. Taking into account the developments of the above-mentioned studies, it is possible to assume that the novel about an artist is a plastic formation, capable of absorbing the features of various novel types and other genre forms depending on the novelist's intentions. The situation is also complicated by the playful nature of postmodernist literature, the tendency to pastiche genres and forms as a response to the pluralism and chaotic nature of the contemporary world. Therefore, the postmodern variation of the novel about an artist is characterized by genre mixing or, in a sense, even genre layering, while all elements of the content structure of the novel about an artist, although modified under the influence of postmodern discourse, still retain their genre basis.

Under the influence of the aesthetics of postmodernism, the very image of the artist in the novel about an artist, who absorbs the features of contemporary society - unreliability, chaos, insecurity - is reinterpreted. It can be noted that, in general, the image of the artist in this subgenre in the work by J.M. Coetzee is represented in a reduced, comical, distorted way: in the novel “Foe" (1986), the writer Daniel Defoe is depicted as old, mired in debt, hiding from creditors, and constantly distorting the story of Crusoe; the hero-Dostoevsky in “The Master of Petersburg" (1994) is represented as an elderly, grieving father, almost devoid of reason, and suffering from epileptic attacks. In two subsequent novels, “Elizabeth Costello" (2003) and “The Slowman" (2005), the writer turns to the image of an old woman writer incapable of procreation, which corresponds to postmodernist ideas of the modern creator as weak, fading, unreliable, insecure, incapable of a brilliant creative breakthrough, but eager to immortalize him/herself in time.

In the postmodern novel about an artist, the process of creativity is also reinterpreted under the influence of poststructuralist ideas about the replacement of the author by self-generated writing and the representation of the text as an open, pluralistic dialogue of cultures. Writing, or, more broadly, creativity, becomes beyond human control and more powerful than the one who composes it (J. Derrida's theory of 'arche-writing'). Thus, for example, in “Disgrace" David, during his creative impulse, catches himself thinking that it is the music that composes him and not vice versa: “And, astonishingly, in dribs and drabs, the music comes <...> As the action begins to unwind, furthermore, it calls up of its own accord modulations and transitions that he feels in his blood even when he has not the musical resources to realize them <...> He is inventing the music (or the music is inventing him)" [Coetzee, 2000, pp. 184-186]. The idea of the primacy of creativity in relation to the author/creator is characteristic of other novels by J.M. Coetzee (“Foe", “The Master of Petersburg", “Elizabeth Costello") and is connected with the concepts of 'the death of the author' (R. Barthes) and 'the death of the subject' (M. Foucault).

In the novel, David Lurie, a university lecturer, is expelled from the university because he has affairs with an African student, Melanie Isaacs, and is forced to leave the town. The former professor finds temporary refuge on the farm of his daughter - Lucy, who is engaged in gardening, dog-raising and trading at the local Eastern Cape market. And because of this part of the novel, which details the farm life of Lucy and her dark-skinned neighbour, the novel is defined as an African pastoral. It is important to note that “Disgrace" is devoid of idyllic sketches, as on this farm, a dark-skinned trio of men mercilessly rapes Lucy, kills almost all the dogs, robs her house and seriously mutilates David. Whereas in the pastoral novel, the farm is conceptualized as an idyllic space and contrasted with the city, in “Disgrace" the farm is “inherently dystopic: isolated, alienating and dangerous, while the city <...> is suggested to be morally dubious and ethically shameful", which may be due to the postmodernist reinterpretation of the genre [Smith-Mara- is, 2006, p. 28].

A separate strand running through the entire narrative is the protagonist's work on the chamber opera, from his thoughts on it in the first chapters to the writing of the notes themselves at the end of the novel. Thus, the narrative unfolds before the reader not only and not so much about a man in the post-apartheid period, but about a creative person and the creative process itself. This is facilitated by the special point of view of the narrator attached to the protagonist, thanks to which not only the events of his life but also his consciousness is portrayed. It is worth noting that, unlike the novel about an artist in previous ages, where in the center of the novel the personality of the artist is depicted, and who is more deterministic, and his work is considered as his spiritual property, in the postmodernist variation of the novel about an artist in the creator-creativity-creation triad, the chain does not focus on the figure of the artist, but on the creation itself, on the creative process, on the reflections and thoughts about a piece of art, revealing the “curtain" of the creative consciousness of the artist who creates his masterpiece.

Thus, the 'internal' content of “Disgrace" is much more complex than the totality of 'external' events. Therefore, we consider the typological and thematic criterion of determining the genre dominance of the novel to be important, which means a complex concept considered not only at the plot and fabula levels but also at the level of deep genre-forming structures. Based on the unity of the 'external' structural elements (three-part plot and composition of the text), as well as on the 'internal' genre-forming features (the hero-artist writing an opera throughout the novel, the conflict between the artist and the world, the chronotope of culture and the motif of creation), it is possible to suggest that “Disgrace" by J.M. Coetzee is such an invariant of the novel about an artist as a novel about a musician, which is confirmed by the excessive interme- diality of the novel as well. We consider the novel about the musician as one of the variations of the novel about an artist, based on the types of artistic activity of the hero-creator: painting, music, writing, etc., with each of the possible types preserving the unity of the meaningful form inherent in the novel about an artist as a whole, but adding specific features. Speaking about a novel about a musician, this addition would be the 'presence' of music in the novel, which can be detected at different levels of the text. Thus, the German literary scholar R.-E. Leuschner distinguishes the following levels of a novel about a musician, at which it is possible to identify the 'presence' of music in the literary text: plot and thematic, compositional and narrative, verbal and figurative [Leuschner, 2000]. Based on the theory of intermediality of Austrian literary scholar W. Wolf, as well as on the developments of A. Medvedev, this system can be supplemented with a metaphorical plan and a plan of musical quotation, thanks to which the means of musical expression are presented in the text [Wolf, 2002; Medvedev, 2001].

The narrative and compositional structure of the novel “Disgrace" has a three-part structure, which is typical of a novel about an artist Bochkareva singles out the three-part plot and composition structure of the novel about an artist, which consists of a biography, the artist's creations and reflections on art. “The biography is a prose story about the artist's life and creative path. It can be seen both as a biography of the artist <...> [and] as a creative process (the creation of a work of art) <...> The artist's works, whether presented directly (poetry, a novel within a novel) or indirectly (visual art, music, etc. ), can act as 'milestones' in the life of both creativity, completing the stages of the creative path, and symbolic points 'magnets' that pull together the energy of the external and internal being of the main character and break the linearity of the path <...> reflections on art - essayist, art criticism, art analysis, theory of aesthetics, commentary, philosophy of art and other 'images of thought', united by the artistic idea of the work and the aesthetic concept of the artist. The integrity is held by the depiction of the creative process, which corresponds to the main motif of the novel about the artist - the motif of creation" [Bochkareva, 2001, pp. 17-18].: the biography of the main character - a professor of literature writing a musical work; the opera itself - the creation of the hero-artist and his reflections on art (the hero's lectures on the poetry of Wordsworth and Byron, reflections on theater and music). In “Disgrace", the biography of the protagonist should be considered, according to N. Bochkareva, as “the spiritual formation of a man", and “life - as the creation of a 'new world', life-creation as a process" [Bochkareva, 2001, p. 18]. At the same time, the biography of the hero-artist directly influences his creativity and is reflected in his work.

From the first chapter of the novel, the reader learns that David, professor of literature, is about to write a work on Byron: “What he wants to write is music: Byron in Italy, a meditation on love between the sexes in the form of a chamber opera" [Coetzee, 2000, p. 4], and while he makes his living teaching lectures “through his mind, while he faces his communications classes, flit phrases, tunes, fragments of a song from the unwritten work" [Coetzee, 2000, p. 4]. And then throughout the novel, we can see how his ideas and plans, influenced by personal life collisions, become a reality when Professor Lurie starts to write a piece of music: “I have plans. Something on the last years of Byron. Not a book, or not the kind of book I have written in the past. Something for the stage, rather. Words and music. Characters talking and singing"; “As first conceived, the opera had at its centre Lord Byron and his mistress the Contessa Guiccioli" [Coetzee, 2000, pp. 62, 180]; later, after a terrible accident at his daughter's farm, the original idea no longer touches “the strings of his soul" and “He tries another track. Abandoning the pages of notes he has written, abandoning the pert, precocious newlywed with her captive English Milord, he tries to pick Teresa up in middle age"; “He comes back to what must now be the opening scene" [Coetzee, 2000, pp. 181, 182], etc. In this way, the image of the main character as an artist-musician creating his creation is drawn out in front of the reader.

Towards the end of the novel the process of the opera creation by the main character is revealed: “Working as swiftly as he can, holding tight to Teresa, he tries to sketch out the opening pages of a libretto <...> in dribs and drabs, the music comes. Sometimes the contour of a phrase occurs to him before he has a hint of what the words themselves will be; sometimes the words call forth the cadence; sometimes the shade of a melody, having hovered for days on the edge of hearing, unfolds and blessedly reveals itself' [Coetzee, 2000, p. 183], and after that the hero-artist performs it himself: “At the piano he sets to work piecing together and writing down the beginnings of a score. But there is something about the sound of the piano that hinders him <...>", "From the attic, <...> he recovers the odd little seven-stringed banjo <...> With the aid of the banjo he begins to notate the music that Teresa, now mournful, now angry, will sing <...>"; “Teresa leads; page after page he follows" [Coetzee, 2000, pp. 184, 186]. The portrayal of the creative process, which runs through the entire narrative of “Disgrace", makes it possible to highlight the main motif of the novel about an artist - the motif of creation.

An interesting fact is that David starts writing the opera just after an accident at the farm, after which he is in a crisis situation, losing interest in life and in love affairs. Perhaps David is finally aware of his old age, of the proximity of the end of his life, and thus, through the opera, tries to immortalize himself in time. Talking to Lucy about his idea of writing an opera, he says: "One wants to leave something behind. Or at least a man wants to leave something behind. It's easier for a woman. <...> I mean, to produce something with a life of its own" [Coetzee, 2000, p. 63]. It should be noted that David's emphasis is on creating a work that has a life of its own. It is precisely because of the inner transformation of the protagonist, which has occurred to him under the influence of circumstances, he changes both his conception of the opera and his choice of protagonist; there are constant interchanges between the storylines of David's life and the lives of the characters in his work. In a state of harmony, dating his student Melanie, David dreams of writing an opera about the life of "Lord Byron and his mistress the Contessa Guiccio- li <...> Their early ecstasies <...>; That is how he had conceived it: as a chamber-play about love and death, with a passionate young woman and a once passionate but now less than passionate older man; as an action with a complex, restless music behind it, sung in an English that tugs continually toward an imagined Italian" [Coetzee, 2000, pp. 180-183].

Having gone through the miseries - dismissal from the university, having suffered serious injuries, the image of Byron as a seducer and a lover no longer responds to David, he begins to think of Teresa, abandoned, deceived and aged: "he tries to pick Teresa up in middle age. The new Teresa is a dumpy little widow installed in the Villa Gamba with her aged father <...> Byron, in the new version, is long dead; Teresa's sole remaining claim to immortality <...> is the chestful of letters and memorabilia she keeps under her bed <...> Is this the heroine he has been seeking all the time? <...> The passage of time has not treated Teresa kindly <...> Her years with Byron constitute the apex of her life" [Coetzee, 2000, pp. 181-182].

Like Teresa, David keeps Byron's letters of the Italian period (all that have survived after the carjacking), and his affair with the student is the apogee of his joyful and carefree life, which has ended so abruptly, and his only claim to immortality is his future opera. However, reflecting further on his place in his creation, David concludes that he is his very creation: “He is in the opera neither as Teresa nor as Byron nor even as some blending of the two: he is held in the music itself, in the flat, tinny slap of the banjo strings, the voice that strains to soar away from the ludicrous instrument but is continually reined back, like a fish on a line" [Coetzee, 2000, pp. 184-185].

Thus, it can be assumed that Lurie's musical work appears in J.M. Coetzee's novel as a kind of "milestone" of his life, which completes not only the stages of the hero's creative but also his life's path, and working on the opera helps him to experience personal transformations and sublimate his inner feelings into the immortal work.

At the beginning of the novel, in a conversation with Melanie, David admits that W. Wordsworth was one of his teachers and “For as long as he can remember, the harmonies of 'The Prelude' have echoed within him" [Coetzee, 2000, p. 13]. Referring to the Romantic poet's decades- long work, which "reflects the development of an artistic mentality, that is sensitive to contemporary events" [Khaltryn-Khalturyna, 2011], David seems to foreshadow the future of his work in which he tries to reflect on his own life path through the characters he has created. It can be assumed that "Disgrace" is based on the “life path of a seeker of true cognition", which passes "through the cognition of oneself to true cognition (mathematics and music)" [Bakhtin, 1987, p. 282]. That is why his 'final' work is not a literary work but an opera, the music for which he eventually writes himself rather than borrowing. Also, speaking of Wordsworth's poem, the purpose of the work was to demonstrate the artist's ability to compose great poetry, and "The Prelude" was the proof of his fitness [Khaltryn-Khalturyna, 2011]. David's choice to write an opera can be considered as some kind of testing him of his artistic worthiness, an attempt to write something significant that will immortalize him in time: "There is still the Byron project <...> he has, if the truth be told, been putting it off for months: the moment when he must face the blank page, strike the first note, see what he is worth" [Coetzee, 2000, p. 121]. Thus, the main idea of the novel about an artist - testing the artist "for artistic genius and, in parallel, the artist's fitness for life" is reflected in "Disgrace" [Bakhtin, 1986, p. 16].

After reading a newspaper article about his affair with a student in which he is mentioned as the author of books about the English singer of nature - William Wordsworth, David is thinking of the inscription on his tombstone: "David Lurie (1945-?), commentator upon, and disgraced disciple of William Wordsworth. Blest be the infant babe. No outcast he. Blest be the babe" [Coetzee, 2000, p. 47]. The final phrase is an implicit reference to Wordsworth's poetry, namely "Ode:

Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" which deals with the theme of death, loss of youth and innocence. Perhaps even now the hero anticipates the imminent end of his life and realizes the need for creating an “immortal" work in which he can immortalize himself. In general, the motif of the fading of life, ageing and death is evident in the novel. David repeatedly emphasizes that he is an old man and life is leaving him: “Like a leaf on a stream, like a puffball on a breeze, he has begun to float toward his end", “he has a taste of what it will be like to be an old man" [Coetzee, 2000, p. 107]. And perhaps that is even why he chooses the elderly Teresa as his main character in the opera, whose image echoes in his soul.

David also reflects on his mission in the world and wonders that “he should be offering himself to the service of dead dogs", when there must be “other, more productive ways of giving oneself to the world <...> Even sitting down more purposefully with the Byron libretto might, at a pinch, be construed as a service to mankind" [Coetzee, 2000, p. 146]. It is important for David to be recognised, to serve humanity as an artist, not as an assistant in an animal welfare clinic. Yet, in one way or another, he keeps coming back to the idea of his opera, the creation of the major work of his life with which he dreams of completing his artistic path.

In “Disgrace" we can distinguish three forms of space (the space of the hero, his work and culture as such) and time, characteristic of a novel about an artist N. Bochkareva distinguishes three forms of time: external, biographical, where the hero's “body" is located; internal - the hero's psychological time, reflecting his evolution; eternal - the time turned to immortality and absorbed all the space of culture, which is reflected in the hero-artist's creation [Bochkareva, 2001, p. 47].: external time (where the hero's 'body' is located), which can be defined conventionally by the time frame from mid-autumn to late spring; internal time - the hero's psychological time, reflected in the depiction of the creative process and David's reflections both on his work and on his life; eternal time - “the time that absorbed all the space of culture", which is reflected in the hero's creation [Bochkareva, 2001, p. 17]. Very importantly, David's work in the novel acts as a springboard in which all three forms of time and space merge: David's opera reflects both his internal evolution and external cultural and historical changes (the choice of the African banjo as an accompaniment instead of the piano). This creates a special chronotope of the novel about an artist, which integrates all forms of time in the 'present of eternity' - the artistic work. According to N. Bochkareva “this concept of time reflects the nature of the conflict of the novel about an artist: to be reborn in culture, one must die in life" [Bochkareva, 2001, p. 18]. This irresolvable contradiction is reflected in the external conflict between the artist and the world: faced with the realities of the new regime, which David does not accept and within which he does not fit, the hero turns to creativity, which can give him a 'second life'. The hero-artist tries to equalize with God the creator in his creations and with the help of them become immortal [[Bochkareva, 2001, pp. 45-47]. David, feeling his fading and approaching end, especially after the wounds inflicted on him, tries to give himself life in music that will sound forever: “a single authentic note of immortal longing" [Coetzee, 2000, p. 214].

The plot-thematic level is related both to the system of characters (images of artists-musi- cians, composers, musical works) and to the plot construction (description of the process of creating a musical work, performance and perception of music). Having studied the plot and compositional features of the novel above, we can state that the reader sees the image of the protagonist as an artist-musician, creating his creation and, at the end of the novel, performing it. Let us dwell in more detail on the specifics of the image of the protagonist in J.M. Coetzee's novel, which is reinterpreted under the influence of postmodernism aesthetics. David is immersed in his inner world of creativity, demonstrating the gap between the outer and inner worlds: not rooted in reality, the hero tries to find the metaphysical basis of his existence in the image of the 'double' he creates in his work. And while David initially chooses the Romantic poet Byron as the main character of the opera, in the end, his 'double' becomes the aged Therese. The novel constantly draws a parallel between David and the image of older women. Being in the heart of the Black Continent, the hero feels helpless and compares himself to the vain and arrogant Aunt Sally in a very fancy colonial outfit, a comic character from a popular 1980s TV series: “He is helpless, an Aunt Sally, a figure from a cartoon, missionary in a cassock and topi..." [Coetzee, 2000, p. 95]. After being mutilated by robbers and locked in the bathroom while his daughter is brutally raped, David is reminded of the children's song, “Two old ladies locked in the lavatory / They were there from Monday to Saturday..." [Coetzee, 2000, p. 109]. Whereas in the literature of previous eras the artist was portrayed as equal to God in his creative powers and endowed with features of divinity, in postmodernism his image is deconstructed, the artist loses his sacred significance and acquires the features of modern man - powerless, uncertain, confused in the chaos of life.

Allusions and reminiscences of not only cultural but also literary fields add to the comicality to the image of the artist in “Disgrace". At the disciplinary hearing, Lurie declares that “there are more important things than prudence'¹, to which one of the panellists replies: “This is all very quixotic, Professor Lurie, but can you afford it?" [Coetzee, 2000, p. 49]. The comparison of the professor to Don Quixote draws a sort of parallel between the characters that run throughout the novel. Thus, along with the comic insanity (the professor's refusal to make a statement in order to maintain his position and place at the university), we find the features of a noble defender of the oppressed (his daughter), a fighter against social injustice (David desperately wants to punish black criminals according to the law). Like the idealistic Hidalgo, David is the only one who confronts the world and tries to change the situation in the post-apartheid period; even his daughter accepts the reality as it is and submits to the new order. In Cervantes' novel, the world of Don Quixote does not coincide with the real one, the hero “creates his life, plays out his spectacle - which in his eyes is life and becomes more real and true to him than the surrounding reality" [Коловерова, 2011, pp. 13-14]. Like Don Quixote does, David “plays the play of his life", even Lucy notices that her father lives in his own play, as if everyone around is part of his spectacle: “you behave as if everything I do is part of the story of your life. You are the main character, I am a minor character who doesn't make an appearance until halfway through" [Coetzee, 2000, p. 198]. There is a certain play on life in J.M. Coetzee's novel, creating a postmodern effect of blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction. David creates an opera about Byron in which he portrays himself as Byron and as Teresa; and he lives as if he is acting on a stage. Thus, Lurie's opera is a kind of reflection of his life, and the hero's life is a play.

Let us consider the metaphorical level of the text, at which “through the means of musical expression the image of the 'state of the world' in the novel is conveyed" [Medvedev, 2001]. In ancient times, there was a view of the world as a harmoniously tuned musical instrument, but along with the socio-cultural changes of the eras, the worldview also was changing: in the 20^th century, the cosmos was replaced by chaos, and the music of the spheres was no longer harmonious. Modernism proclaimed “music of ruin", sounding in the musical compositions by W.R. Wagner and later in the literary work by T. Mann. Music as a metaphor of existence in the postmodernist discourse is presented as a reflection of the world in all its diversity: total uncertainty, unreliability, and chaos. The protagonist of J.M. Coetzee's novel, painfully experiences the fading of both his masculine attractiveness and his vitality in general, as though he embodies the existential weariness and the passing power of man: “He has a sense that, inside him, a vital organ has been bruised, abused - perhaps even his heart. For the first time he has a taste of what it will be like to be an old man, tired to the bone, without hopes, without desires, indifferent to the future" [Coetzee, 2000, p. 107]. David's routine is disrupted by his own reckless actions, and his harmonious life is replaced by an uncertain future. After his dismissal, Lurie becomes not as much isolated in his daughter's farm as withdrawn into his inner world, which is exacerbated by an accident. The main character chooses to be shielded from society, and his only occupation remains working for an animal welfare league and writing an opera. Even David's ambition to write a great opera is replaced by his lesser plans: “It would have been nice to be returned triumphant to society as the author of an eccentric little chamber opera. But that will not be. His hopes must be more temperate: that somewhere from amidst the welter of sound there will dart up, like a bird, a single authentic note of immortal longing" [Coetzee, 2000, p. 214].

Having become isolated within the walls of his own small inner world, a breakthrough to the 'outer' world is no longer possible, and the protagonist clearly understands this. It can be assumed that in this way the external conflict between an artist and reality, which is inherent in the novel about an artist in general, is also changing its vectoral direction. The world is no longer seen as something that impedes creativity. The artist keeps himself away from the outside world in the world of creation. Despite extreme individualism and the insularity of his existence, the hero-artist in the novel correlates conceptually with the world. The artist's fate is perceived as a fragment of existence, in which the changes of time reflect, while his music reflects the worldview, in which echoes of disharmony and frailty of human existence are dominated.

The metaphor of the frailty of life, its transience, its hopeless passing into the past and the ruthless whirlwind of a time in the novel is reinforced by David's conscious choice to make the ageing Teresa the protagonist of his opera, rather than full of strength and attractiveness Byron, as it was in the original plan. The choice of accompaniment also changes: from grand orchestrations to monophony of a single instrument. Working on a piece of music becomes a way of rethinking David's own life, an attempt of self-awareness and acceptance of personal changes as well as an attempt to harmonize the chaos of life in which David lives. After all, music is the most important component of a person's spiritual life, contributing to self-immersion, spiritual purification and inner transformation, according to the great artist and writer of the 21^st century - H. Hesse [Bychkov, 2009]. Based on the philosophical developments of Pythagoras about music, by means of which “human nerves and passions are cured and the initial harmony of soul forces is established", it can be assumed that in J.M. Coetzee's novel, the main character experiences a catharsis by creating a musical work of art. According to the Pythagorean interpretation, catharsis was seen as “the correction of human morals and way of life" [Dolgov, 2010], since the only condition for true knowledge is the purification of the soul from all corporeal things. It is not for nothing that at the end of the creative process, David associates himself not with Byron or Theresa, but with the incorporeal music itself: “he is held in the music itself, in the flat, tinny slap of the banjo string" [Coetzee, 2000, p. 185]. Moreover, at the end of the novel, David reconsiders his former way of life, which is reflected in his reasoning about the marriage of Cronus and Harmony as unnatural, and it “was what the trial was set up to punish" [Coetzee, 2000, p. 190].

Analyzing the compositional and narrative level of the text, it is necessary to note the construction of the novel according to the principle of counterpoint (which in music is usually understood as the simultaneous combination of two independent melodic voices, and in literature as the opposition of two plot lines). The main plot is the story of David, his work and life, his expulsion from the university and his move to the Eastern Cape, his help with the Animal Welfare League, and his work on the opera. The second storyline, though faintly evident in the narrative and fragmentary, is the story of Byron and his love affairs in Italy, and further on Therese already after the Romantic poet's death. As noted earlier, there are constant interchanges between the storylines about David's life and the lives of the characters in his work, and the protagonist's life peripeties directly influence his work (changing the main character of his opera and musical instrument).

The music also manifests itself in J.M. Coetzee's novel at the verbal-figurative level, which includes the techniques of musicalisation of the novel background: the presence of words with musical semantics in the text and the sudden change in the tone of the narrative in conveying the inner states of the protagonist [Medvedev, 2001]. Verbal-musical images emerge throughout the narrative of “Disgrace" and evoke musical-sonic associations in the reader's mind, which create a kind of musical background: “a ground bass", “interludes", “clarinet quintet", “middle C", “sound, low and hoarse", “Melody without climax", “the vocal lines, soprano and tenor", “the baritone of the humiliated husband", “libretto", “nine syllables on C natural <...> descending chromatically to F" [Coetzee, 2000, pp. 5, 11, 12, 15, 82, 121, 122, 122, 146, 185].