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Abstract: The article examines the plot of accident as an ideal way to laconically reflect the moral-ethical state and historical situation in which the society described by the author finds itself. It is stated that the stories under analysis “Im letzten Wagen” by L. Frank and “Auf dem Balkon” by A. Polgar reflect the features of expressionism both on the ideological and the artistic levels. The author analyzes the system of images of the stories and notes that with the typification common to both authors, Frank tends to depict all social strata and give the broadest possible description of the socio-historical situation, while Polgar focuses his atten-tion on the intellectual elite, “spiritual people”, showing their inhumanity and lack of spirituality. Particular emphasis in both cases is placed on female characters. A pregnant banker’s wife in the short story by Frank is an alternative character: against the back-ground of the accident, she is depicted as an earthly Madonna, who epitomizes love and foresees the truth. In Polgar’s short story, a woman of the world is the embodiment of frivolity and stupidity; she embodies the extreme degree of indifference. The study has revealed the similarity of the chronotopic organization of the texts. In both cases, the authors do not localize the plot within the framework of a station or railway, no matter how significant this chronotope may be, but fit the train accident into a broad natural – cosmic – context. In this regard, the fallen masks that hid the egoism of the characters reveal not only specific his-torical issues. Indifference is interpreted as a universal human problem. God and nature are powerless against it. The study has found that expressiveness and accident-centered nature of the texts are expressed through a common set of techniques. Thus, text fragmentation is represented by montage in the text by Frank, and by parcellation and syntactic parallelism in the text by Polger. Both authors consistently build the audial, visual and olfactory canvas of their texts, in which they tend towards bright, loud, and ecstatic characteristics. Human selfishness and callousness are also expressed in the animalistic nature of the texts.

About the author(s) :

Nataliya E. Seibel
South Ural State Humanitarian Pedagogical University (Chelyabinsk, Russia)
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6840-8286

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 29.08.2024; date of publication: 30.10.2024

References:

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