Autobiographical, Documentary and Artistic as Complementary Means Constructing the First World War Reality in the Story ‘Dusk Seen From Afar’ by Ya. Bryl

The article examines Ya. Bryl’s story ‘Dusk Seen from Afar’, dedicated to the concept of the ‘continuous disaster’, which includes the events of the First World War. According to the author’s plan, the narrator, who nominally cannot be treated as a conscious witness to the hostilities, gradually reconstructs the events of 1914–1918, which affected the life of his family and fellow villagers (in the wider context Belarusian people). The complementary role of visual and verbal aspects the artistic representation of military reality is noted. The suggestive potential of literally every material object, participant story, documentary, folklore or literary source is emphasized. Taken together they allowed the storyteller to create an adequate verbal picture of the world war. A number of features that testify to the connection of the work with metaprose are identified. They determine the conceptually different place of the story in the entire range of Belarusian war literature, dedicated to 1914–1918.