Stylistic “Patchwork” in R. Seisenbayev’s Novel “The Dead Wander in the Desert”

Syncretism at various levels of text organization is one of the features of the modern Kazakh novel. Noting the specificity of the syncretism of speech styles in the poetics of Rollan Seisenbayev's novel “The dead wander in the desert,” the authors introduce the concept of stylistic “patchwork”. The goal is to analyze the elements of different speech styles incorporated into the structure of the work using the stylistic “patchwork” method, from the point of view of their role in the creation of artistic reality as well as the reflection of the moral and philosophical concept of the novel about an environmental disaster. This approach to the study of this novel is new, since it was not reflected in the papers of researchers of R. Seisenbayev's works. Within the framework of a formal approach to the analysis of a literary text, the structural-semiotic method and the method of stylistic analysis of the text are used, with the help of which the features and functions of the stylistic “patchwork” are revealed as an artistic method that forms the author’s picture of the world. It was also revealed that through the introduction of elements of colloquial, scientific and official business styles into the novel, the participation of representatives of three spheres of life in solving the Aral problem is demonstrated: people who suffered, the scientific community discussing the state of the Aral, the government bodies ignoring the problem. The elements of the text of journalistic and artistic styles reflect two types of sources of information and two types of truth: the media, which have lost the trust of the people; literary texts and scripture as a source of timeless truth and prophecy about the fate of humanity. The artistic method of stylistic “patchwork” identified in Seisenbayev's novel can be used in Kazakh postmodern literary works and requires further research.