The principle of incompleteness in the works by Dmitry Gorchev

Traditional literary poetics expects an author to create a complete meaningful text with
an aesthetic value. Following this total poetic norm, an author of a literary work – whether it is
a play, a sonnet, a novel or something else – gives his work a certain complete and final form.
Beyond literary fiction, the principle of completeness / finality of the text and the verbal product
itself is also quite comprehensive. It guides the organisation of diverse speech genres or the
genres of discourses that correspond to one or another socio-cultural sphere of communication.
Thus, the system of author’s practice and reader’s expectations in modern verbal culture
includes the significant emphasis on the creation and perception of a whole text and holistic
piece of work. Keeping a classic personal diary also fits into the classic completeness / finality
paradigm.
However, in the world of private Internet communications, including the blogosphere, we can
see a fundamentally different picture. The inverse principle of the relative incompleteness of the
text and its subsequent development in the net through the readers’ and author’s comments is
at the heart of the blogosphere construction, with the possibility of its spontaneous collective
completion. Such principle is, in particular, followed in the work of the perished Russian writer
Dmitry Gorchev. His texts are impeccably artistic, although some may be unacceptable in the
contexts of a normative culture. Sometimes the author’s desire to finish these texts and give
them the status of a holistic piece of work is quite palpable. However, these texts exist in the
environment of instant responses and blogosphere comments, which tears their potential selfsufficiency.
Gorchev’s readers, for the most part, perceive these texts not as a piece of work, but
as «messages» with dialogue potential, like entries in an online diary, in a blog, and respond
to them in different ways. Realising it, the producer of texts no longer strives to isolate and
make them whole and, at the same time, to differentiate himself as a literary author. Therefore,
the position of the speaker remains very much that of the biographical, real Gorchev –
the lyrical contemplator of life.