The Genre of Trolls - Doria

7 THE PROBLEMS OF UNFINALIZABILITY
AND DIALOGUE
7.1 Introduction
Unfinalizability is, as celebrated by Bakhtin in his book on Dostoevsky
(first published in 1929), and in his own way, by Johan Alén in “Little
Matt”, in the context of traditions of the supernatural, sometimes more of
a curse than a blessing. The unfinalizability or indeterminacy of supranormal
creatures—the terms will be used interchangeably—is keenly felt as a
shortcoming and a source of fear for humans, as some of the examples
given below will demonstrate. Rather than embracing unfinalizability as a
necessarily positive value, then, a persistent urge to finalize, or consummate,
supernatural beings is occasionally evinced, and it may take radical forms
(see chapter 7.3, where I focus on this aspect). Often, however, trolls and
their kith and kin continue to be bewilderlingly unfinalized. Though this
may be to the chagrin of the human protagonists, it is also the lifeblood of
the supranormal tradition, as noted by Catharina Raudvere (Raudvere
1993: 122–123). Hence, stories of the supernatural regarded as a genre often
seem to require the unfinalizability of supranormal beings in order to be
effective as narratives. Therefore, I propose to study finalization and unfinalizability
in troll narratives, and to consider the ways in which it moulds
the relationship between man and supernatural creatures in the stories (the
third level of inquiry as mentioned in chapter 1.1). In this context I use the
term unfinalizability to refer to the construction of the image of the individual
in narrative, as well as to the construction of the narrative as a whole.
The conceptual framework needed to analyze troll tradition is not only
that of the positive unfinalizability of Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (the
1963 revised edition), but also that of the prepolyphonic Bakhtin of Author
and Hero in Aesthetic Activity (here cited according to the French translation
by Alfreda Aucouturier), when he had not yet discovered the pervasive
influence of the word on human subjectivity. In this early work, written in
the 1920s, Bakhtin was much concerned with finalization and the self–
other distinction. More importantly, he also pondered the “distortions” of
the artistic image effected by an incomplete finalization. I believe the notion
of defective finalization may be of assistance in investigating finalization
and unfinalizability in the narratives, as it can be used to highlight
Introduction 253