Issue 2 (67)

GEOPOETICS OF THE NATIONAL LANDSCAPE IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE
Year 2020 Number 2(67)
Pages 99-106 Type scientific article
UDC 821.161.1 BBK 83.3(2Đîń=Đóń)
Authors Sozina Elena K.
Topic RUSSIA’S CULTURAL LANDSCAPES IN HISTORICAL ASPECT
Summary Space is connected with a Russian man’s ideas not only of the real, but of a certain ideal, which must (and can) be achieved. This opens a physiognomy of national-sacred landscapes that store the images of the ideal, and the same geo-poetic image often contains the ideal and its antipode. The article examines the key texts of Russian literature from this perspective. In N. V. Gogol’s “Dead Souls” the image of Russian (plain) space lurks the mystery of Russia and the “unnatural power” of space over man. The horror that the immensity of Russian space aroused in both N. V. Gogol and P. Ya. Chaadayev makes it possible to compare their landscapes with the “dark territories” (in E. V. Nadtochy’s definition). In N. A. Nekrasov’s “Who Is Happy in Russia?” Russian space receives the coordinates of social life. F. M. Reshetnikov (“The Podlipnayans”) was guided by the poem of N. A. Nekrasov: his characters, striving for “wealth”, go to the river from the forest, socialize themselves on the way and die on the river. Forest and river — these are the coordinates of their home world, which has Finno-Ugric roots. I. S. Turgenev marked out forest and steppe as the main natural types of the Russian world. However, it was rather plain, steppe space that prevailed as a Russian in the 19th century literature. From N. V. Gogol, the steppe trend goes to A. P. Chekhov, next to whom D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak can be placed. From the east, the border of the Russian Plain, which is lost in the steppes in the south, is the Ural Mountains. The main secret of the space of the Urals is hidden in its forest expanses, covering the mountains, which depths lurk riches. This “telluric” dimension of the region D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak transmitted to P. P. Bazhov. Thus, in the Russian national landscape there are features of the Finno-Ugric and Turkic ethnic worlds, and each of them conceals its dark places.
Keywords landscape, national, Russian literature, geopoetics, metageography, Nikolai Gogol, Petr Chaadaev, Nikolay Nekrasov, Fyodor Reshetnikov, Ivan Turgenev, Anton Chekhov, Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak
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