Известия Уральского федерального университета. Серия 2: Гуманитарные науки (Jun 2020)
Image of Zmeinogorsk in Fiction
Abstract
Thematically, this article lies within the research field connected with the study of urban “supertexts” and is relevant for contemporary literary criticism. The subject of the research is the literary image of Zmeinogorsk, a town representative of the Ore Altai as a whole. The author refers to works of art about the town which she has discovered. They are based on folklore, historical, and geographic texts. The methodological basis of the article is the study of “urban texts” by representatives of the Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School (V. N. Toporov, Yu. M. Lotman) and their modern followers, as well as the geo-poetic approach that studies cultural forms of the structure of terrestrial space (V. V. Abashev). Analysis of fiction about Zmeinogorsk reveals the main tendencies in the literary representation of the urban theme. The image of Zmeinogorsk comes close to the image of Yekaterinburg on the typological and genetic levels. The historical story by P. A. Borodkin Secrets of Snake Mountain (1966) represents the key semantic opposition of the mining and metallurgical image of the town in the mid-eighteenth century. The author sees it as an antithesis of “paradise (nature) and hell (plant)”. The plot of transition from “paradise” to “hell” (P. A. Borodkin) and vice versa (A. P. Heidok) is an invariant for the “Siberian text”. It is realised on the “supertext” level. The “snake” toponymy actualises the corresponding mythology and imagery of the town as well as the plot of “fighting a serpent”, modified according to social circumstances. The mythological serpent becomes a metaphor of the authorities (P. A. Borodkin, E. Yevtushenko). In modern prose, the Serpent returns its mythological functions as the Guardian of the depths of the earth, but the conflict of the plot is removed in favour of partnership between man and nature (Eustasia Tarasawa). In general, the “supertext” of the town is in its infancy, a significant mythological and semantic potential of Zmeinogorsk is still to be realised.
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