The image of the Russian North in the novel by Mikhail Tarkovsky “Toyota cross”

Abstract

In this article the author describes the concept of the Northern text on the example of M. Tarkovsky’s novel “Toyota cross”. The Northern text is understood in a broad sense, which includes the spaces of Krasnoyarsk, the Far East, Siberia, etc.. The boundaries of the Northern local text are characterized by “fluidity” and heterogeneity, as in the works of art can be represented by the Russian and European North, embodied in the images of Norway, Finland, Arkhangelsk and other geographical regions, in addition, the North can be implemented as a mythological space (Lukomorye, belovode, White island). The work is considered with the help he geoethical approach, which is an actual direction of modern humanitarian thought “at the junction” of several scientific disciplines and allows a comprehensive review of the local text, to identify its main structural and semantic components, such as: spatial images, motives, myth, system of oppositions associated with geographical space. Through this approach, in the novel of Mikhail Tarkovsky’s “Toyota Cresta” was identified and described, the Northern traditional text components: images of the Yenisei river, the two-headed eagle, the Russian land, mountains, rivers; systems of oppositions own/foreign, North/South, East/West, life/death, city/village; motives of initiation, wandering, road, fate; the idea of the North as a special space, acting as the guardian of traditional values, going back to the myths of belovode, Lukomorye Kingdom, White island. In addition to the traditional components, we can also highlight additional elements characteristic of modern Northern prose – the image of the right-hand drive machine, the opposition of Moscow and the North, the problem of fragmentation and decentralization of Eastern and Western Russia

Keywords

• siberian text
• local text
• geopoetics
• image
• space
• landscape
• motif
• myth