THE URALS FROM A RAILWAY CARRIAGE WINDOW: MEANS OF COMMUNICATION AND TRAVELOGUES

Abstract

The article considers the railway discourse of Ural travelogues of the late 19th – early 20th centuries. The main theoretical and methodological justification for this phenomenon was the understanding of the means of communication, in this case of the railway, as a message whose main content is “changing of the scale, speed or shape” (M. McLuhan) of human activity. One of the most important sociocultural changes caused by the railway was a new visuality, mediated by the high speed of movement. The train allowed contemporaries to see the world in a new way, becoming a sort of “а view”. A new configuration of space in which movement develops takes place under this view. Particularly, a rapid change of visual impressions triggers semiotization mechanisms, which allow one to regulate the kaleidoscope of the visual flow. As a result, the role of associative thinking, linked with the general poetic context, on the one hand, and the literary tradition of describing the Urals, on the other hand, increases. Another factor that influenced the perception of the Ural space during a railway journey is the intense kinesthetic sensations associated with the dynamics of mechanical motion. It can be said that railway travelogues formed for the Urals an organic style of description that suits the dynamic nature of the mountainous terrain. Moreover, railway travelogues re-structured the Ural landscape in a new way. The large mining centers of the Urals, connecting which was the main mission of the Ural railway, become the key points of the trip. The railway route, which presupposed the movement from one city-plant to another one, returned to the Urals the features of the mining power, having dimmed by the middle of the 19th century.

Keywords

• травелог
• железная дорога
• средство коммуникации
• образ Урала
• восприятие пространства
• маршрут.