Kostroma toponyms in Alexander Zinoviev's memoirs «In Godforsaken Place»

Abstract

The article presents a comprehensive analysis of toponymic vocabulary associated with the Kostroma region, in the memoir essay of the philosopher and writer Alexander Alexandrovich Zinoviev «In Godforsaken Place», included by the author in the book «Confessions of a Renegade». The purpose of the study is to identify the semantic and communicative-pragmatic properties of dominant toponyms which are actively involved in organizing memoir narration, forming text meanings, explicating the conceptual content of the work, creating the author's modality. The study of toponyms in contextual environment is based on the genre and stylistic features of the memoir text: the combination of two temporal plans (past and present); the combination of objective reliability and individual subjectivity. The author of the article gives a brief overview of modern linguistic studies of toponymy in the Russian speech system and presents a classification of toponyms which are subdivided in the analyzed text into placenames and hydronyms. The article characterizes toponymic dominants of the memories: the name of Kostroma city and the name of the writer’s native village Pakhtino. The author of the article presents a coherent study of the key toponyms in some parts of the memoir text. The title of the section «From Pakhtino to New York» uses contextual antonyms that first create an antithesis, and are used as a part of a gradation series, but then, in the process of developing textual semantics, form an enantiosemy, uniting opposite objects of reality: a Russian provincial village and a large American city. With the help of several stylistic devices (antitheses, gradations, enantiosemy), the writer expands the boundaries of the narrative, depicts the universal scale of events, reflects ideas about indigenous Russian spiritual values and life priorities of the Western world. The toponym Kostroma is used in an ironic context: the memoirist quotes his poetic work, where he mentions his hometown which is not particularly different from other cities, since everyday bustle reigns in them all. Further, in the section «Russian Hinterland», Kostroma is named among other Russian cities, becoming a symbol of a more prosperous life and participates in creating the city-village opposition. The key hydronyms of the memories are the names of the Viga and Volga rivers. Their semantic interaction with the names of provincial settlements is actualized in the context. The evaluative vocabulary becomes the means of creating the writer's modality with positive textual connotations prevailing. In conclusion, the author of the article emphasizes the role of Kostroma toponyms in forming the chronotopic characteristics of the text and the communicative organization of the memoir discourse.