TREE IMAGE OF SIBERIA: LARCH

Abstract

The dendroimage image of Siberia is considered in the context of geopoetics and ethnodendrology. For the first time the proposed analysis systematizes the motives associated with the image of larch, one of the main trees in the region. The research materials are scientific works on ethnography and folklore studies, Russian and Russian-language fiction about Siberia written in the XIX-XX centuries. The name of the tree reflects its dual status: coniferous and deciduous simultaneously. The “gender” of the larch is also indeterminate: male / female. The larch has an «intermediate» position in the system of the most important dendroimages of the Siberian text: between cedar and birch. It can be associated with universal tree mythologemes (World Tree, Tree of Life and Death, family tree, etc.), but it most clearly embodies the basic concept of Siberia as a space of violence, hard labor, exile, concentration camps.