MYTHOPOETICS OF THE URALS AND SIBERIA IN D. N. MAMIN-SIBIRYAK’S NOVEL “WITHOUT A TITLE”

Abstract

The article considers the poetics of D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak’s novel “Without a Title” in folklore-mythological, philosophical, historical-literary, and socio-cultural contexts. The main research subject is the mythopoetic structure of Ural-Siberian locus in comparison with the well-established myths of Siberia in Russian writers and publicists’ works of the 19th century. The research determines a dialogical nature of the narrative structure of the novel: “Without a Title” is devoted to the problems of Russian historical path and national self-determination. The images of Ural and Siberia are used as the symbolic expression of the concept of the new man who is formed on the border of his own and others’ world, by crossing of the traditional Russian culture and civilizational processes of the late 19th century (the development of science, technology, the capitalization of social life). Mamin creates a new version of the novel genre in which the plot structures of the utopia, fantastic, travel, socio-psychological novel are rethought. The motifs of Christian and pagan mythology are represented in the artistic description of the characters and Siberian nature, in the development of the key themes of the novel: Russian “expansion” to the east, spontaneous popular colonization of Siberia, its industrial and ontological development, confl ict of the American and Siberian geopoetics; family, life and death in character’s existential experience. In the novel “Without a Title” Mamin represents the process of the mythologization (myth), demythologization (destruction of the myth) and remythologization (making of the myth) of the “thinkable” and “thinking” region territory, creates a new author’s myth of Siberia as Russia of the future.