Georgy Chulkov’s Play The Taiga: Reception of the Siberian Text in the Context of Russian Symbolism
The article discusses the mythopoetics of Georgy Chulkov’s drama The Taiga (1907) and its specific role in the context of Russian symbolism. Chulkov significantly modernised traditional ideas about Siberia in Russian literature while relying on the basic concepts of the doctrine of mystical anarchism that he created. The play is considered against the background of the same-name story preceding it. The transformations of the plot in the two texts are analysed. It is established that the recoding of the system of actors and the transfer of the motif of killing from one character to another in the drama extends its volume in comparison with the earlier story, but does not exhaust its artistic potential. Along with the exoteric code, the drama forms the opposite, esoteric one due to its author’s mystical anarchism. In this regard, the role of the remark in Chulkov’s drama is determined. The remark is filled with suggestive meaning. It cannot be played on stage, but, when reading it, it conveys a change in the mood of the characters and creates a peculiar score of meaning that cannot be reduced to ordinary logic. Creating the myth of the Taiga within the framework of the Siberian theme, Chulkov uses the general scheme of the myth, as V.Ya. Propp described it, and at the same time significantly changes it. Propp’s scheme postulating the stages of the initiation complex includes four elements: leaving, test, limination, and transfiguration (transformation). In the transition from a narrative scheme to a dramatic structure, Chulkov had to significantly change this scheme, enriching it with new elements. So, the motif of leaving is complicated by the motif of another woman’s invasion, the motif of test is adjacent to the motif of madness, in which the heroine finds herself after a magical meeting with the shaman. The most important is the significant transformation of the mythological scheme at the expected point of transfiguration. Chulkov introduces a thanatoerotic motif, which is alien to the main mythologem of Siberia. Thus, the transformation is reformatted at the end of the play into a typical symbolic situation of the inseparability of love and death. The controversy surrounding the play allows speaking about it as an original phenomenon in the Siberian text of Russian literature of the early twentieth century. Despite the absence of any obvious reader interest, Chulkov’s drama was at the epicentre of the literary polemic of opposing literary movements. Realists led by V.G. Korolenko criticised it for mysticism, symbolism, and decadence. Young Symbolists, primarily A. Bely and A.A. Blok, condemned the play for its lack of a deep insight into the secrets of human life and ways of its artistic expression. Thus, the interpretation of the drama The Taiga as an original link of the Siberian text is highly relevant.
Keywords
mythopoetics, Russian symbolism, Siberian text, The Taiga, Georgy Chulkov, русский символизм, мифопоэтика, сибирский текст, драма «Тайга», Г. ЧулковAuthors
Name | Organization | |
Shatin Yuriy V. | Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences | shatin08@rambler.ru |
Silantev Igor V. | Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences | silantev@philology.nsc.ru |
References

Georgy Chulkov’s Play The Taiga: Reception of the Siberian Text in the Context of Russian Symbolism | Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Filologiya – Tomsk State University Journal of Philology. 2020. № 66. DOI: 10.17223/19986645/66/16