The eastern travelogue of the 19th century russian literature: the imagination of imperial peripheries in the perspective of narrative poetics (introductory observations)

The article investigates principled heterogeneity of narrative structure of Russian mid-19thcentury travelogue. "Notes on the Way from St.-Petersburg to Barnaul" written by P.I. Nebolsin in 1849 are taken as an example. M. Foucault's observations about epistemological boundaries between pre-rational, classical, and postclassical cultural stages became the reference point in forming analytical instruments. Differences in relations between "words" and "things" define stylistic peculiarities (symbolic correspondence vs. taxonomy) and the author's position as well. Eastern travelogue is perceived in the article as an aesthetic and - in a broader sense - intellectual imagination experience of imperial space in 18-19th centuries' Russian culture while the dynamic character is given to this tradition by epistemological shift from rational classification to psychologiza-tion of the narrative, larger manifestation of the author's image, broadening the dialogue possibilities. The reason for the turn of 18-19th centuries' Russian eastern travelogue from scientific-descriptive to art dominant was determined by the influence of sentimental poetics cultivating the theme of surmounting socialborders and therefore, as V.M. Zhivov has shown, particularly applicable for national discourse of integration, e.g. integration of diverse spaces of imperial type into the homogeneous entity. P.I. Nebol-sin's narrative orientation was manifested in the texts written simultaneously but belonging to essentially different discourses: namely in his travelogue and scientific monograph about Yermak's campaign. Paradoxicality of this correlation was expressed, on the one hand, in distinct "fall" of the style of academic investigation to a "simple story" but on the other hand -in interpolations of travelogue narration by large scientese fragments which contain statistical tables and spacious historical compilations. Besides, the discussion with Karamzin's tradition was carried on by Nebolsin not from the positions of its negation but rather to intensify its provisions to such a degree of radicalism which was not characteristic of Karamzin himself. The question is particularly about the criterion of the investigator's literal physical presence among the Siberian realties he depicts in his academic work. It is not difficult to understand that travelogue orientation effusively invaded the scientific text. The narrative palette of the travelogue itself, as it is shown in the work, contains equally with "scientific" fragments a number of echoes of early 19th century prose in which the distance between the narrator and thecharacter is greatly shortened. Orientalist approach to the territory which, according to E. Said, presupposed its study and control gives place to the dialogue uniting of a traveler and his personages in the same emotional space. Considering the fact that these plots are addressed intertextually to literature of the first third of the 19th century, the key resource with which the image of Siberia is reconstructed are the motifs of literary origin.

Keywords

Authors

References