The image of a Siberian writer in literary criticism and journalism of G.N. Potanin and N.M. Yadrintsev (the 1870s-1900s)

The article analyzes the image of a Siberian writer created in the works of G.N. Potanin and N.M. Yadrintsev, with which they made a revolution in the Siberian and all-Russian public consciousness, in regional and national literature, introducing a new regional approach to understanding literature and literary creativity. The study is carried out on the material of literary-critical articles by G.N. Potanin and N.M. Yadrintsev of the 1870s-1900s. The author considers the evidence of Potanin’s and Yadrintsev’s modeling of the image of a regional, Siberian, writer objectified in their literary-critical texts, describes one of the brightest and most illustrative representations of the concept of literary creativity, in particular, of a Siberian author as a type of national literary creativity. Potanin and Yadrintsev build their own unique image of a Siberian writer at the intersection of the “image” of masters of literary art generally accepted in Russia, and its Siberian interpretation through the prism of their own philosophical and artistic aspirations and searches of Russian literature and culture in the late 19th -early 20th centuries. Supporting a number of features of the image of a writer common in the nineteenth century, G.N. Potanin and N.M. Yadrintsev agree with a range of generally accepted characteristics of a writer, creating the image of a Siberian author, which includes the interaction of regional, all-Russian and separatist concepts; the idea of their dialogue is emphasized. The article also stresses that the image of a Siberian writer created by the pioneers of regionalism refracted the main discovery of regionalism, on the one hand, and populism, on the other. The discovery came to the Siberian and all-Russian reader largely thanks to Potanin and Yadrintsev; it was the discovery of a Siberian writer inspired by people’s interests in Siberia. Without idealizing this writer, the critics highly appreciate their activities and in their publications do not allow discrediting them, the ideology of regionalism and the philosophical and aesthetic concepts of regional literature and regional writer that would later appear on its basis. Finally, it is noted that the desire to understand the essence of a writer’s works, their purpose and objectives, their specificity in relation to a Siberian author, which came to Potanin and Yadrintsev in full in the 1870s-1900s in connection with the regional program of development of Siberia, goes along with the interest in images of a Siberian reader and Siberian literature in the metatextual space of their literary-critical and journalistic texts.

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