Motives and Images of Sacred Practices of the Peoples of Siberia as a Factor of Poetics in the Works of Russian Literature

The aim of the article is to reveal the sustained attention of Russian writers of different epochs to sacred practices of the peoples of Siberia and to discover the role of sacred practices as a factor of poetics in the works of Russian literature. Chapter VI of Volume IX of The History of the Russian State (1821) by N.M. Karamzin, the tragedy Yermak (1832) by A.S. Khomyakov, the short story “The Other Side” (1917) by V.Ya. Shishkov and the novel Tobol. Many Are Called (2016) by A.V. Ivanov were analyzed. The comparative typological method of analysis was applied to select works written in different periods that include sacred practices as a significant element of the creative interpretation of events. The method of structural analysis helped identify the levels of the literary structure of the works under study that can be considered most functional for sacred practices. While for Karamzin as a historiographer, this is the level of ascertaining of symbolic things and signs of fate that accompany events, writers employ sacred practices as an element of poetics at the level of images, motifs, details or plots of their works. By means of sacred practices, writers uncover the specific features of a human perception of the world, the deep motivation of human actions, moral and spiritual priorities. In the tragedy Yermak, Khomyakov used the motive of a shamanistic prediction of Yermak's fate, his death in the “grey-haired Irtysh” river. However, Khomyakov made the functioning of this motive more complex via a tragic collision of a conspiracy that Yermak's closest companions organized with a shaman against him. Yermak perishes as a real hero while Khomyakov's shaman totally discredits himself and undergoes a spiritual catastrophe. In Shishkov's story “The Other Side”, sacred practices are represented neither by a real shaman character, nor by cult things or religious ceremonies, but, instead, by the characters' passionate desire to resolve contradictions of life with the help of the supreme forces. The plot of the taiga love triangle ends with the death of the child a shaman has to bring back to life. But the shaman and the shamanistic practice become a symbol of the unattainability of the characters' hopes in the story. In Ivanov's novel Tobol. Many Are Called, sacred practices are an element of the plot that predetermines the characters' fate. The sacrificial rite, immolation and spells that the female character performs lead to an opposite result. Here, it is the shaman's that becomes a pledge for further life and a different, “new”, fate. The article provides evidence that, in different periods of time, Russian writers address the sacred practices of Siberian peoples. Woven into the texts in the form of motifs, images or details, these practices help writers disclose the depths of their characters' consciousness and souls, their innermost hopes that they will be heard beyond the borders of the ordinary, visible life.

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