Between myth and literary anthropology: Ket ethnicity in contemporary Russian literature

The paper is dedicated to the literary presentation of an indigenous small ethnic group of Eastern Siberia - the Ket. Until the late nineteenth century, the Ket were treated as the poorest and most marginalized ethnos of this region. In Soviet literature, a special kind of ethnic literature appeared, aimed at reviving small ethnicities within the framework of «socialist realism» («The Last of Udege» by A. Fadeev, «Resurrected tribe» by V. Bogoraz-Tan). However, the Kets were not represented among the characters of Soviet literature. In the post-Soviet literature the situation changed: firstly, the Kets became the epic heroes of the «ethnohistorical novels» of Krasnoyarsk local writers (A. Grigorenko, A. Bondarenko), and secondly, they represented mostly negative characters in the neo-realistic prose of a writer and a hunter M. Tarkovsky. In the novel-parable of A. Grigorenko «Il’get. Three names of fate», the narration takes place in the Middle Ages of East Siberia and Central Asia. The main character, Ket Il’get loses and restores his patrimonial and ethnic identity. The trilogy of A. Bondarenko is based on the real historical context, where Ket people try to revolt against Russian authority. Tarkovsky’s stories and novels present young Kets mostly as marginalized alcoholics who lost their morality and ethnic identity, while the older generation retains traditional beliefs and habits. Being involved in Ket language studies, the avant-garde poet K. Reshetnikov uses several Ket mythopoeic motifs in his poetry of the 1990s («Yenisei cycle»). Unfortunately, neither archaic nor modern Ket mythology is reproduced, but some motifs as Tree, River, totemic ancestor, «Sleeping God» (Es’) are used. In a recently published story of V. Shashorin «Is a Russian strong enough to help a Ket?», the old Russian hunter arrives in Siberia to find hunting places, but unexpectedly becomes a tutor of a young Ket who wants to learn hunting skills and thereby restore his lost ethnic identity. Thus, for the first time in Russian fiction, the return of the Ket to traditional occupations replaces the apology of the mythologized past.

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