I.T. Kalashnikov's novel The Daughter Of The Merchant Zholobov and the Siberian Baroque. Article 1

I.T. Kalashnikov's novels are usually considered in the context of the literature of Siberia, with a focus on ethnographism. This is the only writer who has created a full-scale for the time picture of life in Siberia. The immediate impression of Irkutsk life reflected only in the first of his novels, The Daughter of the Merchant Zholobov. In subsequent novels (Kamchadalka, Exiles), the action is transferred to the regions Kalashnikov had never been to. In The Daughter of the Merchant Zholobov Kalashnikov portrayed Irkutsk of the middle of the 18th century. This is the period of the dawn of "Irkutsk Baroque". It retained its importance in the early 19th century, influenced the early impressions of Kalashnikov. The novel has many genres: it refers to the first Russian historical novels, to ordinary life descriptions and to social-critical novels. These genre-typological differences were initially devoid of integrity. This principle of "conglomerate", "alignment of different", "motley" at all levels of poetics is the general principle of the Baroque culture. The novel is a collection of information, various storylines, stylistic elements and cultural languages. This leads to the Baroque over-complexity of the novel form, its stylistic and compositional irregularities. The imagery of the novel has the Baroque co-reflection of images and motifs of Russian culture and the culture of local peoples. Kalashnikov often uses the ornamental method of constructing a landscape: the picture is split in the line-free images, combining the near and the far, the earthly and heavenly worlds by the line S model. Often, the author uses a picturesque jumble of successively smaller volumes, creating the effect of labyrinthine geometry. If the external space is a huge scope in which a person is lost, then the space of the house is characterized by the principle of contraction and division into small sectors, i.e. a certain labyrinth. The image of the house dynamizes in its symptoms in the Baroque way due to its marginality between the natural and the anthropomorphic spaces, between the this- and the other-worldly, between the present and the historical time. The plot unfolds in the space between the two little-connected topographical centers - Irkutsk and Nerchinsk. Each of the two main characters (Natalya and Aleksey) is in "his" / "her" town and undergoes his / her trials. The events of the plot between these topoi are built as a tangled chain of independent, causally unrelated random events. For the story as a whole and for the individual chapters compressed condensation and dynamics of events of different planes are typical. This rhythm of dynamic change is not a consequence of emotional problems, characteristics of the action; it becomes self-sufficient, alienated world power. The dynamics of the abrupt change of positions, the contrast of exceptional psychological situations, the moments of choice, moral sacrifice - all these are features of the Baroque plot.

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