A “Voyage” from Russia to Siberia: Images of the Exiled in Nikolai Yadrintsev's Prose and the Experience of Forming the Regional Literary Canon

The article analyzes a group of Nikolai Yadrintsev's texts on exile to Siberia: The Russian Community in Prison and Exile (1873), several sections of the fundamental work Siberia as a Colony in Geographical, Ethnographic, and Historical Terms (1892), essays about the life of exiled prisoners “On the Stranger's Side” (1872-1885), “A Brisk Man and a Hundred Thousand Misfortunes” (1885), as well as literary and critical articles of different years. N.V. Serebrennikov, K.V. Anisimov, A.V. Remnev, S.I. Goldfarb, I.A. Aizikova, and E.A. Makarova comprehended Yadrintsev's creative heritage. However, the methods of creating images of heroes, features of typing, as well as images of exile remained outside the scope of scholarly discussion, and the tendencies that forced the regional author Yadrintsev to resort to one or another form of the text's plot construction were not identified. Therefore, the aim of this article was to explain the mechanisms of interaction between Yadrintsev and his contemporary literary tradition, and the specifics of the literary canon he forms. To conduct the research in the given direction, the author turns to the theoretical heritage of a number of scholars. The creative path of a regional writer is considered within the framework of P. Bourdieu's theory of social fields. To analyze correctly the specifics of the Siberian writer's perception and use of literature, which was named classic half a century later, the author analyzed his experience of a rupture with his youthful dreams about the autonomy of Siberia and the subsequent way to building a dialogue between the “metropolis” and the “colony” (the appropriating of the “capital”), referred to the concept of the “canon” and used scholarly works by G. Bloom, M. Yampolsky, B. Dubin, I. Kaspe, M. Gronas, and A. Lanoux. The analysis revealed that, in his works, Yadrintsev uses a quasi-dialogue of the narrator-guide with the reader, typification when creating scenes and characters, as well as a number of cultural allusions. The writer uses them to appeal to the reader's memory and the reader's literary background. Yadrintsev deliberately emphasizes the similarity of his own characters to those of Gogol and Saltykov-Shchedrin. The regional Siberian literature created by Yadrintsev is a bricolage: features of poetics, techniques, images, and characters are collected from the available materials. The Siberian writer carefully approaches the sources of borrowings, creating a relationship of continuity between texts claiming the title of classic and his own. In some cases, Yadrintsev declares a writer with a significant symbolic capital, but far (in every sense) from Siberia, a teacher in philosophical and moral aspects (as it was with Ivan Turgenev, for example) with the aim of including this writer in the canon and giving legitimacy to the emerging regional tradition.

Keywords

Authors

References