ARTISTIC GEOGRAPHY OF V. M. SHUKSHIN

Abstract

The article is devoted to the semiotics and poetics of artistic geography of V. M. Shukshin. The comprehension of toposes in Shukshin’s texts is based on the archetypal division of space into “one’s own” (positive) and “someone else’s” (dangerous, profane). The space of Altai, endowed with signs of paradise, is the most semiotically loaded. Shukshin refers both the Urals and the Far East to the Siberian topos, scaling his own “map” of a man and being. The capitals - Moscow and Leningrad - are interpreted by Shukshin as a place of conquest and the realization of the hero’s dreams of freedom. Though, for those Shukshin’s characters who have not severed ties with their native land, the village, it is a place of spiritual hard labor and death. The ideal artistic topos is timed by Shukshin to medieval Russia and is embodied in such centers of the Russian world as Tambov, Kaluga, Voronezh and Vologda. The study of Shukshin’s geopoetics, his mythogeography allows us to reconstruct the specifics of the author’s image of the world.