Volga text: streaming down to definition

Abstract

This article is another attempt to comprehend such a phenomenon as the "Volga text". The image of the Volga have been repeatedly studied, but there is still no total research that gives a full and complete reply to the question: What is the Volga text? Especially it concerns A.K. Goldebaevs creative heritage, who remains a little-known or unknown writer for the literary world. In addition, the very phenomenon of the Samara text (the Volga text is its important part) has not been fully studied. All this indicates the undoubted relevance and novelty of the study, the purpose of which is to consider the features of the Volga image functioning in the plots of the works by Goldebaev, M. Gorky, S.G. Petrov and F.D. Kryukov. The leading research methods have been synchronic, diachronic, comparative and structural ones. The empirical material comprised such works as "Foma Gordeev", "Through the Line", "Without Fire", "Summer Vacation". The choice of these texts is reasoned by the fact that Goldebaevs documents, stored in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, have been found to have extracts, made from them, containing description of the Volga only. And Goldebaevs story is the only work known to the author of the article, which contains a description of the Volga. The article concludes that it is not entirely correct to define Goldebaev's story as a Volga text: the Volga just locates the plot there and hardly participates in the construction.