Conflict of cultural and natural in the Caucasian megatext of Russian literature

Abstract

The article deals with the role of the antithesis “cultural – natural” in the mythopoetics of the Caucasian megatext. The study is based on the texts of Russian writers (A.A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, A.S. Pushkin, M.Yu. Lermontov, L.N. Tolstoy), in which the Caucasus is the scene of action. At the same time, the thesis that the integrating role in the megatext is played not by locus, but by the underlying mythologeme of all the texts in question. The motivic complex of initiation, established as the basic one for the Siberian megatext of Russian literature, is under consideration as a basis for the Caucasian megatext, since both megatexts arose as a result of perception of Caucasian and Siberian locus as a symbolic “land of the dead”. However, the Caucasian text also contains a complex of motives cultivated by the mythologeme of the world tree, which manifests itself in the form of a number of value-marked oppositions, including pairs “north – south”, “west – east”, “civilization – barbarism”, ultimately ascending to the binary opposition “culture – nature”. Those antitheses are implemented at different levels of the literary text organization: focalization and plot, motives and mythotectonics, the artistic system of the author. There is a semantic tension between the fields “cultural” and “natural”, which is usually resolved through an appeal to the motivic complex of sacrifice, which also ascends to the archetypal iconic complex of the world tree. Consequently, the antithesis “cultural – natural” plays a world-modeling role in Caucasian texts which are pieces of a single megatext. The antithesis superimposes on the motivic complex of initiation and creates an ambivalent chronotope of symbolic death and spiritual rebirth.