The Geocultural Image of the Vygovsky Region in the Mikhail Prishvin’s Works: Specifics and Factors of Change

Abstract

In the article the authors analyze the geocultural image of the Vygovsky region, its transformation in the works by Mikhail M. Prishvin in his early books “In the Land of Fearless Birds”, “Behind the Magic Bun” and in the final novel “Tsar’s Road”. In the first works, the idea of the unique geocultural space in the region is presented through acquaintance with the life style, cultural traditions, values and worldview of people who were born and live in this region all their lives. In the fairy tale novel “Tsar’s Road”, in contrast to the earlier works, deep philosophical reflections on the meaning of Russian history are added to Prishvin’s impression of the special natural and human “content” in the region, so the deciphering of an autonomous geocultural image, a unique complex subculture becomes the context for the writer to comprehend the multi-layered cultural, historical and socio-political space of the Russian North and Russia as a whole. The traditional contradiction of “necessity” and “freedom”, as a result of collision between state power and the original Russian people, according to the writer, on the territory of the Russian North has its own features and gives rise to other forms of compromise. The authors of the article explore these attributes of the transformation of cultural space in specific historical circumstances, its connection with geographical, political and socio-economic conditions, in the way Prishvin saw it, with the aim of further extrapolating conclusions to the historical and modern realities of Russian peoples. Views of Prishvin, which were not objectively assessed during the writer’s lifetime, today again attract the attention of the thinking part of humanity, since they raise to a very high level the problems of preserving the uniquenessof not only the natural-cultural system of the Russian North, but also of any ethnocultural subject.

Keywords:

Mikhail M. Prishvin creative work, literary geography, geocultural image, Russian North, Vygovsky region, Pomors