Drawing a Literary Map of the Urals in the Travel Essays of D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak

Abstract

Travel essays became not only an attempt at writing but also an important part of D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak’s later works. This study uses the method of mapping developed in literary geography. The choice of the mapping technique as the main method of research is due to both the internal features of the writer’s creative thinking (correlation of the artistic space of his works with the real geography of the Urals, a special mapping view of space) and the specific features of the travel genre. A comprehensive geographical methodology for studying literary travel (V. N. Kalutskov) in combination with geopoetic analysis (V. V. Abashev) makes it possible to describe the literary map of the Ural regions present in D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak’s travel essays: the Chusovaya River, Yekaterinburg and its suburbs, Old Perm, the Kama in its lower reaches, the Trans-Urals, and the Southern Urals. During the analysis, the author of the article shows the main structural elements of the travel space on the map: routes, stops, types of locals, natural sites, vehicles, and a characteristic of their role in the process of constructing the Ural landscape. The conclusion of the study is connected with the approval of the special constructive mission of the travel essays of D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak, which is based on the geographical, journalistic, figurative and poetic collection of the Ural landscape by combining territories that are different in their own way. The unity of the Ural space is ensured by the special nature of life associated with the mining economy. The map of the Ural landscape drawn by the writer in addition to detailed economic and social characteristics forms a dense layer of figurative observations and generalisations, including all-encompassing geopoetic images. Anticipating the formation of an all-Ural geopoetics, D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak constructed a coherent spatial narrative, which can be called the first literary map of the Urals.