The Fifth Kingdom, Yuri Buida’s Historiographical Metafiction: Mystification of Historical Conceptualisation

Abstract

This article considers the trends that determine the development of Russian historiographical metafiction at the turn of the twenty-first century, examining its inclusion in the context of modern Russian literature. Also, the author reveals the specifics of the conceptualisation of history in historiographical metafiction and its interaction with the tradition of Russian conceptualism and the Western European tradition (U. Eco and P. Ackroyd). The article studies Yu. Buida’s The Fifth Kingdom as the most representative text that reflects the features of this phenomenon. An analysis of the novel makes it possible to draw a conclusion about the peculiarities of the functioning of the third wave of Russian postmodernism and consider the nature of the deconstruction of the traditional concept of historical knowledge in Russian literature of the turn of the century. The palimpsest in the structure of The Fifth Kingdom acts as the chief method of deconstructing the historical narrative and modelling a new concept of historical knowledge as “feeling into history”. The author reveals the peculiarities of the functioning of this technique in comparison with the general picture of its use in the literature of the time. The author’s appeal to the detective genre strategy consistently profanes the historiosophical approach to constructing the narrative of history, thereby exposing the failure of one of the most popular variants of the national episteme. The analysis focuses on the nature of the deconstruction of the concept of the Troubles, the main vectors being the profanation of the mythologemes the Fifth Kingdom and the Pretender, which form the core of the ideologeme of the Troubles, as well as the consistent textualisation of the historical narrative, exposing its “corporeal’ nature. The conclusion is made about Yu. Buida’s extensive use of the plot schemes of Western European historiographical prose and the simultaneous development of the traditions of Russian conceptualism. The first aspect is represented by the interaction of historical and detective genre strategies and the assimilation of the historical palimpsest model, which is relevant to P. Ackroyd’s work. In addition, the golemic plot also becomes one of the representations of P. Ackroyd’s “trace”. At the same time, the nature of the deconstruction of the concept of the Time of Troubles is built in the tradition of Russian conceptualism and – already – Socialist Art. At the same time, Yu. Buida avoids the predominant profaning of the system of ideological myths, emphasising them as the key markers of the national episteme of history.