“Grazhdane lesa” (“Citizens of the forest”) by Nikolay Akhsharumov in the context of the philosophical and aesthetic struggle of the 1860s

The paper addresses the issues of plot and motif synthesis in Russian fiction by analyzing the allegorical (fantastic) novel “Grazhdane lesa” (“Citizens of the Forest”) by Nikolay Akhsharumov. Throughout the pages of the story, Akhsharumov engages in polemics with renowned writers of his era, including Leo Tolstoy, Fedor Dostoevsky, and Nikolay Chernyshevsky. Some levels of the intertext have been revealed and are discussed in the paper. The examples include modern literature works, scientific treatises, and popular science compilations. The focus is also on the medieval plots of the novel about the fox adapted for the New Age reader by I. V. Goethe in his “Reineke Fuchs” (“Reynard the Fox”) translated into Russian by Mikhail Dostoevsky in 1848. Starting from generalized, stereotyped ideas about Siberia and the Far East, Akhsharumov ignores the rich ethnographic tradition. He creates a dystopia, the central conflict of which is between Lazarus, the symbol of enlightenment and liberal democracy, and the animal world. Special attention is paid to the Old Testament allusions, for the mythopoetics of the novel delves into both the cosmogony plots about the creation of a specific civilization and the eschatological plots centered on the death of a civil society. Akhsharumov considers this motif to be crucial, especially since he was once closely associated with the Petrashevsky circle. Finally, the novel is examined from the point of view of literary failure. In particular, a conclusion is drawn that the synthesis of the contexts under consideration was not organic, resulting in a weightier and unacceptable piece of work for contemporaries.

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Context (archaeology) · Geography · Chemistry · Historical and Modern Theater Studies · Logistics and Transportation Systems · Philosophy · Vladimir Nabokov Literary Studies