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Abstract: The article studies publicistic “inserts” in two D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak’s early essays – “Sisters” and “At the Border of Asia”. These texts were chosen for special study according to the dynamics of the author’s nomination “essay” in his 1880s – early 1890s works. The research is based on the hypothesis that such “inserts” within the literary narrative can be distinguished with the help of text categories. This method makes it possible, firstly, to identify these places in the text, and secondly, to describe their content- related (subject-thematic, spatio-temporal, emotional-evaluative) and compositional specificity. A quantitative analysis has shown a significant difference both in the length of publicistic “inserts” (“Sisters” – 837 words, “At the Border of Asia” – 115 words) and in their percentage of the whole text volume (about 3 % and about 0,4 % respectively). It is shown that this dynamics of the decline can be generally attributed to D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak’s flash fiction evolution in the 1880s and by the varying nature of the compared essays (social and autobiographical). The publicistic “inserts” in the two works also have significant similarities. The category of the theme in these parts of the text is objectified – the first-person narrator is replaced by impersonal constructions, or the plant itself becomes the syntactical subject of the sentence, etc. From being a particular event happening “here and now”, the chronotope extends itself: in “Sisters”, the space obtains a wide geographic nature of “a Ural plant in general”; “At the Border of Asia” is characterized by temporal generalization. The publicistic “insert” is characterized by a neutral tone as far as it is possible within the first-person narrative: the characters’ emotionally colored words disappear; the narrator strives for a most objective description. The conclusions drawn make it possible to trace the dynamics of such “inserts” in the writer’s early work, to show the logic of their use and identifiability by the text category method.

About the author(s) :

Vladislav I. Bortnikov
Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin
(Ekaterinburg, Russia)
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3001-840X

 

Alena V. Bortnikova

Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin
(Ekaterinburg, Russia)
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8373-754X

 

 

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 13.11.2022; date of publication: 30.03.2023

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