Metatextual originality of Nikolai Yadrintsev's Literary Collection: Ideologization and genre-style syncretism
Authors:   National Research Tomsk State University, Smolianinov Artem V. 
Published: December 2024

The article presents a metatextual analysis of the concept and structure of the first regional multi-author collection, compiled and published in 1885 by Nikolai Yadrintsev, one of the main ideologists and founders of Siberian regionalism, which should be considered as an important fact in the history of Siberian literature. The study is based on the theory of metatext proposed by V.S. Kiselev, V.V. Bazhenova, Yu.V. Kazarin and I.O. Gogoleva, according to which metatext is understood and studied as a set of texts correlated with each other, constructed in the process of their individual reception into a single communicative and conceptual whole. The relevance of the study is due to two factors: 1) the interest of modern literary criticism in the history, sociology, poetics of regional literature — in particular, the heritage of regionalists; 2) insufficient knowledge of multi-author Siberian literary collections as examples of an artistic and (or) ideological whole, serving as representatives of sociocultural trends of a certain period in the history of the region. The novelty of the article is ensured by the use of a metatextual approach to analyze the structure and content of the little-studied Literary Collection (1885) by Yadrintsev. The aim of the study is to identify the metatextual originality of the Literary Collection by Yadrintsev. In the course of reconstructing the editorial and compilation plan and analyzing the implicit metatextual structure of the collection, I obtained the following results. Typologically, the publication remains difficult to classify, being a multi-author collection in its form, a supplement to a newspaper in status and form of distribution, a scientific-literary/mixed/ universal work in content, a journal in its compiler's definition, gravitating towards a journal in concept and, paradoxically, an authorial publication as a publishing project and metatextual unity. The ideologization of the collection is expressed to the highest degree by the presence of Yadrintsev's personality in the structure of the metatext in various guises, due to which it becomes a plan for the expression of the concentrated discourse of Siberian regionalism. This fully correlates with the specifics of the organization of the metatextual narrative, in which a specific image of Siberia is formed with the culture, morals, way of life of its population and a narrative about the history and sociocultural problems of the region, the need for enlightenment, intellectual education, etc. Genre-style syncretism as a property, firstly, acts as a typical indicator of the regional literary process of the second half of the 19th century; secondly, it correlates with the typological features of the Literary Collection, its intermediate status between a newspaper and a magazine publication; thirdly, it reflects the intentions of literary subjects, presented in the Siberian regionalism optics and aimed at a multi-level coverage of phenomena and objects of the Siberian space, due to which a holistic image of the territory and its population is formed.