MARI ETHNIC VALUES IN THE ARTISTIC WORLD OF THE YAKOV ELEKSEYN’S STORIES OF THE 1920S

 

Raisia Kudryavtseva¹, Tatiana Belyaeva^2*, Vitaly Rodionov³

 

¹Prof. Dr., Mari State University, RUSSIA, kudsebs@rambler.ru

²Assoc. Prof. Dr., Mari State University, RUSSIA, sokolova_beljaeva@mail.ru

³Prof. Dr., I.N. Ulianov Chuvash State University, RUSSIA, vitrod1@yandex.ru

*Corresponding author

 

Abstract

Yakov Elekseyn’s stories were bright artistic expression of the Mari worldview in the first third of the XXth century. Ethnic values, defining the author’s ideal and being conceptually significant meaning of his works, received artistic expression, penetrating into all levels of the text.

The purpose of this article is to give an ethno-axiological characteristic of the artistic world of Yakov Elekseyn’s stories of the 1920s. Research methods are historical-genetic and structural-semantic.

The ethno-axiological analysis of the Yakov Elekseyn’s stories is possible at the following levels of the text: 1) problematique, 2) artistic space, 3) the behaviour of the character, 4) nomination of characters, 4) contexture of the plot, 5) folklore intertext.

In the Mari writer’s stories amicable family, open and honest life are proclaimed as generic, patriarchal (ethnic) value («Birch bark box» story). Yakov Elekseyn’s traditional topos are house, village and the territory closest to it. The value of this world, ontological attachment to it of the stories’ characters appear as the most important ethnic component of the Mari consciousness and the conceptual canvas of the ideological world of works.

Work as the main value of life of the Mari in the Yakov Elekseyn’s stories is most of all poeticized in his collective version. General and amicable, ordered by a natural cycle itself, it appears as need, joy and pledge of prosperity.

Yakov Elekseyn, according to people’s representation, asserts moral purity, honesty and decency in human relations, between the man and the woman. These values «open» in the work through the study of the contexture of the stories’ plot.

Male characters are given with personal names, for the most part coupled with the word «kugyza (кугыза)», pointing at venerable age and wisdom by life experience, while their wives are all nameless, they are called exclusively by the name of their husbands, what is connected with national philosophy, with understanding of the male as the founder and the protector of a generation.

Yakov Elekseyn often expresses ethnovaluable semantics with the help of folkloristic intertekst (proverbs, sayings, taboo-ойӧрӧ, prayers).

Folk axiology is the very core of the author’s artistic conception. The works affirm the norms of social and personal behavior, based on respect for the generation and spiritual and moral traditions of the ancestors, on careful attitude to laws of the nature, family and labor values.

Values and anti-values of consciousness of the Mari people are reflected in various substantive and formal components of the text; the ethnoaxiological conception of the author becomes means of their association into a single artistic whole.

Keywords: Mari literature of the 1920s, story, artistic world, Yakov Elekseyn, axiological paradigm of literature, value and anti-value, poetics.