CULTURAL LANDSCAPES OF PRIKAMYE AND THE URALS (BASED ON THE BOOK OF VASILY NEMIROVICH-DANCHENKO ‘THE KAMA AND THE URALS’)

Abstract

The geographical potential of Russian literature, which consists in creating figurative descriptions of localities, is poorly used for the purposes of tourism development. This is partly due to the fact that the method of complex geographical analysis of literary texts is developed by specialists in the field of humanitarian geography. This article provides an example of such an analysis and considers the book by V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko The Kama and the Urals in four aspects: 1) literary and geographical context of the journey described, which involves a review of the main texts including a description of routes to the Urals and basic information about the region; 2) the concept of the cultural landscape, which makes it possible to distinguish the internal boundaries of the territory and the stages of the journey; 3) geographical images of the four stages; 4) artistic techniques (color, smell, sound) that create a dynamic description of the landscape. The paper shows that Nemirovich-Danchenko’s essays reflect the structural components of various cultural landscapes of the Kama region (Prikamye) and the Urals. The book created geographical images that were further developed by writers of the 20th -21st centuries. The four stages of the route taken by Nemirovich-Danchenko at the end of the 19th century constitute the framework of currently offered cruise, active, cultural and educational tourist routes. The studied book is a valuable source of figurative descriptions that can be used for identifying new attractions, creating routes, filling existing routes with new implications, writing guide texts, and creating excursion texts. The materials of the article can be used to create an atlas-reference book Literary Travels Around Russia, designed to describe the most important literary travels to the Russian North, South, the Urals, and Siberia.