Allegory and Allusion in the Fairy Tale ‘Dried Vobla’ by Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17072/2073-6681-2024-3-120-129Keywords:
Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin; Fairy Tales; Dried Vobla; Golos newspaper; Andrey Krayevsky; Mikhail Katkov.Abstract
The article explores M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tale Dried Vobla, which is traditionally considered as a manifesto against liberalism and philosophy of ‘moderation and accuracy’. According to Vladimir Lenin’s estimation, the main character of the fairy tale represents the cultural and historical context of the ‘small deeds’ theory used by the right Narodniks as well as ‘liberalism betrayals’ of the 1880s. The author of the paper regards existing estimations as speculative in their nature due to the complexity of the text of the fairy tale: it uses allegories and Aesopian language, has a complicated composition structure. The paper considers the fairy tale as an allegory of the history of the political and literary newspaper Golos (Saint Petersburg, 1863–1884) as well as of the biography of its publisher and editor Andrey Krayevsky. This theory is proved by the closeness of the main character’s views to the policy of the newspaper as well as by the plot of the tale (where the vobla, though firstly being successful, is eventually eaten by ‘slanderers’) that replicates the history of the newspaper (which was a semi-official organ of press of the Loris-Melnikov’s government, closed after the assassination of Alexander II due to the conservative media persecution headed by Mikhail Katkov’s Moskovskie Vedomosti). The historico-philosophical concept of the tale is mainly explained in digressions (which are contextually similar to the writer’s journalist series, mainly Poshehonsky Stories, Unfinished Talks, and Motley Letters, where is discussed the danger of public indifference, the ‘motley man’ (‘weathervane man’), and the features of national sobering, inevitably resulting in a bloodbath. The study of the tale in the cultural and historical context of the time and through the lens of the writer’s journalist series of the 1880s makes it possible to regard the tale not only as ‘condemning’ some certain ideological trends (movements) but also as a complex story covering social, historical, and existentialism problems.References
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