Heterotopy of the country estate in the poetics of Russian symbolism (part I: Zinaida Hippius)

The article describes the phenomenon of describing a country estate in the literature of Russian modernism as a heterotopy. The estate narrative of Russian literature of the 19th century demonstrates that the most significant events in the hero’s life take place in the noble estate, and consequently, the duration of the action and the plot are maximally compressed, and at the same time extended in time. We should not forget that in fact the noble estate served as a repository of intellectual and cultural memory. After the destruction of the landowner estate in Soviet times, the most important signs of the manor heterotopy are preserved: this is the memory of a geographical place, a memory of the manor topos. The heterotopic model of the Russian estate demonstrated exceptional stability for a long time, having functionally transformed, on the one hand, into a summer residence (dacha); on the other hand, the function of the cultural memory is taken over by the modern museum-estate. The article analyzes the stories of Zinaida Hippius “The Witch”, “Two - One”, “Out of Time”. The manor space of Hippius stories not only creates scenery for the storyline, but also reflects the natural world bursting into the hero’s mind, that conflicts with the rational-conceptual line of urban behavior. Elements of the folklore-mythological narrative characteristic of the aesthetics of Russian symbolism are revealed (the story “The Witch”). At the heart of the semiosphere of the country estate’s world of Hippius stories is the Turgenev’s plot of a summer romance flirt. Contact with the elements of nature is not only a triumph of the irrational and mystical in the hero’s mind, but also signs of his initiation: thus, the story “Two - one” is devoted to the topic of the physiological maturation of the hero, who overcomes the boundary between the memory of the manor paradise of his childhood and growing up. In one of Gippius’ later stories, the world of country estate culture turns into a fantastic and closed world where time flows according to its own laws, and the manor with its old library becomes a repository of the cultural memory of a passing era (“Out of Time”). The semiosphere of the homestead world in Hippius stories demonstrates the hero’s movement to a functionally different space compared to his usual world, where real events can receive a fantastic explanation (“The Witch”), and time flows according to its own laws, turning out to be a frozen capsule of time (“Out of Time”). Actual events occur both in a metaphorical (memory and living memory) and mythological (false synchronization) time section (the stories “Out of Time” and “Two - One”); the movement of historical time itself is extremely slow and completely freezes (“Out of Time”)