Image of the estate and home ground in stories and novels by A.I. Ertel

The article analyzes the topos of the Russian estate, embodied in the image of a particular geographical space in A.I. Ertel’s novellas and novels. Identifying the witer’s key message as changing one way of life into another, the author of the article shows that Ertel did not come to unambiguous conclusions regarding the best direction for the boost of Russia’s economics. Ascertaining the hereditary noble estates becoming outdated, the writer linked the decline of estate life with the young nobility’s unpreparedness for constant and hard labour for the commonwealth of the place that had a decisive influence on the formation of noble offsprings born and raised in those estates. The comprehension of Ertel’s prose allows us to conclude that the writer was aware of the mutual influence of the individual and the the locality, therefore, the use of the so-called geocultural approach is also appropriate when analyzing the writer’s stories and novels. Considering the movement of Ertel’s artistic licence, the author of the article illustrates the ideological continuity of the works, states the shredding of the noble hero, determined to a certain extent not by the moral degradation, but by passiveness and indifference. However, at the end of the 19th century, largely based on the achievements and artistic discoveries of L.N. Tolstoy and F.M. Dostoevsky, Ertel manages to create an epic novel, consistently combining the image of people’s lives and the history of the the peoples’ hero, Nikolai Rakhmanny. The autobiographical image of Rakhmanny is not ideal, but it is this hero that the writer entrusts with the expression of the covenants and rules of a happy life so dear to him.