Poetics of the fairy tale “Putem-dorogoyu” (“On the road”) by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin

The fairy tale “Putem-dorogoyu” by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin is traditionally regarded to be an “accident” in the cycle of “Fairy Tales,” and is interpreted as a social story in terms of genre and thematically - as an invariant of the fairy tale “The Voron-Chelobitchik.” The author of the article believes that “Putem-dorogoyu” is an original work with its own problematics, which is not classified as “a story of everyday life” already by virtue of the author’s designation of the genre, namely, “conversation” (dialog). The dialog genre presupposes the fusion of philosophical and literary discourses; “conventionally schematic” type of interlocutor characters who often represent a certain ideological contrast. The heroes of “Putem-dorogoyu” Ivan Bodrov and Fyodor Golubkin personify opposite types of national consciousness, which is manifested in the semantics of their names, which have a stable system of connotations in the Russian anthroponymicon; the names largely determine their mode of behavior. In addition, the heroes’ dialog is projected onto mythological and fairy-tale plots about the dispute between Truth and Lie (Krivda), which allows to consider the problem of the search for Truth in the context of deep national-cultural attitudes and stereotypes; the struggle of the Christian world against the “non-Christian” world; to qualify the readiness of one of the heroes (Fyodor) to fight against the hostile society as readiness for Christian heroism and, hence, martyrdom. The poetics of the fairy tale, formed at the junction of philosophical dialog, magic-tale motifs (serpent-fighting, the way-road) and folk mythological symbolism, leads the reader to a complex of philosophical and historical reflections regarding Russia’s fate. The author’s concept of “Putem-dorogoyu” relates to the problem of violence, “blood” in history: the fairy tale can be regarded as the writer’s forecast of the upcoming historical upheavals.