Release:
2021, Vol. 7. № 4 (28)About the author:
Oleg V. Zyryanov, Dr. Sci. (Philol.), Professor, Department of Russian and Foreign Literature, Ural Federal University named after the First President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin (Yekaterinburg); o.v.zyrianov@urfu.ru; ORCID: 0000-0003-3327-8116Abstract:
The article presents the experience of referring to the little-studied part of the creative heritage of Mamin-Sibiryak — his first dramatic work, the play “The Owners of Gold Mines”. The creative history of this work is traced, a comparative analysis of the printed magazine version of the play and the later edition, which remained in the white manuscript, is carried out. The author made the order of the changes in the genre nominations of the play by himself (from comedy to drama and everyday chronicle and, vice versa, to comedy). The logic of significant adjustment of the system of characters and the nature of the dramatic conflict, as well as the change in the leading axiological attitudes of the author-playwright's consciousness, is revealed.
As a fundamental feature of the plot-compositional construction of the play “The Owners of Gold Mines”, Mamin's synthesis of novel and dramatic forms was recognized, which was most clearly manifested in his orientation towards the theatrical tradition of the “plays of life” of A. N. Ostrovsky, on panoramic illumination of the “dark kingdom” gold miners. In the course of the analysis of the dramatic development of the action, it is shown how the comedy of social and everyday situations organically flows into a real family-psychological tragedy of passionate obsession and painful conscience, complicated by individual melodramatic elements. The emphasis in the spiritual and moral issues of the play on the plot of sin and repentance, of the popular Christian view of human nature makes the work in question related to the folk parable drama of L. N. Tolstoy “The Power of Darkness”. In the conclusion, it is suggested that in the first play, Mamin the playwright is already coming close to the stage discoveries of the existential psychological drama (comedy) of A. P. Chekhov, which will be even more tangibly manifested in the next dramatic work of the Ural writer — the comedy “Little Truth”.
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References:
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