The poem «Yangal-maa» by M. Plotnikov: the ethnic as a resource for life-building design

Abstract

The article comprehends the work of a forgotten Russian writer of the first half of the 20th century Mikhail Plotnikov. The Mansi epic reconstructed by M. Plotnikov belongs to the classical stage of development of the folklore tradition and includes elements of the historical legend about the “meeting” of this small people of the Ob-Irtysh North with the Russians. The poem traces typical plots and motifs characteristic of epic classics, in particular the plot of “heroic matchmaking” with the event components of “searching and getting a wife”, reveals the syncretic nature of the image of Madura Vaza, in the structure of which the functions of a musician-storyteller and hero-liberator of a conquered people are highlighted. His knowledge of Russian and world literature, languages and culture of Russia’s northern peoples, as well as literary critical work in the periodicals of the Urals and Siberia allowed the writer to freely navigate the epic material when creating the poem, completing the necessary links in the mythopoetic cohesion of typologically similar figurative series and discourses recorded in various cultural traditions. M. Plotnikov’s modeling of the Mansi epic tale corresponds to the logic of the formation of the Soviet literary canon and receives intentional and meaningful expression in two versions of the poem, created with a difference of about twenty years. The experience of the poem “Yangal-maa” by M. Plotnikov reveals the features of the modernization of the national archaic and its actualization as the building value base of the new 20th century literature. © 2025 Institute of History and Archeology of the Ural Branch of RAS. All rights reserved.