Mythopoetics of Space in the Novels by Yuri Rytkheu

The article examines mythopoetic basis of the spatial imagery in the novels by a Chukchi writer Yuri Rytkheu. It reveals the specificity of the worldview of the author and his characters as well as the evolution of the writer’s creativity. The author argues that mythological representation of space in Rytkheu’s novels follows such general principles of the genesis of myths as anthropomorphism, “the law of participation” (communion), and late animism (Levy-Bruhl). Rytkheu projected traditional mythological spatial forms and images onto the poetics of the text with the help of mythologemes and archetypal binaries (top-bottom, friend-stranger, close-distant, life- death). The analysis of his two novels written with a gap of forty years — Aivangu and In the Mirror of Oblivion — reveals two different approaches to spatial substrates. In the first novel (1964), there prevails “real” space as the novel’s setting and mythologism of images veiled. The second novel written in the 1990s, the years of Rytkheu’s temporary emigration in Europe (Denmark, Germany), undergoes influence of postmodernism and neomythologism. In this novel, mysterious, multi-faceted space becomes a meaningful object of representation shown from a variety of perspectives.