The novel “Island of Hope” by Yuri Rytkheu: intertextual dialogue and the imagine system

The article provides intertextuality and the ethnic dialogue between cultures and consciousnesses as presented in the artistic representation of the heroic exploration and habitation of a previously unknown island in the Arctic Ocean at the beginning of the 20th century. The novel “Island of Hope” by the Chukchi writer Yuri Rytkheu is based on diary entries with the use of ethnological material in the book “Island of Snowstorms” by the Russian Arctic explorer Georgy Ushakov. The study reveals both conscious and unconscious deployment of diverse intertextual strategies, including quotations, allusions, reminiscences, etc. An understanding of the ontological structure of the ascetic being-event within the lives of the novel’s characters is facilitated by engaging with the phenomenology of action, as explored by M. Bakhtin in his work “Towards the Philosophy of Act”. The deep origins of the novel’s figurative system are highlighted to ethno-traditions, folklore, as well as to the mythological consciousness that arose in ancient times and transformed during a period of historical time. This work reveals how the Chukchi writer-philosopher Yuri Rytkheu, aiming to explore the depths of the spiritual world and forms of existence, as evidenced by the scope of his library, and more importantly, by his numerous novels about the lives of the Chukchi and Eskimo peoples, having the challenges of acculturation and linguistic barriers. Thus, Rytkheu became a unique mediator of mythological meaning-making – a cultural hero and creator of a variety of literary representations of cultural heroes. Since ancient times, myths have idealized human creative activity and responsibility for the world order as foremost and infrequent expressions of subjective self-awareness. This self-awareness is based on the juxtaposition, the internal dichotomy of “Self” and “Other”. According to Maksim Gorky, humanity owes to the mythical cultural hero an “ideal in the form of a staff”, a moral “crutch”. In “Island of Hope”, Rytkheu transfers the functions of mythological figures to real people, proceeding from an archetypal mythologeme to two socially significant characters. The Eskimo sea hunter and shaman Jerok, called “umilyk” and the expedition leader Georgiy Ushakov, the “Russian umilyk”, who assumes responsibility for organizing the settlement and survival of people on a deserted island, gradually attain the status of cultural heroes through their actions.

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