«Свой» и «чужой» мир в этнологическом проекте В. И. Даля
“One's Own” and “Alien” Worlds in Vladimir Dahl’s Ethnological Project

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the national image of the world in Vladimir Dahl’s fiction from an imagological perspective. The aim of the study is to reconstruct the evolution of Dahl’s notions of “one’s own” and “alien” in the context of his ethnological project and concept of narodnost’ (national character). The methodological basis of the study is a synthesis of classical comparative studies (A. N. Veselovsky, V. M. Zhirmunsky), semiotic and conceptual analysis (Yu. S. Stepanov), and the theoretical principles of imagology (H. Dyserink, J. Leerssen, and works by representatives of the Russian school). The material consists of Dahl’s novellas, “physiological” essays, and short stories from the 1840s–1850s, including “The Life of a Man, or a Walk Along Nevsky Prospect,” “Savely Grab, or the Double,” “The Adventures of Christian Khristianovich Violdamur and His Arshet,” and others. The authors demonstrate that Dahl’s artistic world is ethnocentric and organized around the “one’s own — alien” opposition, which, however, due to the writer’s own multicultural experience, is often blurred or paradoxically transformed. Particular attention is paid to the formation of Dahl’s “Petersburg text”: the capital is presented as a “world within a world,” an urban cosmos where traditional dichotomies of living/dead, natural/cultural, and one’s own/alien are modified. It is con- cluded that Dahl’s fiction is not an illustration but an integral part of his eth- nological project, comparable in significance to his Explanatory Dictionary and collection of proverbs. This study contributes to our understanding of the mechanisms of national identity representation in mid-19th-century Russian literature.

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