The Image of Altai in the Short Story of V. Bianki "She"

Abstract

The article considers the individual mythology of Vitaly Bianki. The image of Altai, created by the writer in the short story She, is associated with a practice that is very common in world culture, namely to define the specificity of a particular local text through gender identification. Bianki, arguing with an established tradition of giving Altai Krai a masculinized image, prefers to feminize the image of Altai. The writer, not without intent, used the feminine personal pronoun to title his work. The terrible atmospheric phenomenon described in the story is scientifically called «fyon», colloquially «verkhovka», but the narrator, like the author, clearly prefers the vaguely mysterious designation «She». In Russian, the category of grammatical gender in most cases has nothing to do with the semantics of biological sex, but in the Bianki’s text we meet with a rare exception. In the main character, «the prophetic Altai girl», «the stone maiden», who completely joined together with the natural world, the author of the story embodied Eros of Altai – attracting and scary at the same time.