The Concept of Caucasian Captive in Russian Literature of the 19th Century

Abstract. This article explains the plotline of the Caucasian captive, actual for Russian Literature for two centuries. The history of accession of the Caucasus to the Russian Empire is full of prisoners during the Caucasus Wars from 1816 to 1864. These events were described to the Russian fiction and non-fiction literature of the 19th century. The best Russian writers of the 19th century, as A.S. Pushkin, M. Lermontov, Leo Tolstoy had imaged the plot of the Caucasus Captive, as well as A.A. Bestujev-Marlinsky, V.I. Dal, M. Liventzov, D.L. Mordovtzev and the authors of paraliterature like N. Zriahov, L.A. Charskaia, V. Zhelihovskaia, and others. In the 20th century Sasha Cherny, V. Makanin portrayed to the motif of Caucasian Captive. This concept of national myth is a specific literary form of representation of national content. It contains the symbolic and historical aspects. Caucasian topos relates to the myth of Prometheus (chained to the Caucasus mountains) and The Book of Genesis, (to Mount Ararat, where Noah’s Ark sailed, Gen.8:4,5). Captive’s motif in negative form describes a desire for freedom and its loss.

Keywords: captivity, freedom, Caucasus, symbolic aspect, myth, history, the Caucasian Wars, plot, motif.