Граница Европы и Азии : трансформация смыслов

Abstract

The article analyses the semiotics of the boundary between Europe and Asia. This boundary is special because it is imposed not so much by geography (it is the only borderline between continents that is not marked by any water barrier) as by culture. In the course of historical exploration of the territory the boundary has changed both its location and meaning. The article traces the mental – political, historical, and cultural – grounds for semantization of the boundary Europe/Asia. The focus is on the literary representation of the boundary in contemporary texts created mainly on the territory that lies in its close proximity – the Urals. In literature new meanings are associated with the general semantics of the terminal, the idea of frontier, the “melting pot” of the nation, and the actualization of the memory of local pagan tribes. All this demonstrates new possibilities both in aesthetic and ideological approaches: for writers it is employment of the poetics of the myth; and for a researcher it confirms the acuteness of the ideas of “inner colonization” and formation of a new regional identity.