The eco-identity of modern humanity

Abstract

In her conversation with the writer I. Kochergin, the critic T. Veretyonova tries to determine what the topic of nature means to people today, and discover what kind of relationship contemporary urban residents have with the space outside the city and its inhabitants — birds and animals. Both the interviewer and the interviewee define this as an ‘eco-identity,’ or a search for one’s own ‘ecological soul’ responsible for the connection between man and nature. The interview contains a detailed discussion of the characters in Kochergin’s prose, horses Fenya and Styopa and a dog called Kuchuk among them. Kochergin argues that the ability to see nature is rapidly vanishing from contemporary literature, a process that calls for exploration and contemplation. It is essential that a new language is forged to describe the world, which is not limited to humans and the results of their activity. The writer and the critic agree that human exploration of the space we live in is a topos not yet fully shaped in contemporary literature. Therefore, an opportunity has opened up for writers  to discover it.