“The Highlander Stumbles in the Steppe”: The World-Modeling Function of Verticality in Karachay-Balkar Culture

Abstract

The article analyzes the high degree of correlation between the mountain ecosystem and the axiologeme “vertical”, which is projected onto all levels of the practical and spiritual activity of highland inhabitants. The theoretical and methodological framework of the study is formed by analytical works of G. D. Gachev and other scholars. As sources, the authors use works by North Caucasian local historians, poets, prose writers, linguists, and literary scholars. Being members of the ethnic group under study, the authors in several cases turn to the method of participant observation, as well as to the evidence of target informants.

As a result of the research, an objective panoramic picture of the North Caucasus has been reconstructed, with its geotopographic parameters (altitude above sea level, mountains, waterfalls). A strong determining influence of verticality on numerous man-made objects in the region is identified, such as towers, alpine hayfields, terraced gardens and vegetable plots, houses on mountain slopes, hearth complexes, and tools of physical labor. An increased frequency of the lexeme tau ‘mountain’ and other orographic units (Elbrus, Kazbek, Taulan) is recorded in national anthroponyms, logos, and commercial brands. A unique case is noted of “vertical” semantic recoding of an Arabic word into a Karachay-Balkar target term (tavarikh — taurukh).

The imperative of vertical artistic thinking in Balkar and Karachay writers is confirmed by continuous sampling from their works of astral, solar, and ornithogenic images, as well as orographic, ascensional, neo-romantic, and mortal motifs based on the binary opposition “bottom — top”. Using deportation literature, the study demonstrates a pronounced “yearning-for-verticality syndrome” among North Caucasian mountaineers who, because of deportation to the steppes of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan (1943–1956), found themselves deprived of their vertical environment. A comparative analysis of four Robinsonade narratives (Arabic, English, Russian, and Karachay-Balkar) shows that the record-holder in terms of existential status is the historically attested Caucasian Robinson, whose “island” is located at an altitude of 2,500 meters.