The Russian Messenger travelogues of the 1850s: dynamics and pragmatics

The article is devoted to the analysis of genre features of travelogues of The Russian Messenger ("Russkiy Vestnik"). The definition "travelogue" is investigated and researched in the context of the narratology conception of "event" and "eventfulness". The period of the 1850s in the history of The Russian Messenger is connected with public activity of Mikhail Katkov and was marked by a moderate liberal course. On the example of travelogues of Petr Kudryavtsev, Nicolay Berg and Eduard Zimmermann the specific dynamics of the genre is considered determined by both explicit and implicit objectives of the periodical. The travelogue of Kudryavtsev can be called a phenomenological experience of reality description. Europe, especially Italy (Venice and Florence), in his travelogues is present in the absolute past. Narration in this travelogue has a meditative character. It can be explained as thoughts about death. Letters of Nicolay Berg, on the contrary, are connected with modern reality. His travelogue is ambivalent. On the one hand, it present actual "world picture" with heroes and major significant persons, e.g. Garibaldi. On the other hand, it is an adventurist type of travel, which can be explained in the context of "behavior semiotics". A big part of Berg's narration is a model of reality with potential stories, potential worlds and thoughts. After many years Berg describes it again without details and detailed representation of reality. The travelogue of Eduard Zimmermann, who long traveled in America, open the future of the Old and the New Worlds. This variant of reality reflects the historical way of Russia. Zimmermann's metaphors of railway, steamship, factories and other present a new vision of the new reality. This reality generates a new anthropological type, which realizes the conception of "rational egoism" and utilitarianism. The three investigated travelogues, as noted above, demonstrate different optics, a different view of reality. Descriptions here often transform into contemporary and historical policy analysis. It is concluded that letters, essays and travel notes are diverse genre forms that represent the event of travel. They certainly made readers feel involved by synchronizing their own biographical time with the fundamental and historic one. So travel experience is linked with the experience of understanding the global process in the world. It can be argued that the optics in the near future would be irrelevant, and the approaches to the description of reality not meeting the new challenges of the periodical. They were replaced by themes of the conservative course of The Russian Messenger of the 1860s.

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