The image of Germany in Russian travelogues at the turn of the 19th century: natural and anthropic spaces (to the problem statement)

The article deals with images of Germany in Russian travelogues. In addition, the paper is integrated in a broad context of Alien and Other studies in the modern foreign and Russian humanitaristics including works by E. Said, I. Neumann, B. Waldenfels, G.A. Time etc. The author points that there were intensified contacts between Russia and the West in particular Germany in the 18th century. At the same time the burgeoning elite of the new empire had to solve a problem of self-identity in the European space, which led to the transformation of Own’s and the Other’s images in its culture. This process was reflected in Russian literature as travelogues telling about their authors’ journeys to the West and connecting personal subjective impressions and opinions with objective factographic information. In the late 18th century a transformation of travelogues made some of them belong to belles-lettres. The turning point of this is N.M. Karamzin’s Russian Traveller’s Letters integrating the practice of his native predecessors and traditions of European sentimentalism. Differences between pre- and post-Karamzin’s travelogues are represented in the article by analyzing the text of Russian Traveller’s Letters, V.N. Zinoviev’s Journal of a Journey to Germany, Italy, France and England (1784-1785), D.I. Fonvizin’s letters and F.P. Lubyanovskiy’s Journey to Saxony, Austria and Italy in 1800, 1801 and 1802. The texts vary in style and content. If V.N. Zinoviev’s and D.I. Fonvizin’s impressions are brief and laconic N.M. Karamzin’s and F.P. Lubyanovskiy’s works include large fragments with expatiative descriptions and a special evocative sentimentalistic language. In addition, Russian Traveller’s Letters are more subjective and emotional than Lubyanovskiy’s Journey. The difference between these pairs of texts is also seen in relation to images of natural and urban-istic landscapes. Natural loci do not seem to exist for Zinoviev and Fonvizin, they describe primarily German cities. If countryside is mentioned, it entails the chronotope of the road marked with retardation, loss and adversity. Descriptions of natural landscapes are numerous in Karamzin’s and Luby-anovskiy’s works, they are emotionally coloured, which is characteristic of sentimentalism with its cult of Nature. The sentimentalists often describe German loci as a kind of an idyll with such features as peace, happiness, quietness, diminutiveness, temperance, space harmony of natural ant anthropic elements. Fonvizin’s letters make a sharp contrast with the texts of the sentimentalists. Negative characteristics of German places including the motif of infernal space dominate in his correspondence. Writing from a perspective of cultural space centering, Fonvizin pronounces superiority of his Own, i.e. Russian, over the Other, in particular German. In a manner, he desacralises the image of West Europe whereas the journey of Karamzin’s traveller reminds of a pilgrimage. However, the characters created by the sentimentalists can not be called unconditional westerners. The point of their journeys is not to demonstrate superiority of the Other over the Own, not to become German, but to discover this alien cultural space to make it their own.

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