"Unceremonial" Novorossiya in Ivan Dolgoruky's travelogue "Far-off Bells Always Ring Sweet, or My Journey Somewhere in 1810"

This article examines the representation of the Novorossiya space in Ivan Dolgoruky's travelogue "Far-off Bells Always Ring Sweet, or My Journey Somewhere in 1810". This representation is characterized by defamiliarization, travesty, and ambivalence, stemming from the frontierness of the described space. Its development is depicted in both military (reclaiming lands from the Turks) and peaceful (colonization) terms. Frontierness implies motifs of novelty and instability (social, economic, climatic, etc.). A marker of Novorossiya is also its ethnic and religious diversity, the combination of Western and Eastern (Asiatic) features in the characterization of the space. The Novorossiyan representation also includes motifs of marginality (images of convicts, thieves, fugitives), a greater degree of freedom due to the instability of power and laws, and potential for development and greater opportunities, which, in turn, actualizes the motif of urgia (ordering work) that organizes the space, and the mythopoetic image of "demiurge"-orderers. In this regard, a number of key figures in the Novorossiyan personosphere can be identified: Empresses Elizabeth and Catherine, Potemkin, Faleev, de Traversay, the Duc de Richelieu, most of whom are associated with both military and peaceful development of new lands. Exclusively associated with the battleground space are the images of Munnich, Suvorov, Volkonsky, Gorich, Miller, and Prince of Wurttemberg. However, the most significant figure in the semioticized Novorossiyan history, according to Dolgoruky, is the mythologized, partially defamiliarized and travestied image of Potemkin as the genius loci of Novorossiya, whose "theophany" is most vividly manifested in the topos of Nikolaev, especially in the sentimentalist descriptions of its surroundings - the Spassky and Bogoyavlensky gardens. The motif of instability, in this connection, gives rise to motifs of unrealized potential, ruined plans, and forgotten historical achievements. The motif of frontier novelty is actualized differently in local variants of Novorossiya. For instance, in the steppe space, novelty appears as entropic and is marked by wildness, emptiness, boredom, horror, desolation, treelessness, waterlessness, heat, discomfort, ruin, and death. However, the presence of as-yet-unrealized possibilities within the chaotic topos gives rise to the motif of the steppe's potential abundance. Various combinations of entropy and order characterize the description of demi-natural and urban topoi of Novorossiya - from provincial, empty, boring villages and towns to the highly organized space of large cities and, especially, the loci of gardens, which represent an "anti-steppe." Among the triad of key Novorossiyan urban topoi, Dolgoruky's description of Kherson exhibits the greatest entropy, while that of Nikolaev the least. The middle variant presents the image of ambivalent Odessa, shown as a space in the making, one that has not yet realized its potential due to novelty and politico-economic circumstances, and which acts as an "anti-Paris" within the context of the travelogue. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

Keywords

Authors

References