2022 Vol. 13 №4

This article is a study of literary representations of the text 'Königsberg-Kaliningrad' analysed from the point of view of geopoetics. Based on the descriptions of Königsberg-Kaliningrad in Bolotov's memoirs "Life and adventures of Andrey Bolotov, described by himself for his descendants", Brodsky's poem "Einem alten Architekten in Rom" and the novel "Königsberg" by Buida, the authors explore the sensorial perception of the city by the writers and establish its correlation with the extraliterary metapositions reflected in their texts. It is argued that the basis of the description of Königsberg in Bolotov's memoirs is a detailed mapping of the city, interwoven with a feeling of surprise, which results in an emotional discovery of the unfamiliar space. Brodsky's poetic optics is interpreted as a transition from 'vision' to 'speculation': an imaginary tour of Königsberg leads the poet from the sensory (visual and aural) perception of the city to the understanding of its non-material, spiritual and noumenal essence. Buida associates the space of Königsberg and Kaliningrad with the idea of myth construction. Shifting from the real Kaliningrad to the imaginary Königsberg, the author fills in the semiotic incompleteness of the city as a sign. Based on the comparison of the three types of perception, it is concluded that for different authors, the perception and the understanding of the city K. is associated with its transcendence from the personalization of the material essence of the city to the transition beyond the material, to the city as a noumenon, a thing-in-itself.

The perception of Fyodor Dostoevsky as a literary painter of St. Petersburg has become an axiom in literary criticism. However, modern researchers pay attention to the significance of other cities for the writer, which are inextricably linked both with his biography and his work. Fyodor Dostoevsky not only instantly noticed visual metaphors and historical and cultural narratives of the places where he was destined to be, but he also included presciently read city texts in his literary works. This article is aimed to identify those ‘local texts’ of the urban space in the novel “The Adolescent”, which contribute to the reconstruction and representation of its basic concepts. This research affirms the consistency and integrity of the artistic geo-panorama created by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The creation and representation of concepts both by the writer and his heroes are carried out by comparing individual points and forming a kind of textual ‘isolines’. As an analytical and illustrative material, various mo­difications of such “isolines” of are given, the elements of which are St. Petersburg, Mos­cow, Ko­nigsberg, and Ems. The local texts of these cities contribute to the restoration of the nucleus meanings of the basic concepts of the penultimate work by Fyodor Dostoevsky, which include: disorder, ugliness, goodness, random family, strength, heart, living life, pilgrimage, wandering, care, and flunkeyism.

The image of the city as one of the most important elements of modern post-industrial reality is an essential element in the world picture of any individual. The research aims to study the peculiarities of perception and verbal representation of the image of Kaliningrad by the students of the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University. The objectives of the research determined the choice of a comprehensive methodology, which included the method of unfini­shed sentences, as well as the methods of interpretation and modelling. As a result of this re­search, four interrelated constituents of the image of Kaliningrad were determined — external (architectural and landscape), cultural and historical, anthropological, social and household. The verbal representation of their structural and content characteristics was illustrated using the results of a survey based on the method of unfinished sentences, which was developed and con­ducted by the author.

The article offers a qualitative content analysis of the names of Kaliningrad city tours and identifies the main distinctive features of the image of the city represented in them. The name of the tour is a message sent by the tour operator to the addressee — the potential consumer of tourist services. This type of communication is not exclusively commercial; it has an indirect impact on the accomplishment of a broader range of socially significant goals, first and foremost, the formation of a positive image of the city. The success of communication does not only depend on the fact of the purchasing of the tour but on the social context associated with the subsequent actions of the addressee. The interaction of the sender of the message and its addressee may entail a serious discrepancy between the image of the city represented in the names of tours and the image formed after visiting the city, or the image formed after the tour itself. The study has shown that such a discrepancy in the image of Kaliningrad is typical because of the dichotomy Koenigsberg — Kaliningrad, the contrast between the German past and Russian present, and the intention to represent Koenigsberg as a city that still exists. The article provides recommendations for overcoming the discrepancy problem.