Search
Submit an article RU
Slovo.ru: Baltic accent

2023 Vol. 14 №1

Back to the list Download the article
ENG
Сохранить XML для: JATS (вып.)
RUS
Сохранить XML для: JATS (вып.)
Zhdanov S.S..

Idyll, history, rationality: city images in “Real Journey to Germany in 1835” by Nikolay Gretsch

DOI
10.5922/2225-5346-2023-1-1
Pages
8-28
image of city Lubeck Hamburg Germany travelogue idyll Niko­lay Gretsch Russian literature

Abstract

The article explores the images of the German cities, Lubeck and Hamburg, presented in Nikolay Gretsch’s travelogue “The real trip to Germany in 1835”. The author determines the link between the images of the two cities and the tradition of describing Germany as an idyllic place. This tradition was widespread in Russian literature at the end of the 18th century — first half of the 19th century. In Gretsch’s text, Lubeck and Hamburg are depicted as idyllic but to different degrees. The locus of Lubeck is a homogeneous, patriarchal and achronous idyll, a static space that seems to have frozen in the Middle Ages. In contrast to Lübeck, the city of Hamburg is depicted as a large, contemporary, and dynamic city — in other words, as a modern type of idyll. Moreover, its orderliness goes beyond the idyll and is defined by the rational organisation of space, which is characterised by heterogeneity. Firstly, the idyllic subloci are distinguished, where the key role belongs to the demi-natural images of the garden, the park and the promenade. Secondly, the utilitarian-rational subloci of the stock exchange, quay, and canals are described. Subloci, which are marked by both idyll and rationality, have been identified (e. g. an orphanage, an almshouse). Finally, the third spatial type identified marginal sublocations of seafarers’ establishments associated with the motives of disorderli­ness — drunkenness, debauchery, etc.

Reference

Antsiferov, N. P., 2014. Radost’ zhizni byloi… Problema urbanizma v russkoi khudo­zhe­stvennoi literature. Opyt postroeniya obraza goroda — Peterburga Dostoevskogo — na os­nove analiza literaturnykh traditsii [Joy of the ancient life… Problem of urbanism in Rus­sian literature. Essay of city image constructing — Dostoevsky’s Petersburg — ba­sed on the literature traditions analysis]. Novosibirsk (in Russ.).

Asadowski, K. and Lavrov, A., 2006. “Das Land der Genies” — Deutschland, ge­se­hen von Andrej Belyj. In: Deutsche und Deutschland aus russischer Sicht. Bd. 4. Mün­chen, pp. 753—791.

Boden, D., 1982. Die Deutschen in der russischen und der sowjetischen Literatur. Traum und Alptraum. München; Wien.

Dalkylych, O. V., 2015. Three worlds, three epochs, three cultures: echos of the cities Heidelberg, Tallinn and Kayseri in Russian Literature of the XVIII—XX centu­ries. In: Russkii travelog XVIII—XX vekov [Russian travelogue of XVIII—XX centuries]. Novosibirsk, pp. 427—445 (in Russ.).

Engel, A., 2007. Saxon Switzerland of the romanticism epoch: Russian, German, French images. In: Evroaziatskii mezhkul’turnyi dialog: «svoe» i «chuzhoe» v natsion­al’nom samosoznanii kul'tury [Eurasian intercultural dialogue: “own” and “alien” in the national consciousness of culture]. Tomsk, pp. 36—48 (in Russ.).

Ilchenko, N. M. and Pepelyaeva, S. V., 2015. Dresden as a cultural chronotope pic­ture of the world of V. K. Kyuhelbekera and V. A. Zhukovsky. Vestnik Vyatskogo gosu­darstvennogo gumanitarnogo universiteta [Herald of Vyatka State University], 4, pp. 113—119 (in Russ.).

Ilchenko, N. M. and Aksenova, M. V., 2016. The image of Germany in the travel letters by N. I. Grech. In: Yazyk, kul'tura, mental’nost’: Germaniya i Frantsiya v evro­peiskom yazykovom prostranstve: materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konfer­entsii [Language, culture, mentality: Germany and France in the European language space: materials of the international scientific and practical conference]. Nizhniy Nov­gorod, pp. 112—116 (in Russ.).

Lebedeva, O. B. and Yanushkevich, A. S., 2000. Deutschland im Spiegel der russi­schen Schriftkultur des 19. und beginnenden 20. Jahrhunderts. Cologne; Weimar; Vienna (in Russ.).

Maroshi, V. V., 2016. «Ideal landscape» in the travelogues of Russian traveller about Central Asia. In: Russkii travelog XVIII—XX vekov: marshruty, toposy, zhanry i nar­rativy [Russian travelogue of the XVIII—XX centuries: routes, topos, genres and narra­tives]. Novosibirsk, pp. 37—68 (in Russ.).

Morozova, N. G., 2008. The facets of the perception of Germany in the context of the Russian literature of “travel”. Filologiya i chelovek [Philology & Human], 2, pp. 9—17 (in Russ.).

Müntjes, M., 1971. Beiträge zum Bild des Deutschen in der russischen Literatur von Katharina bis auf Alexander II. Meisenheim am Glan.

Obolenskaya, S. V., 2000. Germaniya i nemtsy glazami russkikh (XIX v.) [Germany and Germans through Russians’ eyes (XIX century)]. Moscow (in Russ.).

Pautkin, A. A., 2017. A. T. Bolotov in Königsberg. Optics of self-knowledge. Filo­logicheskie nauki. Nauchnye doklady vysshei shkoly [Philological Sciences. Scientific Es­says of Higher Education], 4, pp. 52—61, https://doi.org/10.20339/PhS.4-17.052 (in Russ.).

Shchukin, V. G., 2014. The city poetical sphere. The city as a single whole (a fragment of the book). Novyi filologicheskii vestnik [New Philological Bulletin], 1 (28), pp. 8—18 (in Russ.).

Toporov, V. N., 1987. Text of the city-virgin and the city-whore in the mythologi­cal aspect. In: Issledovaniya po strukture teksta [Studies on the text structure]. Moscow, pp. 121—132 (in Russ.).

Zhdanov, S. S., 2017. Images of Urban Germany in Russian Travelogues at the Turn of the XIX Century. Vestnik Kemerovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta [Bulletin of Kemerovo State University], 2, pp. 189—194, https://doi.org/10.21603/2078-8975-2017-2-189-194 (in Russ.).

Zhdanov, S. S., 2019. Prostranstvo Germanii v russkoi slovesnosti kontsa XVIII — nachala XX veka [The space of Germany in Russian literature of the late XVIII — early XX century]. PhD Dissertation. Tomsk (in Russ.).