The Image of St. Petersburg in A. I. Herzen’s Letters in 1839

Abstract

The article examines the December 1839 letters of A. I. Herzen, which he wrote from St. Petersburg, having arrived there for the first time and spent ten days there. The main topic of discussion in these letters was the northern capital. In the eyes of Herzen in 1839, St. Petersburg appears as a city of European culture, which he recognizes as “his own” and enthusiastically accepts. The writer is fascinated by certain loci (the Hermitage, the theater, the Bronze Horseman, etc.) and certain people (V. A. Zhukovsky, V. G. Belinsky). On the other hand, St. Petersburg appears to Herzen as an anomalous and infernal, a space that is fundamentally “alien” to him (with a cold high society, an indifferent “crowd” of “outsiders,” unfavorable weather and climate conditions), causing him horror and rejection. The image of the northern capital created by the writer is an organic part of the St. Petersburg text of Russian literature.

Keywords

• a. i. herzen
• petersburg letters
• epistolary
• travelogue
• travel diary
• image of petersburg
• infernal space