“On the Beaten Path of Russian Tourists”: Representation of the Germany Space in “Parisian Letters with Notes About Denmark, Germany, Holland and Belgium” by N. I. Gretsch

Abstract

The paper deals with German spatial images represented in the travelogue “Parisian Letters with Notes about Denmark, Germany, Holland and Belgium” by N. I. Gretsch in connection with the tradition of describing Germany in Russian literature of the 19th century. Several types of spaces are determined in the text by Gretsch. One of them is formed by deminatural and home idyllic loci for which the motives of orderliness, coziness, cleanness, lightness, domesticity, plentifulness, visual appeal are typical. There is a connection of this spatial kind with the sentimental world-image of Germany in Russian literature represented in its ‘wasted’ variant having no expression. Urban German loci are also marked with the motif of orderliness connected with the space not of the idyll but of the modern rational civilization. Prussia is determined as the main center of ordering the German space and contrasted with several conflicted liminal places bordering France and Denmark. Describing regulated non-idyllic, liminal as well as historical loci of Germany tends to the neutral factual world-image. Finally, there are some elements of the travestycomical German narrative mode in the text by Gretsch, they basically deal with representing the German philistine space.

Keywords

• n. i. gretsch
• travelogue
• world-image
• europe
• germany
• liminal space
• idyll
• elegy
• motif
• russian literature