The most recognizable landscape description in Russian literature

[E Wayles Browne]

>>> On Mon, 13 Nov 2006, Alina Israeli wrote:
>>>> Chuden Dnepr pri tixoj pogode. (Gogol)
>>>
Max replied:
>>> Isn't this in Ukraine?
>>>
>>> Is there a concept of Russian language literature which is separte from
>>> Russia itself?  Something akin to American and English Literature?

>>>
>> On Mon, 13 Nov 2006, E Wayles Browne wrote:
>> Dear Max,
>> Of course there is! Every literature is free to write about other
>> places.
>
> It's not writing about a place.  I could right about sitting on the bank
> of the Thames, but cannot write about it, characterize it as someone who
> is British.  My language would be very much American in character.
>
>> ...
>> Mark Twain's "1601" is not in America but in an imaginary England.
>
> But Twain, in his prose, observations, themes, cadence, is an American,
> not British, writer.  I wish I could pull out Twain's passage about his
> travel to Odessa.  Intuitively, it's something which is American, even
> Missourian, in its description of the setting and reaction to it.
>
I think you're right about him. I've found the passage and pasted the
beginning of it in at the end of this message, in case other readers are
not familiar with it.
See http://www.mtwain.com/Innocents_Abroad/37.html
He speaks rather kindly of his meeting with the Tsar in this chapter,
though he makes fun of it in chapter 38.


> I suspect Gogol chose the landscape described above because he was from
> Poltava. How would you characterize his writing?
>
> MP
> pyz at brama.com
>
I would characterize his writing as an attempt to bring (a) Ukraine and
(b) his own idiosyncratic, eccentric mentality into Russian-language
literature.

Yours,
-- 
Wayles Browne, Assoc. Prof. of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics
Morrill Hall 220, Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853, U.S.A.

tel. 607-255-0712 (o), 607-273-3009 (h)
fax 607-255-2044 (write FOR W. BROWNE)
e-mail ewb2 at cornell.edu



Odessa is about twenty hours' run from Sebastopol, and is the most
northerly port in the Black Sea. We came here to get coal, principally.
The city has a population of one hundred and thirty-three thousand, and
is growing faster than any other small city out of America. It is a free
port, and is the great grain mart of this particular part of the world.
Its roadstead is full of ships. Engineers are at work, now, turning the
open roadstead into a spacious artificial harbor. It is to be almost
inclosed by massive stone piers, one of which will extend into the sea
over three thousand feet in a straight line.

I have not felt so much at home for a long time as I did when I "raised
the hill" and stood in Odessa for the first time. It looked just like an
American city; fine, broad streets, and straight as well; low houses,
(two or three stories,) wide, neat, and free from any quaintness of
architectural ornamentation; locust trees bordering the sidewalks (they
call them acacias;) a stirring, business-look about the streets and the
stores; fast walkers; a familiar new look about the houses and every
thing; yea, and a driving and smothering cloud of dust that was so like a
message from our own dear native land that we could hardly refrain from
shedding a few grateful tears and execrations in the old time-honored
American way. Look up the street or down the street, this way or that
way, we saw only America! There was not one thing to remind us that we
were in Russia. We walked for some little distance, reveling in this
home vision, and then we came upon a church and a hack-driver, and
presto! the illusion vanished! The church had a slender-spired dome that
rounded inward at its base, and looked like a turnip turned upside down,
and the hackman seemed to be dressed in a long petticoat with out any
hoops. These things were essentially foreign, and so were the carriages
--but every body knows about these things, and there is no occasion for
my describing them.

We were only to stay here a day and a night and take in coal; we
consulted the guide-books and were rejoiced to know that there were no
sights in Odessa to see; and so we had one good, untrammeled holyday on
our hands, with nothing to do but idle about the city and enjoy
ourselves. We sauntered through the markets and criticised the fearful
and wonderful costumes from the back country; examined the populace as
far as eyes could do it; and closed the entertainment with an ice-cream
debauch. We do not get ice-cream every where, and so, when we do, we are
apt to dissipate to excess. We never cared any thing about ice-cream at
home, but we look upon it with a sort of idolatry now that it is so
scarce in these red-hot climates of the East.

We only found two pieces of statuary, and this was another blessing. One
was a bronze image of the Duc de Richelieu, grand-nephew of the splendid
Cardinal. It stood in a spacious, handsome promenade, overlooking the
sea, and from its base a vast flight of stone steps led down to the
harbor--two hundred of them, fifty feet long, and a wide landing at the
bottom of every twenty. It is a noble staircase, and from a distance the
people toiling up it looked like insects. I mention this statue and this
stairway because they have their story. Richelieu founded Odessa--
watched over it with paternal care--labored with a fertile brain and a
wise understanding for its best interests--spent his fortune freely to
the same end--endowed it with a sound prosperity, and one which will yet
make it one of the great cities of the Old World--built this noble
stairway with money from his own private purse--and--. Well, the people
for whom he had done so much, let him walk down these same steps, one
day, unattended, old, poor, without a second coat to his back; and when,
years afterwards, he died in Sebastopol in poverty and neglect, they
called a meeting, subscribed liberally, and immediately erected this
tasteful monument to his memory, and named a great street after him.
It reminds me of what Robert Burns' mother said when they erected a
stately monument to his memory: "Ah, Robbie, ye asked them for bread and
they hae gi'en ye a stane."

The people of Odessa have warmly recommended us to go and call on the
Emperor, as did the Sebastopolians. They have telegraphed his Majesty,
and he has signified his willingness to grant us an audience. So we are
getting up the anchors and preparing to sail to his watering-place. What
a scratching around there will be, now! what a holding of important
meetings and appointing of solemn committees!--and what a furbishing up
of claw-hammer coats and white silk neck-ties! As this fearful ordeal we
are about to pass through pictures itself to my fancy in all its dread
sublimity, I begin to feel my fierce desire to converse with a genuine
Emperor cooling down and passing away. What am I to do with my hands?
What am I to do with my feet? What in the world am I to do with myself?

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