The most recognizable landscape description in Russian literature

[Max Pyziur]

On Mon, 13 Nov 2006, E Wayles Browne wrote:

> --
>
>> On Mon, 13 Nov 2006, Alina Israeli wrote:
>>
>>> Chuden Dnepr pri tixoj pogode. (Gogol)
>>
>> 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?
>>
>> Max Pyziur
>> pyz at brama.com
>>
> 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.

> "Mocart i Salieri" does not take place in Russia, and part of "Master i
> Margarita" is set in the Holy Land. Saint-Exupery set his "Little Prince"
> not in France but partly on various asteroids and partly in the Sahara.
> 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 suspect Gogol chose the landscape described above because he was from 
Poltava. How would you characterize his writing?

MP
pyz at brama.com

> Shakespeare's "Hamlet" is in Denmark. Goethe wrote a poem about the
> Italian landscape: "Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn." The Basque
> writer Bernardo Atxaga deliberately set his novel "Obabakoak" partly in
> Germany and partly on the Amazon in order to counteract the notion that
> Basque writers should write only about Basque topics.
> And every language can be written by people from other places, if they're
> good enough. Elias Canetti was from Bulgaria but he wrote in German.
> Aleksandar Hemon (part Ukrainian, if you can believe him) is from Bosnia
> but writes his fiction in American English.
> 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
>
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