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Journeys to a Graveyard examines the descriptions provided by eight Russian writers of journeys made to western European countries between 1697 and 1880. The descriptions reveal the mentality and preoccupations of the Russian social and intellectual elites during this period. The travellers' perceptions of western European countries are treated here as an ambivalent response to a civilization with which Russia was belatedly coming into close contact as a result of the imperial ambition of the Russian state and the westernization of the Russian elites. The travellers perceived the most advanced European countries as superior to Russia in terms of material achievement and the maturity and refinement of their cultures, but they also promoted a view of Russia as in other respects superior to the western nations. Heavily influenced from the late eighteenth century by Romanticism and by the rise of nationalism in the west, they tended to depict European civilization as moribund. By this means they managed to define their own emergent nation in a contrastive way as having youth and promising futurity.
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JOURNEYS TO A GRAVEYARD ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D’HISTOIRE DES IDÉES INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS 192 JOURNEYS TO A GRAVEYARD Perceptions of Europe in Classical Russian Travel Writing By Derek Offord Founding Directors: P. Dibon† (Paris) and R.H. Popkin (Washington University, St. Louis & UCLA) Director: Sarah Hutton (Middlesex University, United Kingdom) Associate-Directors: J.E. Force (Lexington); J.C. Laursen (Riverside) Editorial Board: M.J.B. Allen (Los Angeles); J.R. Armogathe (Paris); A. Gabbey (New York); T. Gregory (Rome); J. Henry (Edinburgh); J.D. North (Oxford); J. Popkin (Lexington); G.A.J. Rogers (Keele); Th. Verbeek (Utrecht) Journeys to a Graveyard Perceptions of Europe in Classical Russian Travel Writing By Derek Offord University of Bristol U.K. A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN-10 1-4020-3908-5 (HB) ISBN-13 978-1-4020-3908-9 (HB) ISBN-10 1-4020-3909-3 (e-book) ISBN-13 978-1-4020-3909-6 (e-book) Published by Springer, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. www.springer.com Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 2005 Springer No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed in the Netherlands. In memory of Dorothy Clare and Dorothy Joan I want to go to Europe, Aliosha, I’ll go from here. I do know that I’m only going to a graveyard, but it’s a precious graveyard . . . (Dostoevskii, The Brothers Karamazov, Book 5, Chapter 3) Contents Acknowledgements Note on dates, transliteration, names, references and translation Foreword xi xiii xv Introduction The genre of travel writing: its history, terrain, poles and boundaries Constructing national identity through travel writing The Russian corpus of travel writing: journeys in Russia, in a borderland and abroad 1 1 7 13 Chapter 1. Piotr Tolstoi: a travel diary Tolstoi’s life and journey Tolstoi’s diary A superficial tour of Western civilization Types of difference in Tolstoi’s universe 25 25 28 33 41 Chapter 2. Fonvizin: letters from foreign journeys Cultural westernization in the age of Catherine Fonvizin and his Letters from France Rejection of the “earthly paradise” The journey to