KAUKAZ CEZ KALEIDOSKOP RUSKEJ LITERATÚRY

• Authors: Laučíková Katarína

Title variants

EN

Caucasus through the kaleidoscope of Russian literature

• Languages of publication: SK

Abstracts

EN

The Caucasus had an image of hostile country full of bloodthirsty barbarians in the Russian representation of the 18th - 19th century. It became a place of exile of inconvenient people from the intelligentsia. The mountains were absolutely new phenomena for the Russians writers coming from the large plains. The Caucasus of the Russian writers is a creation of their imagination, a place where they put on their mental projections and wishes. In the depiction of the mountains, they found a way to express their desire to return to the natural world with the attributed qualities like spontaneity, innocence, carelessness. To some writers it became a means to limit their own identity and created a new category of men standing between the 'civilisation' and the 'barbarian' world. Pushkin created an exotic image of the highlanders - warrior children of the nature and his poem The prisoner of the Caucasus introducing the concept of freedom and liberty influence the perception of Caucasus among Russian readers. Lermontov was fascinated by the tradition of the blood vengeance and depicted the highlanders as the 'noble savage men' whom the anthropologist R. Bartra judges as a cultural necessity to the 'civilised' European who discovered his suppressed primary element, his alter-ego. The imaginary Caucasus of e. g. Marlinskij, Gneditch, E. Gan is full of handsome man, brave warriors and the passionate women giving a pleasure to every man who wants. Certain themes have been overtaken by other writers like the prisoner of the Caucasus, Queen Tamara and demon. The literary imagination seems to be a way for the writers to domesticate, gain control over a strange country.

Keywords

EN

AESTHETIC PERCEPTION; CAUCASUS; HIGHLANDER; MENTAL PROJECTIONS; MOUNTAINS; MYTH; RUSSIAN LITERATURE

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Slovak Academy of Sciences, Institute of Social Sciences
• Journal: Človek a spoločnosť. Internetový časopis pre pôvodné teoretické a výskumné štúdie z oblasti spoločenských vied
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 14
• Issue: 1
• Pages: -
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Laučíková Katarína

• Universita Stendhala v Grenoble, katedra slovanských štúdií, Grenoble

• Katarina Laucikova

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

11SKAAAA097310