#  Lucie 

 



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   ![lucie_-_selfie_website.jpg](/sites/g/files/omnuum1421/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/kotsyuba/files/lucie_-_selfie_website.jpg?itok=z7FhQ1d4) 

 

The goal of my creative project was to analyze the meaning of space in the works of 19th century Russian literature, which I realized as an interactive GIS map. I analyzed space in the following works:

Nikolai Gogol – "The Songs of Ukraine" (in: *Arabesques,* 1835)

Mikhail Lermontov – *Hero of Our Time* (1840)

Taras Shevchenko – *The Dream* (1844)

Fyodor Dostoevsky – *The Double* (1846)

Karolina Pavlova – *A Double Life* (1848)

My "spatial reading" of the above texts (and the creation of this interactive map) is an attempt at visualizing this use of topographic symbols on a historical map. My main conclusions can be summed up as follows:

- Some of the authors use contrasts between different spaces to expose the oppression of a certain marginalized groups. In Pavlova’s *A Double Life*, the contrast between the ‘suffocating’ Moscow society and the free world of (the surrounding) nature, emphasizes Cecily’s unfree and unhappy position as a young woman in 19th century ‘high-society’ Russia.
- The Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, a stark contrast to the Russian works read in class, uses images of the royal family in Moscow and of artificial St. Petersburg – built by slaves on a swamp – to deliver a political, anti-imperial message. The symbol of the famous statue of the Bronze Horseman as the ultimate oppressor reinforces this message. Interestingly, Shevchenko uses a female image (of the ‘helpless widow’) to emphasize Ukraine’s suffering under the tsarist rule. For Shevchenko, the positive depiction of the Ukrainian countryside functions as an idyll that unites the Ukrainians as victims of the imperialist Russian tsar. Similarly, in ‘The Songs of the Ukraine’, Gogol’ brings an ode to the Ukrainian countryside, to its communal spirit and its folk songs. In this way, the positive, idealized depiction of a scenic landscape that is familiar to every Ukrainian helps to strengthen the Ukrainian *Volksgeist* in times of difficulty.
- In Lermontov’s *Hero of Our Time*, Romantic descriptions of the Caucasian landscape and its inhabitants are omnipresent. The anonymous narrator’s representation of the Caucasian nature is inextricably linked to feelings of freedom (from the conventions of society) and creativity.
- For Dostoevsky’s protagonist Goliadkin (in *The Double*), the embankment of the Fontanka in St. Petersburg is the scenery for his first encounter with his double. In *The Double,* St. Petersburg is depicted as a grim, dark and uncanny city; in other words, a ‘foggy’ place that is associated with fogginess of the mind: mental illness.

Through my "spatial reading" and topographic visualization of the five literary works, I realized that there is a deliberate, artistically and oftentimes also politically motivated choice behind almost all of the topographic references in the above texts. Furthermore, I think it is remarkable that two of the writers (Pavlova and Shevchenko) use a lyrical subject that "flies" above physical space in a dream, that is disconnected from it and observes it from above. In both cases, I believe this "detachment" emphasizes the image of a certain space as a prison (for the body and the mind).

To navigate the Omeka map below, please drag it to see the marked regions. By clicking on the regions, citites, river Terek, and other objects, you will be able to access text and imagery associted with the map. The map can also be accessed [here](http://hist1952.omeka.fas.harvard.edu/neatline/fullscreen/lrl#records/226).