Abstract
This article examines the text of renowned nineteenth century Russian travellers notes, The Frigate Pallada, by Ivan Goncharov, the author of Oblomov. Using the teachings of Victor Shklovsky, Yurij Tynianov and Yurij Lotman on the role of the genre of travellers notes in the history of Russian literature, the author examines the chapter on the Cape Province. She demonstrates that in his descriptions of the two nations of the Cape Province - the English and the Boers - Goncharov is applying that which is known to him - his own cultural model of the Russian society of the mid-nineteenth century. In his examination of differences between the English and the Boers Goncharov applies the ideological dichotomy between the Slavophiles and the Westernisers. Goncharov, by "inverting" the "dual model of Russian culture" (Lotman & Uspensky, 1984a) draws comparisons between the Russians of the Oblomov Slavophile type on the one hand, and the English on the other hand as the model for the improvement of the industry of the economically backward Russian nation. To Goncharov the Boers resemble the Oblomov, old world side of dichotomy, which by inversions of the dual model can fluctuate between "the good" and "the bad" categories.
Highlights
In the vast area of cross-cultural studies, the field of South African-Russian connections remains arid
Some celebrated 20th-century Russian and Soviet texts reflects events of the Anglo-Boer War, and express a strong sympathy towards, and affiliations with the Boers. In such diverse texts as The Silver Dove {Serebrianyj Golub’), the modernist novel of the beginning of the century (1922), by the symbolist Andrey Bely, and Sholokhov’s Quiet Flows the Don (Tikhij Don) of 1925, by Stalin’s prize laureat, Russians peasants sing "Transvaal is burning in fire".' Amongst K
Paustovsky’s apolitical texts, highly esteemed in his country for their mastery of the short story narration, we encounter a Russian translation of the Transvaal song: "Transvaal’, Transvaal’strana moja - ty vsia gorish v ogne". Paustovsky confesses in his biography A Story o f One Life (Povest’o zhizni) (1955) that his generation was brought up on the story of the heroic Life o f Pieter Maritz, a Young Boer from the Transvaal. What unites all these accounts of the Anglo-Boer war is a sympathy towards the Boers, based on a vague parallelism between the Russians and the Boers on the one hand, in opposition to the pragmatic and pedantic English
Summary
In the vast area of cross-cultural studies, the field of South African-Russian connections remains arid. Some celebrated 20th-century Russian and Soviet texts reflects events of the Anglo-Boer War, and express a strong sympathy towards, and affiliations with the Boers. Paustovsky confesses in his biography A Story o f One Life (Povest’o zhizni) (1955) that his generation was brought up on the story of the heroic Life o f Pieter Maritz, a Young Boer from the Transvaal. What unites all these accounts of the Anglo-Boer war is a sympathy towards the Boers, based on a vague parallelism between the Russians and the Boers on the one hand, in opposition to the pragmatic and pedantic English. Frigate Pallada, by Ivan Goncharov (1812-1891), the author of Oblomov'^ considered to be the fourth greatest realist novelist in the line of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Turgenev
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