Dva puteshestviia v Ierusalim v 1830-1831 i 1861 godakh by Elena Leonidovna Rumanovskaia (review)

Abstract

136 SEER, 87, I, JANUARY 2OO9 twentypages. This isverymuch a thesis transformed into a book but, sadly, there ismuch thatprevents thiswork from being the ground-breaker it seeks to be. Despite all the author's enthusiasm, the writing is careless and the exposition endlessly repetitive and laboured. The sense of repetition is only increased by the long captions to the illustrations which are essentially a reprise ofwhat is said in the text. There ismuch with which one could take issue, not leastwith the assump tion that Rostopchin's famous 'broadsheets' (letuchielisty)from 1812 were themselves lubki (pp. 32-33). Mention nevertheless should be made of a particularly tortuous paragraph inwhich Norris mistranslates the caption to Terebenev's 'The Russian Hercules Drives Off theFrench', where thepeasant hero does not, 'likeaman' {kak muzh), crush theFrench (p. 20) but,much more eloquendy, crushes them 'like flies' {davil kak mukh) (see Rovinskii, Russkie narodnye kartinki, vol. 4, p. 426). Fitzwilliam College AnthonyCross UniversityofCambridge Rumanovskaia, Elena Leonidovna. Dva puteshestviiav Ierusalim v 1830-1831 i 1861 godakh. Indrik,Moscow, 2006. 200 pp. Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. RB 234.00. This volume provocatively combines two previously unpublished and quite dissimilar accounts of travel to Palestine. The firstwas written by themonk Serapion, an unidentified pilgrim who visited Jerusalem with a group of twentyother poklonnikiin 1830-31, shordy after the conclusion of theRusso Turkish War. He stayed for roughly nine months, receiving tonsure in the Monastery of the Patriarch of Jerusalem and returning home after Easter. Apparendy intended for fellow believers unable tomake the trip, Serapion's brief (twenty-one-page) account primarily describes religious sites and the stories and legends they inspire.He carefully notes ecclesiastical and architec tural details, oftenproviding a count of columns, steps and candles. Highlights include a four-day hike to theJordan river under the benevolent armed escort of the Ottoman governor, a well-organized excursion of 10,000 persons in which 'not a single unfortunate or even unpleasant circumstance occurred' (p. 60), and the celebration of Easter in the Church of theHoly Sepulchre (with 20,000 others), where Serapion greets theHoly Fire in a state of near rapture. The energetic and cultivated Nikolai Polivanov visited Palestine thirty years later together with his uncle Avraam Norov, a prominent statesman who had already published an account of visiting Palestine in 1835 and who wrote another about Palestine and Sinai after thisjourney. Polivanov isparticularly impressed by the suggestively bleak St Saba Monastery near Jerusalem. His thirty-twopages also describe the tripby rail from Petersburg to Berlin, Vienna and Budapest, descent of the Danube, passage by sea to Constanti nople and Alexandria and, after a two-month stay in Palestine, a second REVIEWS 137 sojourn inEgypt. Keenly interested in theOrient's historical ruins and exotic landscapes, Polivanov writes expressively about the experience of travel in these 'picturesque' and 'magical' surroundings. He also made several lovely sketches, some of which are reproduced in this volume, in order both to illustrate his travels and to record the vanishing artistic details of important historical sites.His diary breaks off inEgypt, where 'about 2 versts ahead of us a strip of oasis showed green; a group of palms sharply drawn against the dark mountains of Sinai made a charming foreground' (p. 131). The accounts of both Serapion and Polivanov are utterly fascinating for theirwitness of the overlapping faiths, cultures and political interests that constituted Palestine and theOttoman-dominated East in themid-nineteenth century. Every step brings the travellers into contact with multiple historical, political and ecclesiastical worlds and E. L. Rumanovskaia's extensive commentary, which includes an introduction, detailed notes and essays ? on political and diplomatic history, Russian accounts of travel to Palestine and the Polivanov family ? helps to make sense of this complex setting. Rumanovskaia's particular strength is explicating theways inwhich relations between Russia, theOttoman Empire and other European powers affect the organization of Orthodoxy in Palestine and, consequently, the experiences of precise travellers there. Serapion travels to Palestine shortly after the conclusion of theRusso-Turkish War, for example, and is hailed by Russian monks who have not seen a compatriot for nine years, while Polivanov's visit comes in an era of increased Russian presence in...