“In an interesting and little-known land…”: Middle East everyday life in S. Kondurushkin’s notebooks

Abstract

S. Kondurushkin’s notebooks are an important but little-known part of his literary heritage. They are crucial for understanding his creative laboratory and the most important documents of Russian literary history of the 1900–1910s. This article introduces the materials of Kondurushkin’s notebooks, relating to the time of his stay in the Middle East, into scientific circulation. Special attention is paid to Kondurushkin’s notebooks from the early 1900s. At that time, he was a teacher and later an inspector assistant of Arab schools of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society in Syria. In the notebooks, he records details of everyday life in the Arab East, anecdotal incidents and his work with various sources, including Arabic folklore. The essential historical and literary part of the notebooks are the sketches and fragments of Kondurushkin’s works, which he prepared for publication in Russian magazines and newspapers, as well as the details of his correspondence with the editors. Our analysis shows how the realities of Middle Eastern daily life become a tool for learning one’s own ethnicity, for heightening its sense in an alien cultural environment. Materials of Kondurushkin’s notebooks make it possible to clearly see how the “other culture” is perceived and reproduced by a person who finds himself in the Middle East for the first time and is interested in understanding the new land and its people. The attitude of the young author is note-worthy, demonstrating his maximum openness to all forms of manifestation of “otherness”, his readiness not only to understand, but also to accept it. For the first time, the article introduces materials from Kondurushkin’s notebooks, relating to the time of his stay in the Middle East, into scientific discourse.