Suloisen etelän suojatit pohjoisen kuolemanmaisemassa

Abstract


 
 
 The Children of the Sweet South in the Northern Land of Death. On the Opposition of North and South in Russian Literature from Romanticism up to Socialist Realism
 The starting point of the article is the semiotic theory of culturally coherent “semio-spheres”. The analysis focusses on the changing pictures of the northern parts of the Russian cultural area – Siberia, Karelia, and, in the 19th century, also Finland – in the works of Russian writers from Romanticism into the middle of the 20th century. The traditional juxtaposition of ‘north’ and ‘south’ as cultural, climatic and emotional opposites in Romanticism was inspired in part by admiration for Scandinavian sagas and landscapes. The European idealisation of the South was still valid in the poems of the Russian Romanticism. Embedded into the pictures of a wild and untouched northern nature was the ideal of a simple, rural society and the romantic imagery of the lonesome hero. In the Russian literature of the second half of the 19th century ‘north’ became an emotional centre in opposition to a spoiled, western cultural centre. Nevertheless, the Russian and Ukrainian South continued to be a place of longing for the imprisoned or exiled heroes in the hostile North. In Soviet literature, the communist project to improve the social situation of the toiling masses around the world led to a missionary’s attitude toward the outskirts of the Soviet Union. Russian heroes did not only bring civilisation to the uneducated Northern aborigines but by cultivating the harsh land they also added more civilized Southern nature to the Northern landscape.