Польское в Крымской элегии Нины Берберовой
Polish themes in „The Crimean Elegy” by Nina Berberova

Summary/Abstract: This academic paper explores Polish themes in the novel The Crimean Elegy written bya well-known novelist and memoir writer, the first wave Russian emigrant in the 20th century, NinaBerberova. Polish themes in the prose of Russian emigrants, the representatives of the first wave ofthe Russian Emigration in the 20th century, often appear as reminiscences (the prose of A. Kuprin,R. Gul, B. Zaytsev and others). In Berberova’s The Crimean Elegy a famous opera singer Julia Bolesławowna Z. goes to the Crimea, the land of her childhood and adolescence, in order to calm herstrained nerves and, although it is a foreign land, she finds it safe, where the church and the memoriesassociated with it play a leading role. As it turned out, the church, the sound of barrel organs, thechants, Shubert’s Ave Maria performed by Julia Bolesławowna Z. appeared to be a treasure trove ofthe highest moral values for Berberova’s heroine. And even though the government has changed itsappearance on the Crimea and before the church stood now a freckled, snub-nosed “man with a gun”,he would not dare to enter the house of God. A Pole, a catholic, with her music and the performanceof Shubert’s Ave Maria, she has revived the passion of the deceased, who once prayed on this landto Black Madonna of Częstochowa or to Our Lady of Kraków.

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