Tożsamość uchodźcy
A refugee’s identity

On Russia and Russians in Vasily Yanovsky’s "Elysian Fields"

Author(s): Iwona Krycka-Michnowska
Subject(s): Cultural history, Studies of Literature, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Vasily Yanovsky; Elysian Fields; unnoticed generation; historiosophy; emigration
Summary/Abstract: This article analyzes the historiosophical reflections of the Russian emigrant Vasily Yanovsky, a representative of the so-called unnoticed generation, contained in his memoirs "Elysian Fields" (1983). These memoirs testify to the author’s ambivalent attitude toward Russia and the Russians, an expression of bitter, demanding love for the homeland and his own people; it is a love marked by harsh criticism, but at the same time full of faith in the Russian potential. The leitmotif of Yanovsky’s reflections is the cultural antinomies between Russia and the East on the one hand, and Europe and the West on the other, and the longing to overcome them.

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