The image of the country estate in the literary and art magazines of the Russian Emigration of the First Wave (“The Firebird” and “Chimes”)

About the author

Natalia V. Mikhalenko, PhD in Philology, Senior Researcher, А.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 а, 121069 Moscow, Russia.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6200-6211

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Abstract

The image of the pre-revolutionary country estate in the Russian émigré magazines “Firebird” (1921–1926) and “Chimes” (1925–1929) is polyphonic and intermedial, being created with copies of artistic paintings related to the estate theme (by Sergei Sudeikin and Konstantin Somov in “The Firebird”, and by Sergei Zhukovsky and Sergei Vinogradov in “Chimes”), articles on characteristic features of the estate way of life, and on unique estates of the past (“Old Estates” by Nikolai Misheev in the “Chimes”), stories and poems related to the “estate topos” (“Spring on Krestovsky” by Sasha Chorny, “Youth” by Ivan Bunin, “On a Wolf Fur Coat” by Konstantin Balmont, etc., in “Firebird”). One can call the Sasha Chorny’s poem “The House over the Velicaia River” (“Pictures from Russian Life”) published in “Chimes” the real encyclopedia of the Russian estate life. The image of the estate in the émigré magazines is enshrined in myths of an idyllic image of the lost homeland, and is rooted in the idyllic reminiscences of the lost homeland. Life in harmony with nature, life and everyday activities arranged as works of art, one’s cultural and spiritual development, on one hand, becomes an unattainable nostalgic ideal for emigrants, and, on the other, it is a life-giving memory uniting Russians abroad.