Nostalgia reduction in the consciousness of the Russian young emigrants’ prose heroes

Abstract

This paper considers the manifestations of nostalgia in the narrative and plot scenes of the protagonists of Russian young emigrants’ fiction of the 1930s – early 1940s. The focus is on the works of B. Poplavsky, G. Gazdanov, and J. Felzen. A reduction of nationally oriented nostalgic myths and feelings can be seen in the prose of young emigrants. However, a strengthened existential nostalgia is evident: a longing for the fullness of existence and wholeness of being or awareness of the impossibility of finding a new Home in the reality where one is abandoned and unrooted. The national nostalgia reduction determines the national identity reduction. The internal crisis of the heroes under study proves to be an identity crisis, intensified by an existential crisis. Their situation in an alien world is an existential dead end amid total disorientation. The heroes’ attempts to overcome existential nostalgia are different but equally fruitless: the entry into the “paradise of friends” and the Russian women’s love (“Apollo Bezobrazov” and “Home from Heaven” of Poplavsky), the myth of the House and the understanding of one’s past (“A Tale of One Travel” and “Night Roads” of Gazdanov), an appeal to the poet’s work, bringing the feeling of fullness of being in Russia (“Letters about Lermontov” of Felzen). To conclude, when interpreting nostalgia (its reduction), we find the prose of young emigrants to be closer not to the “older” generation of Russian emigration but to the Western emigrant prose (“Tropic of Cancer” by Miller and “Triumphal Arch” by Remarque).