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Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape
Pushkin's palaces or Dostoevsky's slums? Many a modern-day visitor to St. Petersburg has one or, more likely, both of these images in mind when setting foot in this stage set-like setting for some of the world's most treasured literary masterpieces. What they overlook is the vast uncharted territory in between. In Mapping St. Petersburg , Julie Buckler traces the evolution of Russia's onetime capital from a "conceptual hierarchy" to a living cultural system--a topography expressed not only by the city's physical structures but also by the literary texts that have helped create it.
By favoring noncanonical works and "underdescribed spaces," Buckler seeks to revise the literary monumentalization of St. Petersburg--with Pushkin and Dostoevsky representing two traditional albeit opposing perspectives--to offer an off-center view of a richer, less familiar urban landscape. She views this grand city, the product of Peter the Great's ambitious vision, not only as a geographical entity but also as a network of genres that carries historical and cultural meaning.
We discover the busy, messy "middle ground" of this hybrid city through an intricate web of descriptions in literary works; nonfiction writings such as sketches, feuilletons, memoirs, letters, essays, criticism; and urban legends, lore, songs, and social practices--all of which add character and depth to this refurbished imperial city.
By favoring noncanonical works and "underdescribed spaces," Buckler seeks to revise the literary monumentalization of St. Petersburg--with Pushkin and Dostoevsky representing two traditional albeit opposing perspectives--to offer an off-center view of a richer, less familiar urban landscape. She views this grand city, the product of Peter the Great's ambitious vision, not only as a geographical entity but also as a network of genres that carries historical and cultural meaning.
We discover the busy, messy "middle ground" of this hybrid city through an intricate web of descriptions in literary works; nonfiction writings such as sketches, feuilletons, memoirs, letters, essays, criticism; and urban legends, lore, songs, and social practices--all of which add character and depth to this refurbished imperial city.
- GenresRussia
384 pages, Paperback
First published December 28, 2004
26 people want to read
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March 8, 2016
p.4 – The poet Joseph Brodsky asserted that St. Petersburg would always be the capital of Russia, regardless of official designation. Its primacy is based upon “the second Petersburg, the one made of verses and of Russian prose,” whose excerpts Soviet schoolchildren learned by heart.
p.10 – The English-language term “topography” has been associated with three different meanings over time. Topography originally denoted “a description of place in words,” or a kind of travel literature, but later came to mean ‘the art of mapping a place by graphic signs.” Ironically, in a further slippage, the third meaning of topography, now dominant, simply designates “that which is mapped.” Thus “the place of writing” (topos + grapheim) has come to mean the always already written terrain rather than its description.
p.21 – According to cultural mythology, then, Petersburg is the capital of bad weather and dark moods that give rise to a sublime literary tradition.
p.32 – Petr Chaadaev initially condemned Russia’s indiscriminate copying of the West, but came to appreciate cultural eclecticism’s place in relation to his country’s particular moment of historical evolution. The first of Chaadaev’s Philosophical Letters (1829) refers to the Russian people as “illegitimate children,” members of a culture “based wholly on borrowing and imitation” who accept only “ready-made ideas.” (Petr Chaadaev, “First Letter,” in Russian Philosophy, vol. 1, James M Edie (ed.), Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976, pp.112, 116)
p.33 – In his 1837 “Apologies of a Madman,” however, Chaadaev celebrated Peter the Great, who “opened our minds to all the great and beautiful ideas which are prevalent among them.” (Petr Chaadaev, “Apology of a Madman,” in Readings in Russian Civilization, Vol. II, Thomas Riha (ed.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969, pp.311-12)
Dostoyevsky’s 1873 “Little Pictures” (Malenkie Kartiny) from Diary of a Writer, in an extended polemic against St. Petersburg architecture, which for him, now manifested the city’s characterless quality. “There is no other city like it. It is a reflection of all architectures in the world, all styles and fashions,” he wrote. “Everything has been borrowed and everything in its own way disfigured… One doesn’t even know how to define our current architecture. It is a kind of disorder of the present moment.”
p.247 – St. Petersburg’s tricentennial year of 2003 found the city at a moment that could not have been anticipated during the celebration of 1803 and 1903. Each of these celebrations marks a cultural moment – the hopeful beginning of Alexander I’s reign in 1803, the sense of a waning culture under siege in 1903, and the “Rip the Winkle” experience of 2003, as Petersburg reclaimed its past while simultaneously confronting the lag in its development as a modern city.
The May 1803 centennial festivities were relatively modest compared with the coronation celebration that would be staged to honor a new Russian monarch.
By May 1903, the population of St. Petersburg had increased nearly four times over, and the bicentennial festivities were correspondingly more extensive, despite the fact that Nicholas II had little interest in them.
p.248 – The 1903 bicentennial celebrations venerated Petersburg’s past, but also turned this past into theatre and mass culture, an example that would be followed in 2003.
As Governor of St. Petersburg Vladimir Yakovlev declared on the official tricentennial website www.spb300.ru, “The period leading up to the celebration is, above all, a time for implementing projects in the field of science, technology, construction, and culture” that will “serve as the bases for St. Petersburg’s economic and cultural prosperity in the twenty-first century.”
p.249 – In 2001, in order to help Russian and foreign investors “buy into” this new image of St. Petersburg, Governor Yakovlev established a set of corporate sponsor packages, each tied to a specific monetary contribution, ranging from “general sponsorship” for three million U.S. dollars and “official sponsorship” for one million, down to “patron” status, which cost the donor only five thousand. Official documents from the early stages of preparation stated that approximately one-half of the city’s 5,748 “monuments of history and culture,” 300 works of “monumental sculpture,” and 600 works of “decorative sculpture” were in need of restoration and repair. In addition to projects of moderate proportions, tricentennial preparations also included extensive renovations of twenty-one major imperial-era structures, among them the Peter-Paul Fortress, Alexander Column, Alexandrinsky Theatre, Summer Garden, Admiralty, Stock Exchange, and Russian National Library.
The ten-day tricentennial during the spring of 2003 represented the culmination of several years’ worth of projects and events, as manifested by Petersburg tricentennial calendars for the period 2000-2003, which featured innumerable festivals, performances, exhibitions, commemorative gatherings, sports events, competitions, and conferences takingplace each month. A database of Petersburg tricentennial projects tracked dozens of new efforts, among them an international conference on “The Petersburg Style,” a re-enactment of a Winter Palace ball.
p.251 – Petersburg lack a major gathering place such as Moscow’s Red Square, which can accommodate 1.5 million people. Palace Square holds under 100,000 and was intended for reviewing elite military forces, rather than for assembling a huge crowd. In 1803, Alexander I addressed the public on Senate Square, and in 1903, Nicholas II made a formal appearance on the Field of Mars, but the city’s population was much smaller on both occasions than it was in 2003.
p.10 – The English-language term “topography” has been associated with three different meanings over time. Topography originally denoted “a description of place in words,” or a kind of travel literature, but later came to mean ‘the art of mapping a place by graphic signs.” Ironically, in a further slippage, the third meaning of topography, now dominant, simply designates “that which is mapped.” Thus “the place of writing” (topos + grapheim) has come to mean the always already written terrain rather than its description.
p.21 – According to cultural mythology, then, Petersburg is the capital of bad weather and dark moods that give rise to a sublime literary tradition.
p.32 – Petr Chaadaev initially condemned Russia’s indiscriminate copying of the West, but came to appreciate cultural eclecticism’s place in relation to his country’s particular moment of historical evolution. The first of Chaadaev’s Philosophical Letters (1829) refers to the Russian people as “illegitimate children,” members of a culture “based wholly on borrowing and imitation” who accept only “ready-made ideas.” (Petr Chaadaev, “First Letter,” in Russian Philosophy, vol. 1, James M Edie (ed.), Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976, pp.112, 116)
p.33 – In his 1837 “Apologies of a Madman,” however, Chaadaev celebrated Peter the Great, who “opened our minds to all the great and beautiful ideas which are prevalent among them.” (Petr Chaadaev, “Apology of a Madman,” in Readings in Russian Civilization, Vol. II, Thomas Riha (ed.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969, pp.311-12)
Dostoyevsky’s 1873 “Little Pictures” (Malenkie Kartiny) from Diary of a Writer, in an extended polemic against St. Petersburg architecture, which for him, now manifested the city’s characterless quality. “There is no other city like it. It is a reflection of all architectures in the world, all styles and fashions,” he wrote. “Everything has been borrowed and everything in its own way disfigured… One doesn’t even know how to define our current architecture. It is a kind of disorder of the present moment.”
p.247 – St. Petersburg’s tricentennial year of 2003 found the city at a moment that could not have been anticipated during the celebration of 1803 and 1903. Each of these celebrations marks a cultural moment – the hopeful beginning of Alexander I’s reign in 1803, the sense of a waning culture under siege in 1903, and the “Rip the Winkle” experience of 2003, as Petersburg reclaimed its past while simultaneously confronting the lag in its development as a modern city.
The May 1803 centennial festivities were relatively modest compared with the coronation celebration that would be staged to honor a new Russian monarch.
By May 1903, the population of St. Petersburg had increased nearly four times over, and the bicentennial festivities were correspondingly more extensive, despite the fact that Nicholas II had little interest in them.
p.248 – The 1903 bicentennial celebrations venerated Petersburg’s past, but also turned this past into theatre and mass culture, an example that would be followed in 2003.
As Governor of St. Petersburg Vladimir Yakovlev declared on the official tricentennial website www.spb300.ru, “The period leading up to the celebration is, above all, a time for implementing projects in the field of science, technology, construction, and culture” that will “serve as the bases for St. Petersburg’s economic and cultural prosperity in the twenty-first century.”
p.249 – In 2001, in order to help Russian and foreign investors “buy into” this new image of St. Petersburg, Governor Yakovlev established a set of corporate sponsor packages, each tied to a specific monetary contribution, ranging from “general sponsorship” for three million U.S. dollars and “official sponsorship” for one million, down to “patron” status, which cost the donor only five thousand. Official documents from the early stages of preparation stated that approximately one-half of the city’s 5,748 “monuments of history and culture,” 300 works of “monumental sculpture,” and 600 works of “decorative sculpture” were in need of restoration and repair. In addition to projects of moderate proportions, tricentennial preparations also included extensive renovations of twenty-one major imperial-era structures, among them the Peter-Paul Fortress, Alexander Column, Alexandrinsky Theatre, Summer Garden, Admiralty, Stock Exchange, and Russian National Library.
The ten-day tricentennial during the spring of 2003 represented the culmination of several years’ worth of projects and events, as manifested by Petersburg tricentennial calendars for the period 2000-2003, which featured innumerable festivals, performances, exhibitions, commemorative gatherings, sports events, competitions, and conferences takingplace each month. A database of Petersburg tricentennial projects tracked dozens of new efforts, among them an international conference on “The Petersburg Style,” a re-enactment of a Winter Palace ball.
p.251 – Petersburg lack a major gathering place such as Moscow’s Red Square, which can accommodate 1.5 million people. Palace Square holds under 100,000 and was intended for reviewing elite military forces, rather than for assembling a huge crowd. In 1803, Alexander I addressed the public on Senate Square, and in 1903, Nicholas II made a formal appearance on the Field of Mars, but the city’s population was much smaller on both occasions than it was in 2003.
May 26, 2007
Extremely well-read and well-researched, Buckler approaches the St. Petersburg text through those authors who are often overlooked in the wake of Pushkin and Dostoevsky. An informative read.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews