L’invisible cité de Kitež au reflet de la prose de l’Âge d’Argent
Abstracts
In 1903, the famous fin de siècle novelist, Dmitri Merejkovski (1865-1941), together with his wife, the poet, Zinaïda Hippius (1871-1945), left Saint-Petersburg to confront their religious Weltanschauung with the faith of various groups of Old Believers and sectarians gathered in Svetlojar, beyond the Volga. Four years later, the young, ethnographically oriented writer, Mixail Prišvin (1873-1954), embarked on a similar journey. A comparative analysis of their experiences illustrates how some non-conformist believers invested their cultural identity in the mythic city of Kitež, thus transforming their traumatic memories of relentless state repression into a millenarian longing for the return of the Golden Age. This anticipation led the intellectuals to ponder their own personal beliefs, often realising how superficial and fragile they actually had been. In the remote and dark forest, on Saint John’s Eve, in the proximity of the city of Kitež, which vanished mysteriously in front of aggressors, contraries could seemingly reconcile, interchange and merge. A myth of Saint Russia appeared mixing faith and history in an attempt to exorcise ancient traumas. In the eyes of the non-conformist muzhiks, the breaking up of the Russian Church after the introduction of Byzantine ‘novelties’ (wrongly attributed to the influence of Rome) and the emergence of a modern ‘western’ state seemed to be as apocalyptic as the Mongol invasion.
References
Bibliographical reference
Delphine Desprez, “L’invisible cité de Kitež au reflet de la prose de l’Âge d’Argent”, Études mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines, 38-39 | 2008, 75-118.
Electronic reference
Delphine Desprez, “L’invisible cité de Kitež au reflet de la prose de l’Âge d’Argent”, Études mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines [Online], 38-39 | 2008, Online since 11 March 2009, connection on 29 March 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/emscat/1143; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/emscat.1143
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