Towards the Wind

The article focuses on the role of the northeast as a geographical direction in the history of the Russian frontier as well as on the symbolism of the northeast wind. These geopoetic motifs are present in Maximilian Voloshin’s poem “Severovostok,” in V. Kaverin’s novel “Two Captains,” and in the paratext and libretto of the modern Russian musical “Nord-Ost,” which is based on the novel. The article analyzes the contexts of the northeast wind’s motif in Russian poetry of the first half of the 20th century, primarily in the works of poets from the Black Sea region and Siberia. These authors contributed to the semantics of extremity and local eschatology associated with this wind. In turn, the motifs of wind and blizzard are significant in Russian literature for the themes of Russian pioneering and for depicting the zone of contact with the infernal realm or with the wild paradise of Siberia

Frontier · Paradise · Paratext · Poetry · Realm · Russian literature · European Linguistics and Anthropology · Historical and Modern Theater Studies · Vladimir Nabokov Literary Studies