Although the events leading to the Russian revolution and its aftermath shook the nation, they paved the way for a new era of Russian literature – that of the émigrés. Having had to make the difficult decision of fleeing their homeland with little prospect of returning, writers found an outlet for their confusion in their poetry and prose. Variety exists in their approaches and styles – some opted for a retrospective glance at Russian culture, while others focused on describing emotions with concise and hopeless language. The consistency, however, is found in the themes of nationalism and isolation that emerge time and time again throughout accounts of all three waves of the émigré experience.
The preservation of national identity emerged …show more content…
(KF) and Bunin’s V Parizhe (VP) are two stories which exhibit a concern among émigrés for the way in which the Russian language, their very means of communication, is being altered in their lives abroad. The notion is ingrained in the very title of Teffi’s 1920 prose. Beyond serving as private joke among Russians in France, the title is a bittersweet acknowledgement of the rhetorical nature of the question: there is nothing to do. V Parizhe, on the other hand, demonstrates a much more systematic integration of other languages, primarily of French, into the émigré speech pattern. Prior to meeting his lover, for instance, Nikolai Platonovich ‘съел сандвич,’ and, ‘остановил шофера и вышел… на тротуар.’ Indeed French vocabulary had been part of Russian as early as the 18th century, so the effect is not unsettling in because it is unfamiliar per se. Rather, as one is displaced from the country of their native tongue, this phenomenon is alienating rather than it is new; not only does the émigré lose his country, but his language is sacrificed too. French phrases and vocabulary generally have negative connotations in the story, demonstrated by Platonovich’s declaration that, ‘qui se marie par amour a bonne nuits et mauvais jours.’ Those who are familiar with the French language will take note of the broken nature of this statement, achieved by the omission of article ‘de’. Otherwise, leaving the phrases in French (as opposed to translating/paraphrasing into Russian) renders them incongruent with the character speech and therefore undermines their importance in favour of the main language. The underlying issue here could also be a frustration with the mother tongue, as the speaker had no choice but to use another language to communicate concepts that cannot be communicated in Russian. Zinovii Zinik confirms this frustration as, ‘to write in Russian in England means to describe in Russian words things which only exist in English… what is meant in Russian by
The preservation of national identity emerged …show more content…
(KF) and Bunin’s V Parizhe (VP) are two stories which exhibit a concern among émigrés for the way in which the Russian language, their very means of communication, is being altered in their lives abroad. The notion is ingrained in the very title of Teffi’s 1920 prose. Beyond serving as private joke among Russians in France, the title is a bittersweet acknowledgement of the rhetorical nature of the question: there is nothing to do. V Parizhe, on the other hand, demonstrates a much more systematic integration of other languages, primarily of French, into the émigré speech pattern. Prior to meeting his lover, for instance, Nikolai Platonovich ‘съел сандвич,’ and, ‘остановил шофера и вышел… на тротуар.’ Indeed French vocabulary had been part of Russian as early as the 18th century, so the effect is not unsettling in because it is unfamiliar per se. Rather, as one is displaced from the country of their native tongue, this phenomenon is alienating rather than it is new; not only does the émigré lose his country, but his language is sacrificed too. French phrases and vocabulary generally have negative connotations in the story, demonstrated by Platonovich’s declaration that, ‘qui se marie par amour a bonne nuits et mauvais jours.’ Those who are familiar with the French language will take note of the broken nature of this statement, achieved by the omission of article ‘de’. Otherwise, leaving the phrases in French (as opposed to translating/paraphrasing into Russian) renders them incongruent with the character speech and therefore undermines their importance in favour of the main language. The underlying issue here could also be a frustration with the mother tongue, as the speaker had no choice but to use another language to communicate concepts that cannot be communicated in Russian. Zinovii Zinik confirms this frustration as, ‘to write in Russian in England means to describe in Russian words things which only exist in English… what is meant in Russian by