DOI: https://doi.org/10.34680/urbis-2023-3(2)-242-258
The Image of the City by Pavel Shpilevsky and Władysław Syrokomla: Verbal vs visual
Olga Bazhenova
Belarusian State University, Minsk, Belarus
ORCID: 0000-0002-5683-4448
ABSTRACT
The article deals with the famous works of two natives of Belarus in the middle of the 19th century, Władysław Syrokomla and Pavel Shpilevsky. Their books are among the first historical and ethnographic works about Belarus. The purpose of this study is to compare literary descriptions with visual representations in the works of modern writers, graphic artists K. Rusetsky, M. Yanushevich, an unknown artist named Shklevik, and another anonymous master. The works performed at the early 19th century by J. Peszka and the last third of the 19th century by N. Orda can only serve to expand the illustrative series of the article, since the emphasis will be on the chronotopic simultaneity of verbal and visual in the display of Belarusian culture in the middle of the 19th century. In the texts of these authors, sublime, romantic poetics associated with native places is born, and the image of the city turns out to be a space filled with meanings combining nostalgia for the historical past and modernity, which the authors noted previously unnoticed and previously misunderstood, for example, folk peasant culture, and elements of progress, for example, the growth of educational institutions and industrial factory buildings in small towns. At the same time, they are interested in artifacts corresponding to the greatness of the lands in the categories of Enlightenment culture and its distant ancestor – Renaissance culture. The writers adhere to the concept of the emergence of art and culture in the bosom of ancient times and traditions, therefore they look for significant manifestations of this past in the historical memory of the people, and in fact, discover folk culture, peasant folklore, and ethnography. It is well known that Syrokomla collected materials for the book in the Radziwill archives, which even then had the status of a general historical collection of documents of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The completion of the search for the ancient background in the culture of Belarus was the book Wilija i jej brzegi by K. P. Tyszkiewicz, Count of Lahoysk. His diary of expeditions along the Viliya River was published in Dresden in the 1880s, almost 30 years after the described travels. The books of Syrokomla and Shpilevsky are the forerunners of this scientific work. The graphics of the artists contemporary to these writers do not correspond to the romance of the verbal descriptions of Syrokomla and Shpilevsky. The images of cities in graphic sheets are given with documentary accuracy of landscape veduta and are very far from the romantic flair of verbal descriptions of the same places. For visual memory, an accurate, almost photographic snapshot of the image is important. Despite the difference in verbal and visual representations of Belarus in the middle of the 19th century, literature and art turned out to be complementary languages. The texts of writers and the works of graphic artists, in general, contribute to the discovery and isolation of the culture of Belarus in the Russian cultural space, show the beginning of the formation of the local pantheon of revered figures of science and art and build the main stages of the development of the history of the Belarusian land.
KEYWORDS: verbal, visual, engravings, Syrokomla, Shpilevsky, Lahoysk, Nesvizh
References
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Information about the author
Olga D. Bazhenova
Dr. Sci (Art History), Professor
Professor at the Department of Art
and Environment Design
Belarusian State University
96, Mayakovskogo St., Minsk, 220006, Belarus
ORCID: 0000-0002-5683-4448
e-mail: [email protected]
For citation:
Bazhenova, O. D. (2023). The image of the city by Pavel Shpilevsky and Władysław Syrokomla: Verbal vs visual. Urbis et Orbis. Microhistory and Semiotics of the City, 3(2), 242–258. https://doi.org/10.34680/urbis-2023-3(2)-242-258
