Neo-Russian style of “estate” texts by Nikolai Rusov and Vera Zhukovskaya

Abstract

Nikolai Rusov and Vera Zhukovskaya, despite their talents and education, seemed doomed to margins of life and literature (Rusov illegitimate descendant of princes family Urusov, and Zhukovskaya, alias Mikulina-Podrevsky, in her youth, represented under the uncle’s name, Nikolai Egorovich Zhukovsky was the famous “father” of the Russian aviation, and then, perhaps, secretly became his daughter-in-law). DOI: 10.22455/978-5-9208-0627-7-92-103 93 On the one hand, it is this shaky position of the authors that makes their “estate” texts unsteady, irreal. But, on the other hand, it is the Art Nouveau style, which dominated at the beginning of the XX century, precisely during the period of Rusov and Zhukovskaya’s creativity, being dispelled in art in general, including hitherto unshakable architecture, everyday in the existential, and sometimes in the illusory. The native estate loses its former reliability, but takes on a dreaming dimension, where it is possible to merge water and fire, night and morning, western and eastern, holy and demonic. In this image of the estate, one cannot fail to see the main signs of the neo-Russian style, which was one of the reflections of the modern.