SVANETI IN MODERN UKRAINIAN TRAVEL LITERATURE: “LAND OF WOLVES” BY ALEKSEY BOBROVNIKOV

Abstract

Travelogue is a general term for travel literature, which has become quite common in modern studies. It is a parafiction, representing a syncretic genre and combining various types of texts – memoirs, diaries, essays, reports, notes, etc., that is, it’s on the border between fiction and non-fiction. Travelogue is characterized by the presence of a travel writer (the authors of travelogue are not necessarily writers: they can be of various professions – travelers, sailors, missionaries, politicians, diplomats, merchants, military personnel, historians, ethnologists, etc., however, the majority of them are writers), realism, historicity, chronology, development of the text in time (from the beginning to the end of the journey) and space (following the route).

The present article provides a brief overview of travelers and travel from ancient to the present day; travel in the Caucasus and Georgia is highlighted; a special place is devoted to the travel genre in modern Ukrainian literature and the representation of Georgia in it.

The perception of a stranger against one’s own background carries a strange/amazing connotation in some respects. Such is the travelogue of Aleksey Bobrovnikov, which we selected for our research: Крайности Грузии. В поисках сокровищ страны волков / Крайності Грузії. У пошуках скарбів країни вовків / Extremes of Georgia. In Search of Treasures of the Land of Wolves.  The book was first published in 2016 in Kharkov, Ukraine. The author is an ethnically Ukrainian Russian-speaking journalist, traveler, and documentary filmmaker who traveled around Georgia by bicycle and described its various regions. The publication of the book was met with great response in Ukraine, it was written that Bobrovnikov repeated what Dumas did 150 years ago; some critics assessed the book as an excellent ethnographic report.

A large part of the book is dedicated to a journey to Svaneti – the Land of Wolves. In it Bobrovnikov presents a very original hetero-image of this region. The author’s intention is the cultural romanticization-exoticization of Svaneti as a foreign/other. It is noteworthy that such a text, in which Svaneti is described artistically and ethnographically, is unlikely to be found not only in Modern Ukrainian literature, but also in the literatures of other European countries. This is a kind of unique text, which also deserves special interest and attention.

This book is also important to me because it has not been translated into Georgian, the excerpts in the article were translated by me. Meaning it is also interesting from the perspective of translation theory and practice.

Keywords: Georgia, Svaneti, Ukraine, Travelogue, Ethnoculture, Imagology, Comparative studies, Translation.