Русофония постсоветского травелога: медиальная поэтика Петра Вайля и Александра Гениса

The article examines aspects of mediality in the relationship between Russophonia and travelogues in the works of the contemporary Russophone writers Alexander Genis and Peter Vail. Both emigrated from the Soviet Union to the US and have been active in various media, including radio and television, not only literature. Both leave postmodernity and the notion of a national language and culture behind. Instead, their travel sketches explore aesthetic as well as entertaining formats, continuing the dialogue with literature but also merging it with other media. Their primary reference system for the Russian language provides stability with intermedial and plurimedial effects. “Mediality” denotes the interplay of several media in the communication process with the audience.

First, the article looks at their co-authored book Amerikana (1991), in which they describe American everyday culture by way of a subtle comparison to Soviet life. Next, it examines Vail’s Slovo v puti (2010), focusing on his intertextual sketch “Armenia,” which reproduces the idea of eclectic time layers. Finally, the analysis shifts to the phenomenology of slow movement through cities, villages and nature in Genis’s Strannik (2011).

Genis’s and Vail’s travel sketches connect the US, Europe and Russia, and also their different medial perceptions of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. They preserve the Russian language as a reliable lingua franca used by émigrés of all nationalities from the former Soviet Union. By suggesting an anachronistic subject determined by biography, history, hedonism and desire for knowledge, documentary literature departs from the post-Soviet aphasia (S. Oushakine), which described society after the shockwaves around 1991. Digital formats seem ideal for a globally interactive Russophonia as well as for the highly intermedial genre of autobiographical travelogue. Nevertheless, both authors avoid digital media.