Dust and Stone: Caucasian Sketches in Lermontov, Mandelstam and Grossman

This essay deals with the literary production of three great Russian writers who travelled in the Caucasus, namely Mikhail Lermontov (1814-41), Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938) and Vasily Grossman (1905-64). Lermontov travelled in the Caucasus twice when he was a child (in 1820 and 1825), before serving there in 1837 and 1840. Mandelstam was in Armenia and Georgia in 1930 together with his wife Nadezhda. Grossman’s journey in Armenia lasted only two months in 1961. In particular, I will consider Lermontov’s poems set in the Caucasus, alongside his novel Герой нашего времени [A Hero of Our Time, 1840], Mandelstam’s prose Путешествие в Армению [Journey to Armenia, 1933] and Grossman's Добро вам! [An Armenian Sketchbook, 1965], the latter two being written after the writers’ journeys. My analysis concentrates on the occurrences of two extensively used words, пыль [dust] and камень [stone]. Apart from the factual description of the Caucasus, which is actually dusty and stony, these two antithetical but chthonic elements acquire symbolic overtones of meaning in the Russian literary production. In Lermontov dust is a southern and exotic element, connoted geographically in contrast to the Russian northern frost and mud. The Caucasian stone in Mandelstam overtly refers to Armenian churches, fields, gardens and its language, which are described as stony cakes, teeth, baskets and boots respectively. Such unusual collocations and use of concrete images must be read in the light of Acmeism. Grossman’s Armenia is carved in stone. Not only its landscape, but also its animal inhabitants and human faces are made of stone. However, in Grossman the stone is not just a creating element; it is ancient and therefore the incarnation of time, its memory: the same memory of genocide shared both by the Armenian stony people and by the Jews who turned into dust, Grossman’s people.