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Vicomte Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé, ein Diplomat im zaristischen Russland, verglich das Land und seine Menschen im „Russischen Roman“ (1886) mit der traditionellen Okroschka: „Alles existiert in dieser Suppe, sowohl die leckeren als auch die abscheulichen Dinge. Sie wissen niemals, was Sie daraus herauslöffeln werden.“ Mit der russischen Seele, so der frühe Russen-Versteher, sei es ganz ähnlich: vieles durchmischt, die Mystik und die Vernunft, das Alles und das Nichts.
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After all, it was in fact a Frenchman who coined the phrase “Russian soul.” In his The Russian Novel (1886), Vicomte EugèneMelchior de Vogüé, a diplomat in czarist Russia, compared the country and its people to the traditional okroshka: “Everything exists in this soup, both the delicious and the disgusting. You never know what you’ll be spooning out of it next.” The situation was very much the same with the Russian soul, opined de Vogüé, who described them as a mix of so much, mysticism and common sense, everything and nothing – and, one might imagine, melancholy! We still have a third voice to hear, a more modern one. Asked whether the Russians were an unhappy nation, author Alina Bronsky, who was born in 1978, replied: “Yes, they are suspected of being melancholy. That suspicion is expressed in Russian art and literature. But like all other people, the Russians are well acquainted with the entire spectrum of human emotions.” So is the “Russian soul” just a blanket term? “When talking about mentalities, we have to be open to diversity and nuances,” says Bronsky, “and an altogether mystical/religious word like “soul” is in my view somewhat misplaced here since it posits human idiosyncrasies as inherent and virtually impossible to change.”
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