“Step to the heart of Russia”: R.M. Rilke and L. Andreas-Salome in Nizovka

The article considers the visit of R.M. Rilke and L. Andreas-Salome to the peasant poet S.D. Drozhzhin in the Tver village Nizovka (1900). Complex analysis of personal documents (Rilke’s letters, Andreas-Salome’s diary, Drozhzhin’s memories) allows to state that although familiarity with Drozhzhin was a reason for the trip, but really travelers studied the culture of the Upper Volga’s province represented in different social and psychological types. Nizovka has been understood by travelers as the ultimate expression of Russianness, “the heart of Russia”, which became the basis for its mythologizing, granting the status of Russian paradise.

S.D. Drozhzhin, R.M. Rilke, L. Andreas-Salome, Russian province, Russian idea, poetic paradise