Selma Lagerlöf ’s travelogue on Russia: fairy tale, revelation or propaganda?

Abstract

Speeches constitute unique and poorly studied part of Selma Lagerlöf´s legacy. The article analyzes the speech delivered at the ceremonial meeting of the Swedish Academy on December 20, 1926, where Lagerlöf chose to talk about her experiences during the journey to Saint Petersburg and Moscow, which she had made in 1912 accompanied by a close friend of hers Valborg Olander. The publication of the speech in a major Swedish newspaper “Dagens Nyheter” omitted a larger part of the speech’s text, namely the very description of the trip to Russia, leaving space for the political message only, which followed in the second half. The only unabridged version of the speech was published in 1945. The latest publication of the speech in Sweden is dated 2016 and received mixed reviews, as Selma Lagerlöf ’s characterization of Russia in it borders to some extent on propaganda. Selma Lagerlöf renders her impressions of her visit to both Saint Petersburg and Moscow and her encounters with Russian people, culture, art, theatre, and religiosity, as well as with social and political conditions. Among these impressions a key role is given to the visit to Tretyakov Gallery, where she got mesmerized by one of the paintings, namely by Ilya Repins “Ivan the Terrible and his Son Ivan on November 16th, 1581”. This stark impression allowed her to shape the speech’s rhetoric as a revelation while herself trying on a role that of a seeress. The article though studies Lagerlöf ’s speech about Russia primarily as a literary work: in terms of composition, artistic techniques and images. Like anything else Selma Lagerlöf wrote, her address to the Swedish Academy members follows a thoroughly planned narrative idea. To reach her thesis Lagerlöf makes use of a variety of tropes, such as metaphor, allegory, parable and ekphrasis.