World literature in the interim of cultures: about the Russian edition of Letters from Turkey by Kelemen Mikes

Abstract

The article provides a detailed critical review of the Russian-language commented scientific publication of Letters from Turkey by Keleman Mikes, an outstanding monument of Hungarian narrative prose of the 18th century. The text is analyzed in terms of the currently relevant category ‘world literature.’ In the course of the analysis, three important points of association of Letters from Turkey with world literature are revealed. These are namely firstly, a high degree of internationality of ideas, plots and motifs presented in this work in the form of obvious and hidden quotations; secondly, the way in which the author designs his own writer’s identity; thirdly, the specific sharpness and depth of cross-cultural and cross-confessional analysis of the Islamic context and the particular multicultural “interim” (in contact with the Turkish, Armenian, Jewish, and Greek cultures), in which the author as a European-educated Hungarian Christian intellectual lived for several decades. Highlighting some of the shortcomings of the scientific apparatus of the publication, the author notes the high level of philological culture inherent in the book as a whole. In the course of comparing the Khotyn episode of Letters by Mikes with Ode on the Taking of Khotin from the Turks by Mikhail Lomonosov, it was concluded that the literary tasks of the two authors, who were contemporaries, are opposites. Lomonosov creates an outstanding monument of national literature from the elements of world literature; on the contrary, Mikes elevates the Hungarian national prose to the level of world literature.