Jerusalem–Petersburg: The Territory of Freedom in Russian–Israeli Literature

It is not easy to imagine contemporary literature without an urban text. Cities have long ceased to be a background for a plot and have themselves become a plot - a metaphysical, cultural, mythical space in which knowledge about the secrets of life is revealed (or hidden). In Russian-Israeli literature, the topos of the city occupies a pivotal position since semantic themes and elements that excite Russian-Israeli writers are manifested through urban mythopoetics. Jerusalem, on this map of the convergence of the mythical and the real, as it should be, takes center stage. At the same time, because several Russian-Israeli authors are natives of Leningrad or closely connected with this northern city (D. Sobolev, L. Levinzon), Jerusalem in their texts loses its usual architecture, landscape, geography, and history in order to appear as an urban androgyne. This super-city unites the features of St. Petersburg and Jerusalem, creating a joint territory of the impossible. The kabbalistic combination of the discourses of the two cities, their alchemical marriage, forms a particular system of signs, which mixes fairy tale and reality, myth and history, past and present, everywhere and nowhere. Jerusalem-Peterburg is a labyrinth city, a network city. Russian-Israeli writers send their characters to this city to search of something unthinkable, marvelous, elusive, impossible. Through this search, they find an understanding of the essence of being, reality, freedom.

In this lecture, we will try to understand and reveal the sources of the Jerusalem-Petersburg topos, define its symbolism, and name its main functions in Russian-Israeli literature using examples from the works of Dennis Sobolev and a number of other authors.