Slavophile Elements in Andreï Makine’s Prose
Slavophile Elements in Andreï Makine’s Prose

Summary/Abstract: This paper aims to analyze theinfluence of the 19th-century Slavophile ideaslike samobytnost (originality, uniqueness, distinctiveness) or sobornost (a common spiritual bond uniting members of a community) on Andreï Makine’s novels The Life of an Unknown Man and The Woman Who Waited. Although he has lived in France since 1987 and writes exclusively in French, mainly for a French readership, Russia remains one of his great obsessions, which he poetically transfigures, in a Dostoyevskyan manner, intoa world of both ugliness and beauty. Beyondthe sordid and unbearable social reality, Makine suggests that there is a profound, authentic Russia, not in Moscow and St. Petersburg, butin the secluded and forgotten villages, where people like Vera and Volski, the main characters of the two novels, live organically in peaceful communities, keeping intact traditional Russian spiritual values.

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