Vyshcheslavtsev, A.V.: Essays in Pen and Pencil from a Journey around the World in 1857-1860

Title

Ocherki perom i karandashom iz krugosvetnogo plavaniia v 1857-1860 gg., Sankt-Peterburg 1862

Essays in Pen and Pencil from a Journey around the World in 1857-1860

Keywords

Summary

The book is divided into 9 chapters: The Atlantic Ocean, From the Cape of Good Hope, The Malaysian Sea, Hong Kong, From Vladimir’s Bay to Amur, From Edo, The Pacific Ocean, From Tahiti to Buenos Aires, Brazil and the Journey Back Home. Written in an engaging style, which drew parallels to Ivan Goncharov’s Frigate Pallada soon after its publication, the book provided the readers with a mixture of exotic adventures, ethnographic and natural descriptions. South Africa is marked as an alien place: “It’s a completely different world, it’s almost as if I moved to the Moon. I hear of lions, elephants and tigers, but our fearsome beasts, like wolves and bears, do not exist here; I see black, brown and variously coloured people; in the shops there are ostrich feathers and various unseen things”. The second chapter offers a mixture of travel anecdotes and descriptions of the local inhabitants, i.e. “Malaysians”, “Negros”, “Hottentots”, “Bushmen”, “Caffres” and others. The whole book is illustrated with lithographs made by students of the Imperial Academy of Arts (I. Shishkin, V. Vereshchagin, A. Gine, P. Dzhogin), from drawings by Vyshcheslavtsev.

Bio

Aleksei Vyshcheslavtsev was a Russian doctor, traveller and writer. After graduating from the Faculty of Medicine of Moscow University, he was dispatched near Sevastopol to serve as a doctor during the Crimean war. He recounted his experience in a number of articles published by the journals “Sovremennik” and “Russkij vestnik”. Between 1857 and 1860 he embarked upon a journey around the world serving as the ship’s doctor on the clipper “Plastun”. He documented this journey through essays published by “Russkij vestnik” (later reworked and extended in a separate edition), as well as through numerous drawings. When he returned to Russia, he served as a peace mediator in the Tambov district. An art lover, he wrote several books on art history and Italian painting (Giotto, Raphael).

Sources

“Vyshcheslavtsev (Aleksei Vladimirovich)”, in Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ Brokgauza i Efrona, t. VIIa, Sankt-Peterburg 1892, p. 587;

S. Ivleva, “Ocherki perom i karandashom iz krugosvetnogo plavaniia v 1857-1860-kh godakh” Alekseia Vyshcheslavtseva v Rossii i v Danii (k istorii illiustrirovannogo izdaniia 1860-kh gg.), in Sankt-Peterburg i strany Severnoi Evropy. Materialy piatoi ezhegodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, ed. by V. Baryshnikova, S. Trokhacheva, Sankt-Peterburg 2004, p. 326-333;

B. Gorelik (ed. by), “An Entirely Different World”: Russian Visitors to the Cape. 1797-1870, Cape Town 2015, p. 111-135.

A.F.

Gallery