Gorodetskii, V.V.: In the African Jungle. A Hunter’s Diary

Title

V dzhungliakh Afriki. Dnevnik okhotnika, Kiev 1914

In the African Jungle. A Hunter’s Diary

Keywords

Summary

The book is a recollection of Gorodetskii’s travel to British East Africa, which lasted approximately three and a half months, from the end of 1911 to the end of February 1912. In the preface, the author states the influence of famous Western colonial writers, such as Jules Verne and Thomas Mayne Reid, whom he read as a child. Africa remains, for him, “an extremely rich country, untouched by culture”, “a fairy-tale” country. Although Gorodetskii devotes the majority of the chapters to the safari in which he took part, described in details along with the various animals encountered and killed, he also makes precise observations on the local peoples and their customs. His account is accompanied by 114 photographs and drawings both of animals and people, and two maps that show the itinerary of the safari.

Bio

Born in Podolia, Gorodetskii studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg and later moved to Kiev (1890), where he lived and worked as a renowned architect for thirty years. A passionate traveller and hunter, he took part in many hunting expeditions both in Russia (Siberia, the Caucasus) and abroad (Tibet, Mongolia, Africa). It was for this reason that he went to British East Africa in 1911-1912, and later recollected his experience in a memoir published in 1914. In 1920 he moved to Poland, where he continued to work until his death (occurred in Tehran, where he was temporarily stationed). He is considered one of the main architects of the city of Kyiv, being responsible, among other things, for the so-called House of Chimaeras. From his travels he brought back not only a significant collection of photographs, but also trophies.

Sources

M. Zabrodskaia, Russkie puteshestvenniki po Afrike, Moskva 1955;

D. Sosnowska, Beyond the Limits – eccentric H., in Architect and their Societies. Cultural Study on the Habsburg-Slavic Area (1861-1938), ed. by A. Kobylińska, M. Falski, Warszawa 2021, p. 211-236.

A.F.

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