The article examines the realization of traditional for travelogue opposition of self and the other in the novel Description of the city by Dmitry Danilov published in 2012. The name of the city is not given directly but is hidden behind a variety of riddles offered to the readers. The author creates the universal space of a provincial city and raises question of finding the identity and one’s own place, exploring space and feeling it as “one’s own”. Description of the city is a city text in its ‘pure’ form, as the city itself remains unnamed. It contains the description of typical city locations that can be found anywhere (Ice palace, shops, apartment blocks, hotels, bus stops). The spatial solution of the traveler’s movement resembles the slow movement across the map with careful fixation of the visited points, where the city is perceived as a stubborn opponent. The multitude of riddles repeated in almost every paragraph reinforces the impression of futility of the traveler’s efforts. The city is not an integral part of a complex “other”, but is quite independent and equal in importance to the traveler.
travelogue; Russian literature; image of a city; literary space of the text; modern literature