Letter from (the Myth of) Saint Petersburg

Extract

In modern Russia, Petersburg has been the text in which intellectuals have sought to read the past as an index to the future. The city has functioned in their imaginations as more than a mere city: it has been a mythopoeic space.

—Katerina Clark, Petersburg: Crucible of Cultural Revolution

Petersburg has not yet been treated, however, as I propose to do, in terms of a cultural network that cannot be reduced to a single textual structure, as a body of texts that collectively provides a structural analogue for the material city, and not merely an artistic refraction of it.

—Julie A. Buckler, Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape

AS I WALKED DOWN ULITSA RUBINSTEINA ONE MORNING, A DECREPIT DOOR OPENED, AND A PORTLY MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN STUCK HERSELF out halfway, as if unwilling to make a commitment to the outside world. She held a tray full of cigarette butts, wrappers, and other garbage. She quickly turned it upside down, dumping everything onto the sidewalk, and disappeared inside.