Self-portrait during the battle, with a picture gallery in the background (about Fyodor Glinka)

In this paper, we try to show that the magnus opus of Fyodor Glinka, his Letters of a Russian Officer (1809/1815-1816), when analyzed, is liable to add to our understanding of the archaists-innovators debate as formulated by Tynyanov. We approach the Glinka’s book on the genre level, as a combination of letters, journal and travel (military) notes. Our analysis of narrative and stylistic composition of the 8-volume work lays bare the drama of ‘war and peace’ and the collision between two civilizations in which a lot of Slavophile interrogations could be read. This proto-Slavophile position as well as a utopian free-masonic stance assure the ideological and philosophical coherence of the Glinka’s book, whereas its poetic wholeness is assured by an interplay of high, low and median styles, which the writer brilliantly exploits. Our analysis gives an opportunity to observe how the ancient genres of epigraphy and ekphrasis, revived in the 18th century, following the interest for travels and ruins, enter the book’s poetic system, and to note that Glinka treats these genres in a new way, turning away from the Karamzinist model.