The concept of ‘home’ in the essays by F. Salten ‘New people in the old land’

The subject of research is the ethnospecific concept of ‘home’ in the essays of the Austrian writer of Jewish origin Felix Salten New People in the Old Land. The writer’s spiritual quest, embodied in the reflections of the narrator-traveler observing the developing Palestine of the early 20th century, is found in many novels and short stories written by him. It was the conviction of the importance of building a new house on the old land that gave rise to Salton’s further search for a way to create a ‘universal world’ on the pages of literary works. The purpose of the article is to identify the place of the concept of ‘home’ in Salten’s concept sphere and to define what it means to the author himself. The research methods rely on the principles of the relational-realistic paradigm of methodology, indicating the features of the concept’s implementation in the text. Salten creates a complex ambivalent concept, the content of which reflects doubts and the problem of self-identification of the writer himself. The article shows the connection between the historical changes of the critical borderline period and the artistic system of F. Salten’s essays. For Salten the concept of ‘home’ is, first of all, a utopian space of Eden, the hope of finding a lost paradise. ‘Home’ is also an object of creation - long patience and hard work in the desert lands of Palestine. At the same time, this is a utopia of saving civilization as a whole because finding a home is closely related to the pacifist idea of human unity.