Space, travel, and transfiguration, the story by Olga Rozhneva “Wormwood of wanderings”

The fictional travelogue is based on a document, like most genres of Orthodox Christian fiction. The personal growth of a traveler hero is a hallmark of this genre today. The story by Olga Rozhneva “Wormwood of wanderings” (2018) is an odyssey, a story of long forced wanderings with cruel vicissitudes. The documentary basis of the plot is the life of M.G. Dubrovsky, married von Luelsdorf, told by herself. The story lies in the tradition of the prose by Jules Verne. It has a scientific and cognitive value, based on descriptions of nature, history and life of various countries, draws a person to interact with natural ambience. Among the sources of information were the memoirs of Russian emigrants, letters, historical references, fragments from the poems of poets of Russian Harbin as evidence of events perceived by their own eyes. Historical descriptions were the elements of a picture of the world. Some of it is associated with good, mercy, creation, and some also with immense cruelty and destruction. The stylistic ground of the narrative was formed by the improperly direct speech of the heroine, supplemented with the voices of relatives or strangers. This opened a wide panorama of emotional and moral assessments. The story goes to the first person when the heroine’s soul begins to transform under the influence of St. John (Maximovich) in order to reject hatred as a source of psychic evil. Saint’s voice sounds in dialogues, in retelling of heroes, and testimonies for living. The sound of this or that voice speaks of the state of mind of the heroes, characterizing the situation in different planes from the point of view of immediate participants. The substantial conflict between good and evil lies at the core of the plot, when the formation of each hero’s personal mind goes. The travelogue allows us to prove that the highest achievements of the spirit, as well as the lowest degradations of it, are the real content of everyday life. Thus, the human spirit appears to be free mind, independent of circumstances