Discussion
In this talk, I will focus on the literary representations of the forest in the stories of Tolstoy and of the nineteenth-century North Caucasian writer Adil-Girey Keshev. As Bruce Grant demonstrates in
The Captive and the Gift, the forest is integral to the North Caucasian style of warfare, based on raiding, captive-taking, and clandestine operations rather than combat in an open field. In turn, the dense Caucasian forests become a space of protection and a means of escape for the fighters of the North Caucasus. For the Russian forces, the forests represent an impenetrable, dangerous space conducive to an utterly foreign style of combat. It is in the liminal space at the edges of the forest that literary encounters occur between Imperial Russian soldiers and the North Caucasian fighters. The forest becomes a place of danger, protection, encounter, and, most importantly, retreat.
Through a comparative examination of the Russian literary perspective found in Tolstoy’s “The Raid” and “The Woodfelling,” alongside the native North Caucasian perspective in Keshev’s The Abreks, I will demonstrate that the literary space of the forest functions as an examination of conflicting ideas of honour. In particular, I ask, in the conquest of the Caucasus – a historical period of unprecedented and unrelenting violence – how do the respective sides conceive of the possibility of honour?
