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cles. Thus, Pomor folklore reflected basics of their self-identification, understanding of their place in the world.

Sami fairytales animated the environment, nature, space powers: the sun, the moon, the northern lights, stones, water. There lived bogatyrs (epic characters, heroes of folk Russian and Sami legends, defenders of motherland from its enemies) who were a personification of power and defenders of their people. Fairytales connected everyday reality and fantastic images. One of them said about a reindeer that ran up to the sun at dark night, rubbed against it with its velvet horns, chipped a piece of it and brought it to people.

§ 2. The North as the universal model of the world and the basement of Russian and Sami national characters

An important role in development of the Kola North literature belongs to writers of the XIX – early XX centuries – Maximov, Prishvin, Sluchevsky – who discovered the theme of Russian North in Russian literature and defined key images, models and mythologemes in its depiction. Their approaches coincided with the interest of the world literature at the turn of XIX–XX centuries in artistic image of the North, in particular that of the High North. Here we do not mean mutual influence of literatures but a birth of a common for all writers’ tradition to depict the North which assumed similarity of world models, systems of images and symbols, common approaches to depicting of a man living in the North. In this sense it is possible to speculate on the North image identity in literatures of different countries.

Russian, Norwegian, American writers reconstructed the image of the North as a sublime space in unbreakable unity of natural, spiritual, human and aesthetical origins. Birth of the High North image in the world literature is not accidental. Action in famous dramas by Ibsen and novels by Hamsun takes place in the Northern wilds. The writer who has discovered the poetic image of North in American literature was undoubtedly Jack London who published a collection of stories about Klondike in 1900–1912. Almost at the same time (in 1880–1900) in Russia a famous poet and traveler Konstantin Sluchevsky wrote

“Along the North-West of Russia” (Po Severo-Zapadu Rossii) and a cycle of his poems “Murmansk echoes” (Murmaskiye otgoloski). And in 1908 appeared a book of essays by Mikhail Prishvin “Following the magic kolobok” (Za volshebnym kolobkom) that was also written under the impression on the travel across the Kola Peninsula. Following the literature fashion, Prishvin collated works by Ibsen and Hamsun with what he had seen in the farthest border between Norway and Russian Lapland. Thus, at first, works by Russian writers followed the world trends and the problem of relations of a man, nature and civilization was to the fore.

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Ideology reasons were also similar: unlike tragic perception of the world of decadence, many writers aspired to find a world equal to heroic and positive origin of man. Perhaps, premonition of the world end prompted them to return to eternal origins of human being, to primordial origin which could only be preserved in the North.

In works by London, Prishvin, Sluchevsky the North is independently depicted in sublime and eternal images of space and time. They endow nature with aesthetics and symbolic sense, reproduce cycles of being, characterize the way of people’s life in the North and national culture features of northern peoples, render philosophical understanding of life and death. In all the works, a journey across the North is compared to antique “Odyssey” because human aspiration to discover new worlds is unstoppable.

Both Jack London and Mikhail Prishvin consider veracity and accuracy principally important in rendering of natural world. Northern stories of London have been published from 1900 till 1912, and travel to Alaska has taken place in 1896–97. They are written in a frank and factual way and notwithstanding of details, became the model of the Northern world. On the one hand, the writer reproduced precisely the geography of Alaska and Yukon, with its routes, settlements, the rivers and the lakes, and on the other hand, he represented the North as the universal world which had a lot in common with other Nordic countries.

There were boundless snow spaces, “the gloom of black December nights”, “foul wind”, “the sun on gold larches and aspens”, “breezy cold air” [London, 1986, 1992].

Michael Prishvin (1873–1954) – the remarkable Russian writer – has visited the Kola North, or so-called Russian Lapland, twice, in 1907 and in 1933. He passed through the Kola Peninsula, lived in the Lappish settlement in the tundra, fished with the Pomors. The North fascinated him, and in 1908 he published the book of stories and northern impressions “Following the Magic Kolobok”. The Kolobok – is an artful character of a Russian fairy tale, the round roll, which avoids and escapes from people and animals into the wood. This image isn’t casual for the author, who is led by some fantastic force towards mysterious adventures.

As well as Jack London does, the writer feels uniqueness, mysteriousness of the Northern Nature: “The bright transparency and silence”, “transparent easy weightless water, cold as ice”, “day not real, but crystal”, “mysterious sunny night”, “the sun sparkling too brightly, but cold and sharply” [Prishvin, 1984,

с. 148, 151, 161, 176, 215, 218–219]. The writer marks clearness of lines, freshness of paints, cold – almost cosmic – light of the northern world. Lyrical hero of Prishvin, as well as the hero of Sluchevsky, observes changes of natural forms, when vast spaces of rocks reminds the silent hardened ocean, and ocean looks like solid glass.

And this image of primordially pure and severe nature later appears in poems by Vladimir Semenov, Vladimir Smirnov, Victor Timofeev, in maritime

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stories by Boris Blinov thus continuing literature tradition in depiction of the North.

Precedence in creating of space mythology of the Kola North belongs, in our opinion, to a remarkable poet Konstantin Sluchevsky, who visited the Kola Peninsula in the XIX century and wrote a collection of poems “Murmansk echoes”.

A famous Russian poet Sluchevsky created the model of the mythological space of the Kola North in the collection of the poems “Murman’s echoes”. He was a nobleman who had got education in France and Germany, the Doctor of Philosophy. In 1885 he visited the Kola Peninsula on a cruiser “Zabiyaka” (“Squabbler”), the Tersky and the Murman’s coasts.

The poet was amazed at great scales of the northern space. He exclaims: “What a great sizes are there!” Habitual measurements are not suitable for the description of granite lumps which are erected by a great walls. He strengthened epithets, comparisons, includes archaic lexicon to transfer stately scope of sea depths, contrasts of day and night, heat and cold, stones and trees.

Sluchevsky finds a poetic image – a myth. In his imagination, the Kola North is a wild elementary world in which the Demiurge starts to search for prototypes and forms of the future Universe. As though the Founder was not assured yet of the intentions, He, playing weights and spaces, “gave to the rocks the shape of magic palaces, sent the form of persons to the reflections, threw midway the deformed layers, scattered shine on shallows and brilliant sea stones”. Sluchevsky couldn’t find an analogy seen on the Kola North in the previous impressions (travel across the Alps). He recognized that northern world is unique also, there is possible to compare it only with antique theogony, creating of the Universe. The heaps of rocks and stones have reminded him of the ancient epic, or a drama. The play of the whales looked as the fight of titans and giants. The majestic statics of granite rocks, the sky and the sea – as an eternal frame of life, movement of born and changing forms forced the poet to think of life and death.

According to Sluchevsky, the person living in the North is a part of a poetic myth. Sluchevsky studies a life circle of the Russian northerners and expresses the admiration of their energy and the creative work, especially of the beautiful cities on the shore of the cold see.

Sluchevsky asks a philosophical question: how does the Russian person succeed in survival in the conditions of icy winds and a terrible cold, on the edge of the world, “where the Lord has connected the border of the native land with the border of the Creation”. The answer is that the following: the person is cleared of vanity and vices of a civilization in the northern world, he is before the eyes of the God here, – where the God manifests himself in Nature выросшей на ней “пигмейки-сосенки” [Sluchevsky, 1984, p. 148, 151, 161, 176, 215, 218–219].

Sluchevsky creates the spiritual Universe, where the natural environment is shown as congenial to the God and the Man. The poet uses the concepts of

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theogony, antic drama and epic, fairy tale, life and death, the God and the Man, when he represents the image of the Kola North.

Thus, image of the North in the Kola land literature collates with ancient, antique and biblical origins of civilization and acquires philosophical understanding.

Mikhail Prishvin, independently on Sluchevsky, interprets time and space through myth and Bible images. The illusion and a reality mix up in his book, the author’s imagination draws the fantastic world: “Possibly such day was after the Flood, when water has only started to leave. The water fills all sinful earth… Our ark slides in silence. The feeling of unreality is born from the perception of the bright transparency and silence... The time of magic images in the country of the midnight sun approaches. What I see now – all is a dream. Animals have come out of woods, fishes from the water. Moon has leaned on a birch. Strings of kantele have rung out. Man has started singing. He sang affairs of times past, sang things creation…” The traveler feels that the time has stopped, and he comes back in the past. Lapps can’t name neither month, nor year. Only smile guilty. Don’t know. Time stops” [Prishvin, 1984, p. 219–220, 240].

Scale and characteristics of northern time and space give birth to basic philosophical and poetic images-symbols. The central symbol in the Northern stories of London is the image of the White Silence; it is congenial to the white nights in Prishvin’s book, one of the chapters names as “Sunni nights”. Time, Space, Temperature create the main image of London’s Northern stories – the White Silence. White Silence is a philosophical and poetical allegory of the Nature itself, God, Eternity, Destiny, Life, Death, Immortality: “Nature has many tricks wherewith she convince man of his finity, – the ceaseless flow of tides, the fury of the storm, the shock of the earth quake… – bat the most tremendous, the most stupefying of all is the passive phase of White Silence. All movement ceases, the sky clears, the heavens are as brass: the slightest whisper seems sacrilege the man becomes timid, affrighted at the sound of his voice… Strange thoughts arise unsummoned, and the mystery of all things strives for utterance. And a fear of death, of God, of the universe comes over him. It is not pleasant to be alone with painful thoughts in the White Silence”.

Bewitched by the white nights, the Prishvin creates a fantastic image of the Russian Lapland, where “unprecedented flowers, animals, birds are clever and kind”. Northern birches remind him of apple-trees, moss-grown stones – of gravestones. The sun which does not set in summer, destroys time, gives a filling of continuity of life. In the short term of a northern summer the Nature hurries all cycles of development up. Nature flourishes all the polar day and night long, the tireless sun breaks all the usual rhythms of human life, the author confuses day and night and feels “excessively emotional and tired”. The dead silence, emptiness, beauty of the Nature – all grieves the hero to think of great sense of human life. “If there was the huge person who would rise, has lit desert up, but we were weak insignificant lumps at the bottom of the rocks. And such

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longing was in the nature for the huge person!” Lapps – are the fantastic heroes of the mysterious northern world, “the tribe forgotten by the cultural world”. Prishvin spends a lot of time with them, repeats words of Lappish language, listens to legends, learns customs. The author is surprised, how these small, naive, fun-loving people live harmoniously under severe conditions of the North.

Man living in the North and conquering its spaces is one more generalized character concentrating mythological, natural, psychological and national sense.

Sergey Maximov in his book of essays “A Year in the North” (“God na Severe”) revealed basic features of Russian national character, personification of which he saw in Pomors and its origins in Pomors folklore. “The Russians are cheerful in pleasure, don’t fall into boredom. The depression breaks our people, but they have a lot of strength to be the great people”. As Maximov decides, the severe climate and biting cold can’t fight the Russians. The Russians in the North not so much struggle with the difficulties, but lead high-grade life, using all north treasures: fish, berries, animals, wood… He writes that in the North he meet especially healthy people because “pure sea air, a hard work, even the wine-glass of vodka drunk in time, strengthen forces and spirit of the Russian person” [Maximov, 1987, vol. 1, p. 36, 82–83, 111, 204, 211, 246].

Russian man in the North, as Maximov discerned him – free, industrious, fearless, patient, hospitable, healthy, able to joke, not broken down by misfortunes – personifies indeed best, idealized national character traits. Prishvin is in accord with him. However, the real northerners for Prishvin are the Pomors. The Pomors are considered as the essence of the Russian nation. “It is a unique corner of Russia known to me, where people are proud of the native land”. A Pomor writes a letter to an imperial official about life in the North: “Our region is rich, the best northern region because all northern riches aren’t touched”. The Pomors live with passion, risk fishing in the rough sea, work with enjoyment, fight to death.

Describing the Russian North, Prishvin unites real and fantastic lines. It is interesting to notice that fantastic and mystical images are caused by forms of the northern country, a palette of northern paints, dead silence, the white nights, and powerful rhythms of natural life. The Lapps keep the most ancient forms of life and legends. The Pomors for Prishvin are the embodiment of the national character and the basement of the Russian life

Discovering the subject of the North in world literature at the turn of XIX–XX centuries London, Prishvin and Sluchevsky created a whole artistic image of the Kola North connecting with the system of poetic symbols – concepts of space, time, nature, life, death… Living in the North forms national character and, undoubtedly, there are similar features between characters of Maximov and Prishvin and characters of Ibsen dramas and London stories. We note romanticism, bravery, sternness and rebel origin in the character of Brand, Per Gunt, Borkman, London’s gold diggers.

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§ 3. The Russian North, the national character and the October Revolution through the eyes of European writers: Nexø, Grieg, Jung

At the beginning of the XX century works about Russian High North by European authors appeared in regional literature. The view of western writers on Kola North and Russian man in the High North is the important subject in literature. It lets us consider main aspects of national identity as they are reflected in the mind of a man who belongs to another culture.

Revolution events of 1917 attracted western writers to the Kola Peninsula: Norwegian Nordal Grieg, Danish Martin Andersen Nexø, and German Franz Jung. They tried to reflect key events in the world history through Russian revolution interpretation, depict creation/birth of new life and understand national uniqueness of people who had high hope in tragic circumstances of post war world destruction. It is interesting that western writers, who visited the Kola North and Murmansk in the first half of XX century, saw people who possessed not only physical and spiritual health but also remarkably talented ones. Idealized, embellished image of Russian man is not common for western literature.

In 1922 a famous Danish writer Martin Andersen Nexø (1869–1954) was trying to reach the IV Komintern congress in Moscow via Murmansk and here, in the Kola Peninsula, he felt as if he was born again for the world. He was struck by high hopes of the people, not only Russian, in soon and better tomorrow amidst destruction and famine of the Civil War. Landlord who got used to good hotel amenities, he spends a night on the ground underneath “thin and loose hair of a dwarf birch”. In the morning he sees a town with log houses, without streets, a bay packed with semi-sunken ships, sheep, pigs, poorly dressed children, train coaches crowded by uncommonly friendly people of all nationalities: Tartars, Finns, Russians, Turks, Chinese… The writer observes in surprise how people of Murmansk play football, round dance, do exercises after work. He sees strong dapper bodies, firm muscles, and asks a question: “Where do they get from? Where are those skeletons with chattering bones put by the world press not only in famine regions of Russia but also all over it? Where is that suppressed and terrorized people?” Nexø compares his impressions on Russia those on Germany that survived revolution and war and there “people’s faces are grey, the people are skinny and their heads are hopelessly bowed because… day by day it is getting worse and worse”. The writer expected to find Russia in its collapse but “everyone is playing, laughing, dancing here: I cannot see anyone who is under the pressure of an invisible burden”. He assumes it is a feeling of freedom and belief in better tomorrow for which they work that gives vital powers to the people living in the North. Nexø compares European practicality and Russian spirituality. In his understanding, faith of Russians is similar to universal law of life that causes growth and makes all the being origins move. As for material progress, in Nexø’s opinion, it is not capable to give birth to anything new, and, hence, “the biggest thing we can do is to take our civilization to

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a cemetery by airplane” [Nexø, 1962, с. 292–300]. First impressions, the strongest ones, will be further corrected by complicated events in our history but the theme of “marvelous Murmansk” repeatedly appears in Nexø’s works.

Europeans, being rationalist by nature, were surprised with fantasies of Russians that they aspired to bring to life. A Norwegian writer Nordhal Grieg who visited Murmansk in 1930s paid attention that in a wooden uncompleted town two large buildings were in construction – a power station and a theatre (a Palace of Culture, to be more specific). In his essay “Theatre and Life” Grieg writes that “all the country is plunged for very lust of culture. New theatres are appearing all over. In town and villages Art will talk to people, immortal with live”. In early 1920s Russian man sees the genuine sense of revolution in acquiring of culture. For him culture is like widening his life horizons and contemplating of unapproachable beauty, like a source of his own growth. He will make his material living because he is used to labour and culture is a dream that came with revolution. Perhaps here, in the North, processes of growth and building a new life seemed especially impressive in the conditions of severe climate and primordial nature as a Russian man seemed full of physical power and strong spiritual energy, capable not only to survive but also to commit deeds.

An outstanding German writer, avant-gardist and revolutionary Franz Jung was in Murmansk on May, 1, 1920. Together with a fellow of his they entered a fishing vessel “Captain Schroder” and made the captain change the course and head for Murmansk because Germany communist party sent them to Moscow. The evening Jung spent in a Murmansk club, became for him an example of collectivism ideas and human brotherhood.

This is how he recollects it in his memoirs in 1961: “We arrived at Murmansk on May, 1, 1920. There was blizzard in the port. We, Appel, Knufgen and I spent the evening of May, 1 at a Russian club in Murmansk. Just some weeks before Murmansk had been liberated from the English occupants. There was no food neither for the red, nor for the white, nor for the militia, nor for the commissars, nor for the government’s guests. When leaving, the Englishmen had totally destroyed all the supplies warehouses. It was terribly cold; I can see Murmansk, as if now, a pack of miserable huts with some stone houses between them.

Seamen, port workers, peasants, loggers and people from the street, in one word a crowd of some hundreds of people was squeezed in a long shed. Russian people… There was no one who could speak with us. None of us knew a single Russian word. It was stuffy in the shed. The lighting was so poor that you could only see your nearest neighbor. And that was when the crowd started to sing.

They sang “International”, a song about the red coat of arms and many other songs. In intervals the commissars gave short speeches and moved on to the next song that lasted for several hours.

It became the greatest event in my life. That was what I had been searching for and aspiring to since I was a child: motherland, man’s motherland. Al-

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ways, whenever I encountered in a human nature turpitude, unconceivable anger, betrayal, i.e. in Russian people, I recalled that day, May, 1 in Murmansk and tried to regain inner balance” [Jung, 1961, с. 156]. In Jung’s memory endless, deserted and cold space joined with the choir power sang about the future that was beautiful and about people who all were brothers. Revolutionary pathos, poetic interpretation of the new world contributed to romantic depiction of a Russian man by European authors. In spite of this idealization, there were familiar traits of national character: love for freedom, patience, and optimism.

§ 4. The World War II in the Kola North as it is described in the fiction and the poetry of Russian and European writers.

Identity as the unity of human values

In 1940s war theme becomes the main one in the Kola North literature. It is important to note that war events characteristics, depiction of a man at war and national character preserve northern folklore traditions as well as Prishvin and Maximov Russian national identity ideas. The writers themselves were seamen and soldiers, frontline correspondents, both those who came from the Kola land (K. Bayov, A. Podstanitsky) and famous Soviet journalists, poets, writers (K. Simonov, V. Kaverin, V. Pikul, I. Ehrenburg). L.T. Panteleeva, a famous researcher into the Kola North literature remarks that “war time events defined the artistic form of literature works for that period: a lyrical poem and an impartial essay, a heroic ballad and a story, parody, fable, feuilleton, chastushka”. Literature is presented by many genres and it was created not only by travelers and journalists but also by defenders of Zapolyarye (the Kola land). They shared their destiny, life and death with native people of the Kola Peninsula. Writers told about seamen and soldiers deeds with a special emphasis on severe nature of the Kola North. They remembered peaceful life and at this point the theme of love and faithfulness becomes the main theme.

Alexander Podstanitsky (1920–1942), a journalist, pilot who died at the age of 20 fighting the fascists, became a genuine poet and brave warrior. In his poems “Murmansk in the evening” (“Murmansk vecherom”), “On-the-road song” (“Podorozhnaya”), “A birth of a song” (“Rozhdenie Pesni”), “To tell”

(“Rasskazat”) one can recognize images of Murmansk and dear home (high tide of the moorages, beautiful icebreakers, trains leaving for Leningrad) northern nature (newly fallen snow, blue ice, traces of reindeer team), loving and faithful beloved and war (an air fight with fritzes, courageous Messerschmitt ram attack).

The image of the Kola North in its traditional dimension (severe land, courageous people) also appears in Konstantin Simonov’s works about war

(1915–1979). In 1972 he purposefully collects poems, essays, stories written in different years and related to his trips to Zapolyarie (The Kola Land) to be pub-

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lished in Murmansk in his book “Murmansk Direction” (“Murmanskoe

Napravlenie”). Simonov would write: “I have loved for a long time this severe and beautiful land where live brave people accustomed to fighting difficulties.

And I believe that readers of this book will feel permanency of this love” [Simonov, 1975, p. 5]. Stories written in war time and about war take a central place in his book, when Simonov travelled to the North as a war correspondent of the “Red Star” newspaper and went on reconnaissance, took part in marching of the Severomorsk troops. The main themes of his wartime poems were bravery of a Russian soldier during the war and a tragic death of the best and the strongest. (In his poems: “The Artillerist son”, “The Death of the Friend”, “The Voice of the Far-away Sons”) Simonov put special emphasis on severe climate conditions in which a soldier defends his motherland: “A May day in Zapolyarie. Rocky shoreline tundra buried in snow, the mountains are rising from all over like a crowd of white caps… The troops are advancing, the staff is moving forward… There are many places unreachable by car and where horses fall into snow”. Even the theme of love for a woman is inseparable from the northern landscape (A town with winds since the morning, and rain the evening… All this town is like a portrait of yours, “You have walked with me on icy stones [Ibid, p. 40, 45]. There was one more topic related to war that united Russian, Scottish and New Zealand writers (V. Pikul, A. McLean, D. Glover) – deed of seamen who participated in arctic military convoys. The writers had common understanding and depiction of war and a man at war and each of them was a convoy participant.

Valentine Pikul (1928–1990) finished a school for sea cadets on Solovetsky islands and became a condition station commander at the battleship

“Grozny” that convoyed English and American caravans with weapons bound to Murmansk. Pikul is the author of the famous novel “A Requiem for PQ-17 Caravan”.

Alistair Stuart MacLean (1922–1987), an outstanding Scottish writer, marine painter, author of “H.M.S. Ulysses” novel was a torpedo man on convoy ships. Denis Glover (1912–1980), a famous New Zealand poet was an arctic convoy officer and was granted both English and Soviet awards. He included his tragic war experience in his collection of poems “The Wind and the Sand: Poems 1934–44” and in his poem “Murmansk or Never”.

Pikul and MacLean novels are united by true-to-life narration about a caravan that was left without any protection by the British Admiralty and sank between “Murmansk and Svalbard”. In his “Requiem” Pikul builds up an almost documentary narration, giving a minute-by-minute account of the tragedy time and seamen heroic deed. He includes captain’s records, ship documents, witnesses and historians’ evidence, and his characters – real seamen and ships – are alive for him. Emotional narration becomes an antithesis to impartial documents: “Even prostrated and broken, through explosions of torpedoes and bombs, through gloating bragging of Gebbels, through infernal heat of fires,

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gulping with water and fuel oil, frost bitten and burnt, PQ-17 caravan is however coming to us!” [Pikul, 2004, p. 135].

MacLean’s novel describes in bright colours the severest conditions that an English convoy had to endure during its winter journey. With heavy feelings the author narrates about the death of each ship and seamen heroism without forgetting to mention important details and fixing the time minute-by-minute. These books are also united by poetic intonation that makes the reader feel solemnity of the situation, grandiosity of the deed, the highest sense of every lost life. Endlessness and silence of the ocean, the titanic battle in its waters resemble “Iliad” by Homer.

In the both novels the musical grand finale finishes the death theme. It is the minute of silence which transforms tragedy into the legend. This is the description of seamen who escaped from bombs but have frozen in the conditions of extreme north.

Alistair Stuart MacLean:

“The Adventure was torpedoed just before sunset. Three-quarters of the ship’s company escaped in lifeboats along with twenty survivors picked up from the Planters. A month later the frigat Esher found them, in three lifeboats tied line ahead, off the bitter, iron coast of the Bear Island, heading steadily north. The Captain, alert and upright, was still sitting in the stern-sheets, empty eyesockets scarching for some lost horizon, a withered claw locked to the tiller. The rest were sitting or lying about the boats, one actually standing, his arm cradled around the mast, and all with shrunken sun-blackened lips drawn back in the hideous mirth. The log-book lay beside the Captain, empty: all had frozen to death on the first night… The Barrier is the region of the great silence, the seas of incredible peace, so peaceful, so calm, so cold that they may be there yet, the dead who cannot rest” [Maclean A.S. “H. M. S. Ulysses” URL: http://www. e-reading.org.ua].

Last pages of the Pikul’s novel – is a requiem to the lost ships, sounding already in eternity: “The Ships, as well as people, died differently… Others met death in solemn silence, only then the long ominous rumble was heard from under the water, there were the heated boilers which have not sustained the embraces of a cold blew up. Other ships plaintively groaned by sirens, their metallic constructions collapsed with a roar; the pulled down ships shifted in the sky their masts – as the hands for agonal handshake. And then the ships buried in abyss with a roar, almost furiously having sparkled with “eyes” – the glasses of the cabins… Drowned ships of PQ-17 have emerged on a surface right after the war; shades of the ships as the phantoms have begun to hesitate on horizon, without going to the communication, without knocking by cars… Caravan

PQ-17 wanders at ocean among freakish icebergs, the dead ships slowly drift on the black water” [Pikul, 2004, с. 153]. We notice brevity, almost asceticism of MacLean and Pikul images, their emotional power and picturesque expressiveness. The metaphor of the ship and its command, doomed to eternal wanderings

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