The Russian at a Rendez-Vous with European (Love Plot as a Metonymy
of Intercultural Dialog)

The article considers one of the invariant plots in 19th-century Russian literature, that of the “love between a Russian and a European”. In the studies of Russian literature, this plot has come to be referred to as “The Russian at the Rendez-vous” – after N. Chernyshevsky's article title – with the variants of “love story between a Russian man / woman and a Polish woman / man”, “love story between a Russian woman and a German man”, “love story between a Russian man / woman and a French woman / man”. On many occasions, from these variants of the “Russian
at a rendez-vous with a European” plot, the opposition of naturalness, idealism of the Russian – falsity, pragmatism of the European is derived. Alongside, the interpretation of the love plot creates sublime images of the German man or the French woman, which contain the idea of the European nature of Russian culture.