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Post a Comment Sea and Cliff: Towards the History of the Political Metaphor
Abstract
The article examines the famous political metaphor: Russia resembles an unshakable cliff against which the waves of European revolutionary sea break in vain. This image is well known from Vassily Zhukovsky’s To the Russian Giant (1848) and Fedor Tyutchev’s The Sea and the Cliff (1848–1851), but it was invented earlier, being wide-spread in the political rhetoric of the time. The article reconstructs the pre-history of the metaphor and reveals its association with other political metaphors. It tries to explain why the image of a cliff in stormy sea was so widespread in conservative journalism and poetry. The author of the article seeks to find out, what kind of political imaginary could stand behind such rhetorical figures and what kind of political expectations could be inspired by this rhetoric. The article also tries to outline in general the methodology of investigating social, political and ideological metaphors.
DOI: 10.31168/2305-6754.2025.2.07
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