Odessa as “Point de Capital”: Economics, history, and time in odessa fiction

It is a curious experience to go about the wharves and these adjoining streets [of Odessa], and see business in progress. Yonder are the ships and steamers ready to carry Russian food-stuff to all parts of the world … the railway train over there, between us and the water, looks like business too. But is not this square full of grain-bags and meditative steers a strange compound of the commercial and the pastoral? Those loads must be tremendously heavy. No wonder the hard-worked beasts are glad to take their recess-time lying down; but the eff ect suggests cattlepieces in the Hermitage picture galleries rather than the haste and bustle of the docks to which we Americans are most accustomed. The contents of these fat bags may have come from Little Russia …There are rich grain lands in those regions as well as in the Valley of Volga, and both men and women work at the harvesting. The grain has come down the river in barges and freight steamers, and now here it is, ready for shipment to feed other lands with less broad fi elds. Yes, Russia’s present is great, and her future will be greater. The rest of the world needs her golden grain. She needs-shall we say the rest of the world?.