Where Empires End: Geography of the poetic formula "from A to B"

The paper examines the imaginary geography of the poetic formula “from place_a to place_b” across six European languages. Using georeferenced PoeTree corpora, we analyze the types, distances, and directions of these spans, which reflect a “soaring view” rooted in the ode tradition and sustained in 16th-19th century poetry. We show that the formula functions as a tool of political and cultural boundary-making: Romantic-era national literatures favour more local spaces, while imperial traditions combine local and global spans. Long-distance formulas tend to align along the East-West axis, being an important framework for global geographical imagery. We use statistical modelling to distinguish geographical symbolic “centers” and “borders” and show that centers are typically political entities and borders are natural features, pointing to a shared European geographical imagination.