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Into Hostile Territory: Holland and Russia (1840–2)

Wendy S. Mercer

in The Life and Travels of Xavier Marmier (1808-1892): Bringing World Literature to France

Only a few months after his return from Spitzbergen, Marmier's next journey took him to Holland on a mission for Charles de Rémusat, who at that time was Ministre de l'Intérieur. The mandate from ... More

Only a few months after his return from Spitzbergen, Marmier's next journey took him to Holland on a mission for Charles de Rémusat, who at that time was Ministre de l'Intérieur. The mandate from Rémusat was in fact a pretext to allow Marmier to complete his studies on the northern countries, and also to write a book on Dutch literature. The resulting volume of Marmier's Lettres sur la Hollande was dedicated to Rémusat. Early in 1842 Marmier left Paris again, this time heading for Russia, Finland, and Poland. His impressions were recorded in a series of outspoken and highly controversial articles in the Revue des Deux Mondes that were then published in book form under the title Lettres sur la Russie, la Finlande et la Pologne.Less

The Public’s Russia

KEITH NEILSON

in Britain and the Last Tsar: British Policy and Russia, 1894-1917

This chapter discusses public and popular views of Russian life, literature, and culture. Although there was generally a public revulsion against anarchists and nihilists, this was tempered by a ... More

This chapter discusses public and popular views of Russian life, literature, and culture. Although there was generally a public revulsion against anarchists and nihilists, this was tempered by a belief that many of their activities were justified by the behaviour of the repressive regimes that had spawned the movements. The favourable reception in Britain of Peter Kropotkin underlined the fact that personal qualities could lift an anarchist above the general condemnation of the breed in the public's mind. However they interpreted Russia, it is clear that the British public had definite views of that country and for the most part, these views were unfavourable.Less

Diary, 1901–1969

Kornei Chukovsky

in Diary, 1901-1969

This is an abridged version of Kornei Chukovsky's diary, a voluminous document spanning seven decades and three generations (1901–1969), beginning in pre-revolutionary Russia and encompassing almost ... More

This is an abridged version of Kornei Chukovsky's diary, a voluminous document spanning seven decades and three generations (1901–1969), beginning in pre-revolutionary Russia and encompassing almost the entire Soviet era. Contained in twenty-nine notebooks, the diary is a commentary on some of the most important historical events of the period, including the Russian Revolution of 1917. Chukovsky also writes about the literary ferment that began in the late 1950s and persisted into the early 1960s, and how he listened closely and avidly to the new voices in Russian literature. In addition, he speaks about censorship under Joseph Stalin, and describes his friendship with such major literary figures as Anna Akhmatova and Isaac Babel.Less

Reading Russian: Russian Studies and the Literary Canon

Beasley Rebecca

in Russia in Britain, 1880-1940: From Melodrama to Modernism

The Russian literary canon for English readers is usually assumed to be the creation of a small number of amateur translators. But what was the role of the growing professional and academic Russian ... More

The Russian literary canon for English readers is usually assumed to be the creation of a small number of amateur translators. But what was the role of the growing professional and academic Russian community? This chapter describes and analyses the teaching and learning of Russian language and literature in Britain, focusing primarily on the early years of the twentieth century when the subject was in an intense period of development. The chapter details and contextualises the resources available to those who wanted to learn Russian independently (Russian primers, dictionaries, grammars and parallel texts), and the variety of institutions that provided Russian lessons or other means of learning the language. Drawing on archives, memoirs, contemporary articles and debates, this chapter analyses the political, ideological and cultural forces that determined the mode of teaching devised, the curricula followed and, above all, the literary canons established.Less

The Reign of Alexander I, 1801–1825

Nicholas V. Riasanovsky

in Russian Identities: A Historical Survey

This chapter describes Alexander I's reign as one that manifested the culmination of the Age of Reason, of the Enlightenment in Russia, inaugurated by Peter the Great and developed for a century. It ... More

This chapter describes Alexander I's reign as one that manifested the culmination of the Age of Reason, of the Enlightenment in Russia, inaugurated by Peter the Great and developed for a century. It adds that Alexander I seemed to represent the best of the Enlightenment: twenty-three years old, handsome, and brought up on the rhetoric of his grandmother Catherine the Great and the instructions of the prominent Swiss general, statesman, and philosophe Frederic-Cesar de LaHarpe. It discusses that the best results of this reform period were achieved in the field of education and culture. It adds that if the early years of Alexander I's reign indicated cultural promise, its ending saw the emergence of Pushkin and the commencement of what is generally known as the Golden Age of Russian literature. It also tells of the emperor's most remarkable assistant/prime minister, Michael Speransky's greatness.Less

Russians and “Others”: The Text as Territory

Kathleen Parthé

in Russia's Dangerous Texts: Politics Between the Lines

This chapter examines how the literary canon in Russia came to be perceived as national territory and property to be defended not so much from external threats as from aliens within. It suggests that ... More

This chapter examines how the literary canon in Russia came to be perceived as national territory and property to be defended not so much from external threats as from aliens within. It suggests that the periodic coming-together of spatial and cultural components of national identity with hyperethnicity influenced the interpretation of writers and texts which fell outside the borders of the “textual nation.” The chapter also analyzes the core identity of Russian literature, and discusses the distinction between genuine Russian writers and mere samozvantsy (pretenders).Less

The End of Soviet Literature and the Last Dangerous Text …

Kathleen Parthé

in Russia's Dangerous Texts: Politics Between the Lines

This chapter examines the end of the so-called dangerous text in Russian literature. It evaluates the whether the ten beliefs about the literature–state relationship and the paradigm for the ... More

This chapter examines the end of the so-called dangerous text in Russian literature. It evaluates the whether the ten beliefs about the literature–state relationship and the paradigm for the political reading of literary texts in Russia would hold up the closer scrutiny provided by the case studies in this book. The book analyzes the behavior of individual literary figures and suggests that keeping a distance from the state was not the only culturally sanctioned option for them. It also argues that the experiences of dangerous texts in the Soviet period are mostly hidden from the researcher because the primary experience of the text above or below ground comes down to one person reading silently.Less

Thinned and Diluted: Babel in Published Russian Literature of the Soviet Period

Marietta Chudakova

in The Enigma of Isaac Babel: Biography, History, Context

This chapter presents a fascinating view of Babel's evolution as a writer and stylist in his interaction with the body of Russian and Soviet Russian literature. Contrary to the prevailing view of ... More

This chapter presents a fascinating view of Babel's evolution as a writer and stylist in his interaction with the body of Russian and Soviet Russian literature. Contrary to the prevailing view of Babel as a sui generis author with a limited genealogy in Russian letters and practically no following among Soviet Russian writers, it is shown that Babel, in fact, had a tremendous impact on Soviet Russian prose, which absorbed elements of his style even as it diluted its intensity and pungency to “safe” consumption levels. Paradoxically or not, Babel, too, found himself caught up in the “taming of Babel”: as the author of his 1937 story, “The Kiss,” he was coming close to resembling his own Soviet epigones.Less

Venedikt Yerofeev, Moscow–Petushki (1970): self and others

Steven Earnshaw

in The existential drinker

In Venedikt Yerofeev’s Moscow Stations the character Venichka, a version of the author, takes an increasingly surreal train ride towards Petushki, a town at the end of a Moscow line which he believes ... More

In Venedikt Yerofeev’s Moscow Stations the character Venichka, a version of the author, takes an increasingly surreal train ride towards Petushki, a town at the end of a Moscow line which he believes to be like paradise. Unlike other drinker novels where the committed central drinker’s behaviour is regarded as outside social norms, Venichka is surrounded by like-minded Russian souls who also drink continuously. One of the central conceits of the novel explored in this chapter is thus the role of Venichka as a Russian everyman who is simultaneously alienated from the State, and paradoxically also from the people – drinking is his chosen vocation rather than a means of dulling self-medication. Venichka’s alienation is manifest in his ongoing argument with God, Russia and Fate. The chapter assesses how the novel refuses to privilege rationality, philosophy or empiricism in its determination to fully exist in a country/world which lacks any kind of coherence, and offers a comparison between this novel and Exley’s A Fan’s Notes in their treatment of the individual, drink, and the Nation State.Less

Nabokov’s Transition from Russian to English: Repudiation or Evolution?

Brain Boyd

in Stalking Nabokov

This chapter examines Vladimir Nabokov's switch from Russian fiction to the English literary tradition. It first considers Alexander Dolinin's “strong” reading of Nabokov's career; Dolinin ... More

This chapter examines Vladimir Nabokov's switch from Russian fiction to the English literary tradition. It first considers Alexander Dolinin's “strong” reading of Nabokov's career; Dolinin characterized Nabokov's early years as a period of creatively combative engagement with the Russian literary tradition and his later years, some time after his switch to English, in terms of a disavowal of that former engagement and a diminution of his own Russian achievement. The chapter cites some obvious counterevidence to the claim that Nabokov devalued his Russian work and explains why Nabokov continually drove himself to develop artistically. In particular, it describes how Nabokov passionately and persistently sought to arrange translations into English of what he thought his three best Russian novels—The Defense, Invitation to a Beheading, and The Gift. It also discusses Nabokov's sense of cultural evolution and his desire throughout his American and final European years to keep alive the memory of the Russian liberal tradition.Less

The Child's Eye: Isaac Babel's Innovations in Narration in Russian-Jewish, American, and European Literary Contexts

Zsuzsa Hetényi

in The Enigma of Isaac Babel: Biography, History, Context

The narrative method of the child's eye, reflecting the dual identity of succeeding generations, is a phenomenon that seems to be the most outstanding achievement of the Jewish literature of ... More

The narrative method of the child's eye, reflecting the dual identity of succeeding generations, is a phenomenon that seems to be the most outstanding achievement of the Jewish literature of assimilation. This chapter attempts to define the substance of this innovation by focusing on the parallel motifs in the works of Isaac Babel, his Russian–Jewish literary predecessors, and his successors or followers in world literature, sometimes moving back and forth in time in order to isolate these overlapping motifs of different authors. These cross-national literary links, some of which can be followed up to this day, are a living proof that Russian–Jewish literature may be justly considered a particular tradition within world literature and one that is important in its own right.Less

Introduction: The Western Wall of Russian Literature

in The Jewish Persona in the European Imagination: A Case of Russian Literature

This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this book, which is about the imagination and depiction of the Jewish persona in Russian literature. The book explores the representation of Jews in ... More

This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this book, which is about the imagination and depiction of the Jewish persona in Russian literature. The book explores the representation of Jews in literary fiction by placing them within the continuity of the Jewish vocabulary of difference, not only in Christian, but also in post-Christian Europe. It argues that most historical facts of European Jewish experience are not the sources of the “Jewish” image but its cultural role as the paradigmatic Other after Christianity lost its legal and social hold on European societies. The book also analyzes the relevant works of several Russian writers including Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, Anton Chekhov, and Isaak Babel.Less

Introduction: Reading the Russians, or Translation as Explanation

Claire Davison

in Translation as Collaboration: Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield and S.S. Koteliansky

This introduction contextualises the collaborative translations, recalling the climate of ‘Russian Fever’ in London’s early-twentieth-century intellectual circles, and the biographical setting. It ... More

This introduction contextualises the collaborative translations, recalling the climate of ‘Russian Fever’ in London’s early-twentieth-century intellectual circles, and the biographical setting. It then situates co-translation theory within recent critical debates, looking at the skills and expertise each partner could contribute individually to the creative endeavours. A broad overview of recent critical studies of the reception of Russian literature within modernist dynamics in Great Britain is followed by a synopsis of the book’s central ideas, claiming that Mansfield and Woolf’s literary translations had a lasting, transformative impact on Woolf and Mansfield’s own literary apprenticeship in terms of their poetics and their creative, formal experimentation, and also their reviewing and critical appraisals.Less

Introduction

in Music from a Speeding Train: Jewish Literature in Post-Revolution Russia

This book studies Jewish literature and culture by situating authors from Isaac Babel and David Bergelson to Osip Mandelshtam, Perets Markish, Dina Rubina, and Inna Lesovaia in the same literary ... More

This book studies Jewish literature and culture by situating authors from Isaac Babel and David Bergelson to Osip Mandelshtam, Perets Markish, Dina Rubina, and Inna Lesovaia in the same literary universe in which the framework for creativity is provided by modernism and socialist realism, revolution and catastrophe, as well as traditional Jewish writings such as the Hebrew Bible. It discusses Yiddish literature and the terms “Soviet Yiddish,” “Russian-Jewish literature,” and “Jewish literature in Russian”—that is, Russian-language work with Jewish themes written by Jews. Because it addresses cultural production in Soviet Russia in general, the book considers works written by Jews without any apparent Jewish content and examines the question of what constitutes Jewish literature. It also explores the socialist realist manipulation of time, narrative, and memory, focusing mostly on prose. In particular, it offers readings of poetry by Markish, Mandelshtam, Boris Slutskii, Semen Lipkin, and Il'ia Sel'vinskii.Less