Catriona Kelly
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159643
- eISBN:
- 9780191673665
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159643.003.0015
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter discusses the changes Russian women writers experienced from the 1950s until the early 1990s. Although women were included in Soviet political developments, the definitions of ‘women's ...
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This chapter discusses the changes Russian women writers experienced from the 1950s until the early 1990s. Although women were included in Soviet political developments, the definitions of ‘women's writing’ during this time were related to sentimental topics such as the family and love. By the arrival of the 1990s however, Russian women's writing slowly approached a new point of change in direction that led to the creation of new perspectives and new opportunities.Less
This chapter discusses the changes Russian women writers experienced from the 1950s until the early 1990s. Although women were included in Soviet political developments, the definitions of ‘women's writing’ during this time were related to sentimental topics such as the family and love. By the arrival of the 1990s however, Russian women's writing slowly approached a new point of change in direction that led to the creation of new perspectives and new opportunities.
Emily Van Buskirk
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691166797
- eISBN:
- 9781400873777
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691166797.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter discusses the heterogeneity and flexibility of Ginzburg's notebooks, examining what happens when a “note” (zapis') migrates from one composition to another and acquires new neighbors. It ...
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This chapter discusses the heterogeneity and flexibility of Ginzburg's notebooks, examining what happens when a “note” (zapis') migrates from one composition to another and acquires new neighbors. It explores her “theory of the note” in her early scholarship on Pyotr Vyazemsky (1925–26, 1929) and in her article “On Writers' Notebooks”—her first scholarly reflections on in-between prose, later to become the area of her most significant contributions to literary scholarship. Ginzburg's early scholarship, and the inception of her notebook project in 1925, coincided with a perceived crisis in the novel and a rising interest in documentary literature. A focus on the late 1920s will allow us to trace how Ginzburg's notebooks were shaped by this crisis and sought to emerge from it.Less
This chapter discusses the heterogeneity and flexibility of Ginzburg's notebooks, examining what happens when a “note” (zapis') migrates from one composition to another and acquires new neighbors. It explores her “theory of the note” in her early scholarship on Pyotr Vyazemsky (1925–26, 1929) and in her article “On Writers' Notebooks”—her first scholarly reflections on in-between prose, later to become the area of her most significant contributions to literary scholarship. Ginzburg's early scholarship, and the inception of her notebook project in 1925, coincided with a perceived crisis in the novel and a rising interest in documentary literature. A focus on the late 1920s will allow us to trace how Ginzburg's notebooks were shaped by this crisis and sought to emerge from it.
Catriona Kelly
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159643
- eISBN:
- 9780191673665
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159643.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter discusses the different changes that occurred during the late 19th century until the early 20th century in Russia. These changes gave Russian women writers more opportunities for ...
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This chapter discusses the different changes that occurred during the late 19th century until the early 20th century in Russia. These changes gave Russian women writers more opportunities for literary output. However, these changes also took place against an enormous social upheaval. The roles of women in major public political campaigns were notable, and several women writers during this period were staunch feminists. The chapter also looks at the changes linked to the presence of women in the literary scene, and how Russian society viewed these female writers. The discussions presented in this chapter also raised the phenomenon of the diversity of women's writing during this period.Less
This chapter discusses the different changes that occurred during the late 19th century until the early 20th century in Russia. These changes gave Russian women writers more opportunities for literary output. However, these changes also took place against an enormous social upheaval. The roles of women in major public political campaigns were notable, and several women writers during this period were staunch feminists. The chapter also looks at the changes linked to the presence of women in the literary scene, and how Russian society viewed these female writers. The discussions presented in this chapter also raised the phenomenon of the diversity of women's writing during this period.
Catriona Kelly
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159643
- eISBN:
- 9780191673665
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159643.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
From the 1920s to the 1940s, literature in Russia can be described as diverse and experimental, and Russian women writers of that time were able to produce some of the most adventurous and ...
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From the 1920s to the 1940s, literature in Russia can be described as diverse and experimental, and Russian women writers of that time were able to produce some of the most adventurous and artistically successful texts. However, it was also during this period when the institution within the Soviet Union of Socialist Realism was formed. This institution was particularly hostile towards the writing quality of Russian women writers. This chapter discusses the concepts of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’, which are the two kinds of writers of that period, those who lived inside and those who lived outside the borders of Russia.Less
From the 1920s to the 1940s, literature in Russia can be described as diverse and experimental, and Russian women writers of that time were able to produce some of the most adventurous and artistically successful texts. However, it was also during this period when the institution within the Soviet Union of Socialist Realism was formed. This institution was particularly hostile towards the writing quality of Russian women writers. This chapter discusses the concepts of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’, which are the two kinds of writers of that period, those who lived inside and those who lived outside the borders of Russia.
Emily Van Buskirk
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691166797
- eISBN:
- 9781400873777
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691166797.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter explains the concept of post-individualist prose as a pointed departure from nineteenth-century Realism. This is a fragmentary, documentary literature that restricts itself to the realm ...
More
This chapter explains the concept of post-individualist prose as a pointed departure from nineteenth-century Realism. This is a fragmentary, documentary literature that restricts itself to the realm of “fact,” while being free to range outside the conventions of established genres. The post-individualist person's primary dilemma is a crisis in values, and Ginzburg treats writing as an ethical act. The chapter considers how writing serves as an “exit from the self,” a process by which the self becomes another, leaving behind the ego. It then turns to two of Ginzburg's narratives (“Delusion of the Will” and “A Story of Pity and Cruelty”), which concern the dilemmas of moral action in response to the death of a loved one. The traumatized subject uses techniques of “self-distancing” to deal with his or her sense of self and of the past by constructing a complete and responsible self-image, embedded within a social milieu, and then trying to connect it with his or her actions. Ginzburg's techniques of “self-distancing” are examined side-by-side with Shklovsky's concept of ostranenie (“estrangement”) and Bakhtin's vnenakhodimost' (“outsideness”).Less
This chapter explains the concept of post-individualist prose as a pointed departure from nineteenth-century Realism. This is a fragmentary, documentary literature that restricts itself to the realm of “fact,” while being free to range outside the conventions of established genres. The post-individualist person's primary dilemma is a crisis in values, and Ginzburg treats writing as an ethical act. The chapter considers how writing serves as an “exit from the self,” a process by which the self becomes another, leaving behind the ego. It then turns to two of Ginzburg's narratives (“Delusion of the Will” and “A Story of Pity and Cruelty”), which concern the dilemmas of moral action in response to the death of a loved one. The traumatized subject uses techniques of “self-distancing” to deal with his or her sense of self and of the past by constructing a complete and responsible self-image, embedded within a social milieu, and then trying to connect it with his or her actions. Ginzburg's techniques of “self-distancing” are examined side-by-side with Shklovsky's concept of ostranenie (“estrangement”) and Bakhtin's vnenakhodimost' (“outsideness”).
Emily Van Buskirk
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691166797
- eISBN:
- 9781400873777
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691166797.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This introductory chapter begins with a review of the works of Lydia Ginzburg. Ginzburg came of age soon after the Revolutions of 1917 as the most talented student of the Russian Formalists. For ...
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This introductory chapter begins with a review of the works of Lydia Ginzburg. Ginzburg came of age soon after the Revolutions of 1917 as the most talented student of the Russian Formalists. For seven decades, she wrote about the reality of daily life and historical change in Soviet Russia. Yet in the English-speaking world, she is still known primarily as a literary scholar and as a “memoirist” of the siege of Leningrad during World War II. The chapter then sets out the book's focus, namely to investigate Ginzburg's concept of the self in the wake of the crisis of invidualism: a self that is called “post-individualist.” An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented followed by a biographical sketch of Ginzburg.Less
This introductory chapter begins with a review of the works of Lydia Ginzburg. Ginzburg came of age soon after the Revolutions of 1917 as the most talented student of the Russian Formalists. For seven decades, she wrote about the reality of daily life and historical change in Soviet Russia. Yet in the English-speaking world, she is still known primarily as a literary scholar and as a “memoirist” of the siege of Leningrad during World War II. The chapter then sets out the book's focus, namely to investigate Ginzburg's concept of the self in the wake of the crisis of invidualism: a self that is called “post-individualist.” An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented followed by a biographical sketch of Ginzburg.
Emily Van Buskirk
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691166797
- eISBN:
- 9781400873777
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691166797.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter focuses on Ginzburg's notes about others. In particular, it examines her character analyses from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1970s, where she tries to explain history through character and ...
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This chapter focuses on Ginzburg's notes about others. In particular, it examines her character analyses from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1970s, where she tries to explain history through character and character through history. Following the model of two literary landmarks from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—Herzen's My Past and Thoughts (published in installments beginning in 1854), and Mandelstam's The Noise of Time (1928)—she tells not life stories, but stories of personality in which history is reflected. At a time when the official doctrine of Socialist Realism and the strict censorship regime had cut off any genuine intercourse between literature and life, Ginzburg's sketches constitute a gallery of portraits of her contemporaries, and a valuable literary history of her social group. They also represent a defense of “true” intelligentnost' (an orientation toward higher cultural and social values, ideals, and willingness to suffer for these) against the easy lamentations and lacerations unleashed and made more socially permissible by oppressive circumstances.Less
This chapter focuses on Ginzburg's notes about others. In particular, it examines her character analyses from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1970s, where she tries to explain history through character and character through history. Following the model of two literary landmarks from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—Herzen's My Past and Thoughts (published in installments beginning in 1854), and Mandelstam's The Noise of Time (1928)—she tells not life stories, but stories of personality in which history is reflected. At a time when the official doctrine of Socialist Realism and the strict censorship regime had cut off any genuine intercourse between literature and life, Ginzburg's sketches constitute a gallery of portraits of her contemporaries, and a valuable literary history of her social group. They also represent a defense of “true” intelligentnost' (an orientation toward higher cultural and social values, ideals, and willingness to suffer for these) against the easy lamentations and lacerations unleashed and made more socially permissible by oppressive circumstances.
Catriona Kelly
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159643
- eISBN:
- 9780191673665
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159643.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter gives a brief history of women writers, specifically Russian women writers. Additional information on the subject shows that female authors in Russia emerged fairly recently, and that ...
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This chapter gives a brief history of women writers, specifically Russian women writers. Additional information on the subject shows that female authors in Russia emerged fairly recently, and that the earliest written work by a Russian woman was a Greek medical treatise. Further on in this chapter discussions regarding the different female authors who are introduced in this book are presented, and finally the chapter talks about how the concept of ‘discourse’ will be used.Less
This chapter gives a brief history of women writers, specifically Russian women writers. Additional information on the subject shows that female authors in Russia emerged fairly recently, and that the earliest written work by a Russian woman was a Greek medical treatise. Further on in this chapter discussions regarding the different female authors who are introduced in this book are presented, and finally the chapter talks about how the concept of ‘discourse’ will be used.
Emily Van Buskirk
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691166797
- eISBN:
- 9781400873777
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691166797.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter treats Notes of a Blockade Person, a heterogeneous narrative in multiple parts that is not only Ginzburg's most important and famous “single” work, but also her most misinterpreted in ...
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This chapter treats Notes of a Blockade Person, a heterogeneous narrative in multiple parts that is not only Ginzburg's most important and famous “single” work, but also her most misinterpreted in terms of its genre—it is often taken for a diary or memoir. It conducts a detailed exploration of the layers of this palimpsest in order to identify more precisely the genre of Notes, an undertaking that crystallizes the central features of Ginzburg's writings as investigated throughout this book. Her techniques of self-distancing create a third-person narrative about a slightly generalized other, in a well-defined historical situation.Less
This chapter treats Notes of a Blockade Person, a heterogeneous narrative in multiple parts that is not only Ginzburg's most important and famous “single” work, but also her most misinterpreted in terms of its genre—it is often taken for a diary or memoir. It conducts a detailed exploration of the layers of this palimpsest in order to identify more precisely the genre of Notes, an undertaking that crystallizes the central features of Ginzburg's writings as investigated throughout this book. Her techniques of self-distancing create a third-person narrative about a slightly generalized other, in a well-defined historical situation.
Emily Van Buskirk
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691166797
- eISBN:
- 9781400873777
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691166797.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
The Russian writer Lydia Ginzburg (1902–90) is best known for her Notes from the Leningrad Blockade and for influential critical studies, such as On Psychological Prose, investigating the problem of ...
More
The Russian writer Lydia Ginzburg (1902–90) is best known for her Notes from the Leningrad Blockade and for influential critical studies, such as On Psychological Prose, investigating the problem of literary character in French and Russian novels and memoirs. Yet she viewed her most vital work to be the extensive prose fragments, composed for the desk drawer, in which she analyzed herself and other members of the Russian intelligentsia through seven traumatic decades of Soviet history. This book, the first full-length English-language study of the writer, presents Ginzburg as a figure of previously unrecognized innovation and importance in the literary landscape of the twentieth century. Based on a decade's work in Ginzburg's archives, the book discusses previously unknown manuscripts and uncovers a wealth of new information about the author's life, focusing on Ginzburg's quest for a new kind of writing adequate to her times. The book provides examples of universal experiences—frustrated love, professional failures, remorse, aging—and explores the modern fragmentation of identity in the context of war, terror, and an oppressive state. Searching for a new concept of the self, and deeming the psychological novel (a beloved academic specialty) inadequate to express this concept, Ginzburg turned to fragmentary narratives that blur the lines between history, autobiography, and fiction. This full account of Ginzburg's writing career in many genres and emotional registers enables us not only to rethink the experience of Soviet intellectuals, but to arrive at a new understanding of writing and witnessing during a horrific century.Less
The Russian writer Lydia Ginzburg (1902–90) is best known for her Notes from the Leningrad Blockade and for influential critical studies, such as On Psychological Prose, investigating the problem of literary character in French and Russian novels and memoirs. Yet she viewed her most vital work to be the extensive prose fragments, composed for the desk drawer, in which she analyzed herself and other members of the Russian intelligentsia through seven traumatic decades of Soviet history. This book, the first full-length English-language study of the writer, presents Ginzburg as a figure of previously unrecognized innovation and importance in the literary landscape of the twentieth century. Based on a decade's work in Ginzburg's archives, the book discusses previously unknown manuscripts and uncovers a wealth of new information about the author's life, focusing on Ginzburg's quest for a new kind of writing adequate to her times. The book provides examples of universal experiences—frustrated love, professional failures, remorse, aging—and explores the modern fragmentation of identity in the context of war, terror, and an oppressive state. Searching for a new concept of the self, and deeming the psychological novel (a beloved academic specialty) inadequate to express this concept, Ginzburg turned to fragmentary narratives that blur the lines between history, autobiography, and fiction. This full account of Ginzburg's writing career in many genres and emotional registers enables us not only to rethink the experience of Soviet intellectuals, but to arrive at a new understanding of writing and witnessing during a horrific century.
Emily Van Buskirk
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691166797
- eISBN:
- 9781400873777
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691166797.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. This book, while drawing on Ginzburg's own theories of in-between prose, has aimed to shed light on unexpected relationships among ...
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This chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. This book, while drawing on Ginzburg's own theories of in-between prose, has aimed to shed light on unexpected relationships among her choice of genres, her rhetorical strategies, and her search for a so-called post-individualist self. This book has also brought to light several paradoxes attending Ginzburg's creations. The remainder of the chapter expands on a few of these paradoxes that have been only implicit until now. Ginzburg was rather skeptical about the individual writer's ability to transcend the discourses and conditions of her time—and in fact, she saw this rootedness in the present as a positive sign of the individual's connection to his or her culture. At the same time, in many ways she appears to have cultivated an alternative ethics and way of writing, strongly connected to the tradition of the intelligentsia and the literary giants of the previous century such as Tolstoy and Herzen.Less
This chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. This book, while drawing on Ginzburg's own theories of in-between prose, has aimed to shed light on unexpected relationships among her choice of genres, her rhetorical strategies, and her search for a so-called post-individualist self. This book has also brought to light several paradoxes attending Ginzburg's creations. The remainder of the chapter expands on a few of these paradoxes that have been only implicit until now. Ginzburg was rather skeptical about the individual writer's ability to transcend the discourses and conditions of her time—and in fact, she saw this rootedness in the present as a positive sign of the individual's connection to his or her culture. At the same time, in many ways she appears to have cultivated an alternative ethics and way of writing, strongly connected to the tradition of the intelligentsia and the literary giants of the previous century such as Tolstoy and Herzen.
Catriona Kelly
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159643
- eISBN:
- 9780191673665
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159643.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Humorous satire is considered as an important literary technique among Russian women writers. The first female Russian writer who used this technique was Nadezha Buchinskaya, who wrote under the name ...
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Humorous satire is considered as an important literary technique among Russian women writers. The first female Russian writer who used this technique was Nadezha Buchinskaya, who wrote under the name Nadezha Teffi. This chapter discusses a careful analysis of the different stories and narratives made by Teffi. It is shown that Teffi's use of humour, as well as a variety of other literary devices, was able to give these stories an effortless and rather straightforward quality.Less
Humorous satire is considered as an important literary technique among Russian women writers. The first female Russian writer who used this technique was Nadezha Buchinskaya, who wrote under the name Nadezha Teffi. This chapter discusses a careful analysis of the different stories and narratives made by Teffi. It is shown that Teffi's use of humour, as well as a variety of other literary devices, was able to give these stories an effortless and rather straightforward quality.
Anne Lounsbery
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781501747915
- eISBN:
- 9781501747946
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501747915.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
This book shows how nineteenth-century Russian literature created an imaginary place called “the provinces”—a place at once homogeneous, static, anonymous, and symbolically opposed to Petersburg and ...
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This book shows how nineteenth-century Russian literature created an imaginary place called “the provinces”—a place at once homogeneous, static, anonymous, and symbolically opposed to Petersburg and Moscow. The book looks at a wide range of texts, both canonical and lesser-known, in order to explain why the trope has exercised such enduring power, and what role it plays in the larger symbolic geography that structures Russian literature's representation of the nation's space. The book brings to light fundamental questions that have long gone unasked: how to understand, for instance, the weakness of literary regionalism in a country as large as Russia? Why the insistence, from Herzen through Chekhov and beyond, that all Russian towns look the same? In a literary tradition that constantly compared itself to a western European standard, the book argues, the problem of provinciality always implied difficult questions about the symbolic geography of the nation as a whole. This constant awareness of a far-off European model helps explain why the provinces, in all their supposed drabness and predictability, are a topic of such fascination for Russian writers—why these anonymous places are in effect so important and meaningful, notwithstanding the culture's nearly unremitting emphasis on their nullity and meaninglessness.Less
This book shows how nineteenth-century Russian literature created an imaginary place called “the provinces”—a place at once homogeneous, static, anonymous, and symbolically opposed to Petersburg and Moscow. The book looks at a wide range of texts, both canonical and lesser-known, in order to explain why the trope has exercised such enduring power, and what role it plays in the larger symbolic geography that structures Russian literature's representation of the nation's space. The book brings to light fundamental questions that have long gone unasked: how to understand, for instance, the weakness of literary regionalism in a country as large as Russia? Why the insistence, from Herzen through Chekhov and beyond, that all Russian towns look the same? In a literary tradition that constantly compared itself to a western European standard, the book argues, the problem of provinciality always implied difficult questions about the symbolic geography of the nation as a whole. This constant awareness of a far-off European model helps explain why the provinces, in all their supposed drabness and predictability, are a topic of such fascination for Russian writers—why these anonymous places are in effect so important and meaningful, notwithstanding the culture's nearly unremitting emphasis on their nullity and meaninglessness.
Catriona Kelly
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159643
- eISBN:
- 9780191673665
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159643.003.0014
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Unlike most Russian women writers during her time, Vera Bulich came from a well-off family in St. Petersburg. This chapter discusses and analyses the different poems and stories of Bulich, which are ...
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Unlike most Russian women writers during her time, Vera Bulich came from a well-off family in St. Petersburg. This chapter discusses and analyses the different poems and stories of Bulich, which are less immediately striking than the works of Tsvetaeva and Shkapskaya, to name a few. However, an interesting feature of Bulich's works is that these show her attempts to speak about intellectual issues and at times, she speaks with a feminine voice.Less
Unlike most Russian women writers during her time, Vera Bulich came from a well-off family in St. Petersburg. This chapter discusses and analyses the different poems and stories of Bulich, which are less immediately striking than the works of Tsvetaeva and Shkapskaya, to name a few. However, an interesting feature of Bulich's works is that these show her attempts to speak about intellectual issues and at times, she speaks with a feminine voice.
Edith W. Clowes
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801448560
- eISBN:
- 9780801460661
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801448560.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russians have confronted a major crisis of identity. Soviet ideology rested on a belief in historical progress, but the post-Soviet imagination has ...
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Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russians have confronted a major crisis of identity. Soviet ideology rested on a belief in historical progress, but the post-Soviet imagination has obsessed over territory. Indeed, geographical metaphors—whether axes of north vs. south or geopolitical images of center, periphery, and border—have become the signs of a different sense of self and the signposts of a new debate about Russian identity. This book argues that refurbished geographical metaphors and imagined geographies provide a useful perspective for examining post-Soviet debates about what it means to be Russian today. The book lays out several sides of the debate. It takes as a backdrop the strong criticism of Soviet Moscow and its self-image as uncontested global hub by major contemporary writers. The most vocal, visible, and colorful rightist ideologue, Aleksandr Dugin, the founder of neo-Eurasianism, has articulated positions contested by such writers and thinkers as Mikhail Ryklin, Liudmila Ulitskaia, and Anna Politkovskaia, whose works call for a new civility in a genuinely pluralistic Russia. Dugin's extreme views and their many responses—in fiction, film, philosophy, and documentary journalism—form the body of this book. The book provides the keys to a vital post-Soviet writing culture; it is a guide to the variety of post-Soviet efforts to envision new forms of social life, even as a reconstructed authoritarianism has taken hold; and it introduces non-specialist readers to some of the most creative and provocative of present-day Russia's writers and public intellectuals.Less
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russians have confronted a major crisis of identity. Soviet ideology rested on a belief in historical progress, but the post-Soviet imagination has obsessed over territory. Indeed, geographical metaphors—whether axes of north vs. south or geopolitical images of center, periphery, and border—have become the signs of a different sense of self and the signposts of a new debate about Russian identity. This book argues that refurbished geographical metaphors and imagined geographies provide a useful perspective for examining post-Soviet debates about what it means to be Russian today. The book lays out several sides of the debate. It takes as a backdrop the strong criticism of Soviet Moscow and its self-image as uncontested global hub by major contemporary writers. The most vocal, visible, and colorful rightist ideologue, Aleksandr Dugin, the founder of neo-Eurasianism, has articulated positions contested by such writers and thinkers as Mikhail Ryklin, Liudmila Ulitskaia, and Anna Politkovskaia, whose works call for a new civility in a genuinely pluralistic Russia. Dugin's extreme views and their many responses—in fiction, film, philosophy, and documentary journalism—form the body of this book. The book provides the keys to a vital post-Soviet writing culture; it is a guide to the variety of post-Soviet efforts to envision new forms of social life, even as a reconstructed authoritarianism has taken hold; and it introduces non-specialist readers to some of the most creative and provocative of present-day Russia's writers and public intellectuals.
Deirdre David
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- June 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198729617
- eISBN:
- 9780191843280
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198729617.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, Women's Literature
In the 1960s, Snow’s cultural celebrity led to many trips to the United States and the Soviet Union. Much in demand as a lecturer on science and the humanities, Snow was a visiting professor at the ...
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In the 1960s, Snow’s cultural celebrity led to many trips to the United States and the Soviet Union. Much in demand as a lecturer on science and the humanities, Snow was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Wesleyan University. Resentful of her subordinated status as ‘Lady Snow’, Pamela nevertheless accompanied him on his travels. In the Soviet Union they were treated as honoured guests and enjoyed many visits to the dachas of leading Russian writers and intellectuals. Their support of Russian writers, however, led to attacks upon them as fellow-travellers. Pamela based her comic novel about American academic life on her time at Wesleyan University (Night and Silence, Who is Here?), and during the 1960s she became a regular and vibrant contributor to various BBC cultural programmes, primarily with the remit of reporting on current fiction.Less
In the 1960s, Snow’s cultural celebrity led to many trips to the United States and the Soviet Union. Much in demand as a lecturer on science and the humanities, Snow was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Wesleyan University. Resentful of her subordinated status as ‘Lady Snow’, Pamela nevertheless accompanied him on his travels. In the Soviet Union they were treated as honoured guests and enjoyed many visits to the dachas of leading Russian writers and intellectuals. Their support of Russian writers, however, led to attacks upon them as fellow-travellers. Pamela based her comic novel about American academic life on her time at Wesleyan University (Night and Silence, Who is Here?), and during the 1960s she became a regular and vibrant contributor to various BBC cultural programmes, primarily with the remit of reporting on current fiction.