A Fallen Idol is Still a God: Lermontov and the Quandaries of Cultural Transmission by Elizabeth Cheresh Allen (review)

Abstract

532 SEER, 88, 3, JULY 20I0 horror of ethnic cleansing may suggest some of the troubling paradoxes of violence inRussia5 (p. 19).But unfortunately the juxtaposition is not somuch instructive as simply random. The scattered treatment of topics, genres and methodologies results in the introduction's ratherminimal and obvious claim for thevolume that itdemonstrates 'themany rich and complex ways inwhich Russians have conceptualised violence as a fundamental problem of human existence and theways they have tried to act upon it, for better or worse (mosdy forworse!)' (p. 19). RoyalHolloway College Universityof London D. Beer Allen, Elizabeth Cheresh. A Fallen Idol isStill a God: Lermontovand the Quandaries ofCultural Transmission. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, 2007. xii + 286 pp. Notes. Selected bibliography. Index. $55.00. CI my, spletias', kak para zmei, / Obniavshis' krepche dvukh druzei' ('And we, entwined, likea pair of snakes, /Embraced more tightlythan two friends'): perhaps this image ? taken fromMikhail Lermontov's Mstyn (a work that Elizabeth Cheresh Allen does not in fact discuss) ? best illustrates something of the rhetorical structure of A Fallen Idol is Still a God: Lermontov and the (QuandariesofCulturalTransmission.Arguing that 'Romanticism might have lost itsauthority to command unquestioned allegiance, but it still merited a certain reverence and respect' (p. ix), Allen demonstrates how 'Lermontov could find inspiration inRomanticism, but he could not find unequivocal convic tion' (p. x). Accordingly, A Fallen Idol isStill a God constitutes a major contribu tion toRussian literary scholarship on (at least) two fronts.On the one hand, it sets out with sensitivity and imagination a detailed chapter-by-chapter survey of a series ofmajor works by Lermontov ? a sub-set ofByronic poems, Demon,Masfarad, and two sections on Geroi nashegovremeni. On the other hand, it revisits the question of Russian romanticism from an original angle and suggests thatbecause scholars 'tend to focus on transitions into futureperiods rather than to explore the transitions out of past periods' (p. 12), arguments about the shift from romanticism to realism have failed to take proper account of the fundamental sense of 'ambivalence' that characterizes post romanticism in general, and Lermontov's works inparticular. As Allen herself summarizes her own thesis: 'in their overarching concern with the loss of cultural integration and integrity, Lermontov's works epitomize the condition of living in an epoch of transition.His works reflect neither a lingering, late Romanticism, not the cultural transition fromRomanticism toRealism, but, more precisely, the passage out ofRomanticism into a time between cultural periods, in the dimming twilight of one period and before the dawn of another' (p. 53). Throughout, she strikesa fine balance between doing justice to the values of the culture she describes (thus helping to reconstitute the 'ambivalent' atmosphere of the era), whilst simultaneously meditating on the relationship between that historical past and our perception ? and indeed use ? of it, not least because the transitional, ambiguous feelings she REVIEWS 533 attributes toLermontov's post-romanticism can be discerned in aspects of our own postmodern condition (the book's final sub-section is indeed entided Tost-Romanticism in Postmodern Perspective'). Perhaps it is this factor that has brought Lermontov so visibly to the attention ofRussianists of late, although scholars such as Vladimir Golstein (Lermontov's Narratives of Heroism, Evanston, IL, 1999) and David Powelstock [Becoming Mikhail Lermontov:The Ironies ofRomantic Individualism in Nicholas Ps Russia, Evanston, IL, 2005) have preferred issues of self-presentation and the relationship between author and text to the issues of genre, typology and period that engage Allen's attention. In fact, throughout A Fallen Idol isStill a God,Allen frequendy focuses in detail on thework of previous critics.Yet this is not (merely) about demonstrating her familiaritywith existing traditions of scholarship and establishing the originality of her own approach. Rather, she mines the work of others ? whether in agreement or disagreement ? in order to demonstrate not somuch themultiplicity of interpretations that any literarywork necessarily invites, but rather the very ambivalence (and what she also terms anomie) that is integral to Lermontov's oeuvre. Just as Allen facilitates the reader's grasp of existing scholarship, she also defdy situates Lermontov more generally within the contexts of European Romanticism, something thatwill make her book ofparticular interest to comparativists (and not just...