Ancient Rome in the Russian Silver Age

Abstract

Preparing this review has been rewarding and frustrating. I have learned much of value for my current project; I have also learned that different traditions of criticism vary sharply. I write from die perspective of another discipline. I am a classicist - an expert on Latin poetry and prose of the early Principate (roughly the first 120 years CE) - but undertook this review because I am studying die reception of Latin poets, such as Virgil, in Russia and the USSR, among other places and eras. Frajlich's book suggests that there is a gap between Russian criticism and classical scholarship in conceptual categories and vocabulary, in what constitutes an argument, in how to cite evidence for one's assertions and even in how to think about poetry. For me, the okno ? Rossiiu offered here is not impressive. It suggests that Russian criticism is in a backwater, witii no sense of the wider ebb and flow of criticism. For example, the biographical approach espoused here was challenged decades ago in criticism in English; similarly, the hagiographical approach to the poets discussed; and the idea that one can establish literary facts (p. 1 93) hardly deserves comment. That said, I am the first to admit my lack of qualifications to review this book as a study of Russian poetry of the Silver Age; but I hope here to initiate or contribute to a debate about the demands of interdisciplinary work.Frajlich states her scope: study considers the poems of the major and minor Symbolist poets who contributed to what V. N. Toporov calls 'the Roman text' and what Walter Rehm calls Romdichtung (p. 22). This is a topic of rich potential, which belongs to tiie field of reception studies. Unfortunately, die book is pedestrian, outdated and ill-informed; a very good idea, but a missed opportunity. Moreover, Frajlich's narratives of die poets' lives and poetry relies heavily on earlier scholarship; at times her text becomes a patchwork of often contradictory quotations of other scholars to the extent that it is not clear mat Frajlich ever ventures an opinion of her own. She seems to be die victim of the authoritarian model of scholarship which still prevails in Russia, Germany and Greece (for example). It is sad to see this outmoded deference here from someone educated in the North American system, because mere are hints that she has original ideas.Reception studies is one of the hottest phenomena in the field of classical studies in the early 21st century. Work on the legacy of the classical world/the classical tradition/the reception of classical antiquity - the terminology matters, because it constructs different models of the relationship between the ancient texts and their more recent instantiations/imitations/appropriations - is currently burgeoning. Pioneering studies include Charles Martindale's Redeeming the Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), Lorna Hardwick's Reception Studies. New Surveys in the Classics 33 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), and three recent volumes from Blackwell: Classics and the Uses of Reception, edited by Charles Martindale and Richard Thomas (2006), Classical Literature and Its Reception. An Anthology, edited by Robert DeMaria and Robert Brown (2007), and A Companion to the Classical Tradition, edited by Craig Kallendorf (2007). In these volumes, almost no attention is paid to the reception of Greek and Latin literature in Russia and the USSR, a gap I hope to fill before long.Frajlich's book illustrates the dangers of attempting to undertake reception studies without the proper expertise. I would not dream of attempting such a project without the full participation of a Slavist; sadly Frajlich made no attempt to consult any classicists or others expert in the reception of classical antiquity. Had she done so, she would soon have discovered a rich seam of scholarship on the reception of Rome that converges in some respects with her own observations. …