Costlow, Jane T. Heart-Pine Russia: Walking and Writing the Nineteenth-Century Forest (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 765 realities have produced a reassertion of national or regional identity: one trend in the Bulgarian films explored by Dina Iordanova has been precisely to ‘embrace’ Bulgaria’s ascribed status as Balkan Other on Europe’s wild fringes. The book provides detailed information on a wide spectrum of film-related institutions, from funding arrangements to film festivals and the state of local cinema facilities. While the narrative feature film unavoidably takes central place in any wide-ranging study like this, admirable space is given to animation, documentary and experimental filmmaking, areas where significant work is being produced (like Péter Forgács’s found footage-based Private Hungary series). The book’s tone can be spikey, even darkly amusing when covering institutional dysfunctionality, and the welcome provision of information is combined with sound critical assessments (though Emir Kusturica is arguably treated too harshly). There is perhaps a favouring of socially engaged films, as well as a broad preference for art over ‘popular’ cinema. Whatever one’s own cultural preferences, Peter Hames is certainly correct to argue that popularity and profitability, when enforced as the sole criteria of cinematic success, amount to a ‘Market Stalinism’ destructive of true diversity. In distinction from some of the other perspectives, Bohdan Y. Nebesio champions ‘commercial’ Ukrainian films over a lingering tendency towards poetic obscurity, a complementary entreaty for a national cinema not to abandon its audience entirely. Interacting with and supplementing one another in interesting and fruitful ways, the ideas offered here do justice to the impressive depth and extent of the factual material. This collection of densely researched, well-analysed studies offers a richly informative insight into a specific region that will be unfamiliar to many and also has much to contribute to broader discussions around globalization, film funding, the challenges facing small cinemas and the articulation of national and regional identity. Macclesfield Jonathan Owen Costlow, Jane T. Heart-Pine Russia: Walking and Writing the NineteenthCentury Forest. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY and London, 2013. xiii + 270 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Index. $36.50. Jane Costlow’s elegantly written, insightful and meticulously researched book discusses the role of the forest in Russian folk tradition, literature and scientific studies. It displays the author’s admirable gift of using interdisciplinary approaches in a highly balanced and lucid manner. The book also highlights the existence of a certain cognitive model based on various connections between literary works, environmental studies and artistic SEER, 92, 4, OCTOBER 2014 766 movements in Russia. In a highly innovative way, it also explores many aspects of Russian nineteenth-century environmentalism that had an impact on several developments in the twentieth century. One of the exciting discoveries of the study suggests that some important nineteenth-century Russian educationalist and environmentalist trends had a distinct parallel in America despite the existing difference in cultural traditions and the culture-specific relationship with nature found in both countries. It also brings back to life many forgotten names of influential writers, artists and scientists, including Mel´nikov-Pecherskii, Vladimir Korolenko, Mikhail Nesterov and Dmitrii Kaigorodov. As Costlow elucidates, her book ‘takes as its central focus the cultural resonance of the forest in nineteenth-century Russia — the forest of European Russia rather than Siberia, which has its own web of imaginative significance’ (p. 5). As a scholar specializing in environmental studies, Costlow thinks that it is important to investigate cultural contexts (including a set of stories, images andmetaphors)inanewwayinordertogaininsightintohumannature.Taking a cue from those Russian critics who speak about a special feeling of nature that both precedes and accompanies thinking about landscape, Costlow also aligns herself with Barry Lopez who advocates the view that different cultures develop their own modes of talking about the land and of conversing with the land. ‘As with any cultural process’, writes Costlow, ‘the conversation is both with the land and with previous conversants: our sense of a place’s meaning emerges both from engagement with the place itself and with the cultural traditions already alive there’ (p. 6). Costlow’s numerous examples taken from scholarly and literary works and the visual arts suggest that the role of the forest as part of the megatext of Russian landscape enables us to...