Gogol 2002 by Joe Andrew, Robert Reid

Abstract

920 Reviews The Uspenskii portrayed in Mondry's monograph draws a contrast inhiswritings between a strong, energetic, hard-working, androgynous peasant woman, who was capable of supporting her family inwidowhood, and an enervated, 'feminine' bour geoise,who undertook no physical labour and was entirely dependent on themale of her species. (This contrastmay owe something toChernyshevskii's banal dissertation on aesthetics, inwhich vitality and torporwere identified as key components in the conceptions of beauty thatChernyshevskii attributed to the common people and the upper classes respectively.) In the process of idealizing the peasant woman, Mondry contends, Uspenskii desexualized her body and indulged a fantasy about 'physically strongmaidens', thus revealing a 'Christian anxiety around corporeality' (p. I6). One can point, in support of this thesis, to the ecclesiastical influences on Uspenskii (his fatherand uncles and he himself were educated in seminaries, and his uncles became priests) and to thegeneral prominence ofmen from a similar background among the raznochintsy, the dominant force in the radical intelligentsia in the age ofAlexander 11 (I855-8I). In any case Christian sentiment and imagery imbued the Populism with which Uspenskii was associated. Uspenskii himself can findno bettermodel for socially responsible conduct thanChrist or his followers: in one of the sketches that Mondry examines, for instance, he reworksRussian hagiography inorder to represent the fourteenth-century Saint Stefan of Perm' as a Populist avant la lettre. Mondry's monograph does contain various shortcomings. There is in places a re petitiousness about her text,which may be due- if we are to judge by the careless description of a section of Chapter 6 on a tale by Chekhov as a 'paper' (p. I23)-to overhasty assemblage ofher various earlier articles and papers on thisand related sub jects. The book's frame of reference, especially with regard to thePopulist context of Uspenskii's writing, isnot particularly broad or deep. (Mondry might, for instance, have made use of thememoirs ofVera Figner, given Uspenskii's admiration of this prominent Populist revolutionary, indeed his apparent fantasies about her.) There are also rathernumerous minor flawswhich a sub-editor could have eliminated: little inconsistencies, over such matters as the date when Uspenskii may have contracted syphilis (pp. iI and 33) and the date of a lecture that he attended (pp. 58 and 70); spelling mistakes (notably 'lead' for 'led'); and misspellings of the names of some of the scholars cited (including Ivanits,Marsh, and Paperno). Nevertheless Mondry's book represents a thoughtful contribution to scholarship on the late nineteenth-century Russian literaryworld. It provides a compelling pic ture of aman deeply affected by religious belief, who seems to have taken frightat the prospect of sexual freedom and pleasure thatwas opened up by the struggle of the radical intelligentsia towhich he belonged for the emancipation ofwomen. UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL DEREK OFFORD Gogol 2002. Ed. by JOE ANDREW and ROBERT REID. Vol. I: Gogol and Others; vol. II: Aspects ofGogol. (Essays inPoetics special issues, vols 28 (Autumn 2003) and 29 (Autumn 2004)) Keele: Keele University. 2003-04. Vol. I: ii+ 220 pp.; vol. II: iv+ i8i pp. C22 (each). ISBN 978-o-95ogo80-7-6 (vol. I); 978-o-95ogo80-8-3 (vol.II). These two volumes arise frompapers given at an 'International Conference to Mark I50 Years since theDeath ofNikolai Gogol', held in 20oo under the auspices of the Neo-Formalist Circle. The firstvolume contains essays that deal with Gogol in a wider cultural context, while the second contains essays that focusmore directly on Gogol's work per se, covering areas such as language and style, the conceptualiza tion of time, ethics and culture, analysis of individual works, and aspects ofGogol's MLR, I02.3, 2007 92I creative biography; that said, many of the essays in the second volume take a con textualizing approach, broadly speaking. Overall, across thegreat diversity and range encompassed in these two volumes-the collective contribution tomodern Gogol studies ofwhich theeditors rightfullyspeak-it is such invocation ofbroader cultural and textual frames thatespecially makes this contribution a considerable one. The opening essay of the second volume is a tour de force of scholarship by Neil Cornwell on 'The Absurd inGogol and Gogol Criticism', a piece which combines an erudite overview of its themewith an effortless...