Gogol's Afterlife. The Evolution of a Classic in Imperial and Soviet Russia by Stephen s> Moeller-Sally (review)

Abstract

I24 SEER, 83, I, 2005 anniversarycommemorations that have taken place over the last I50 years and provides a lively account of the Soviet and post-Soviet films that feature Pushkin'slife and writings. Chapter four surveysfilm versions of Pushkin's works:LittleTragedies (1979), TheLastRoad(I986), Keep Me Safe,My Talisman (I986), My FavouriteTime (I987) and Side Whiskers(I990), and argues that 'films,like museums and anniversaries,are institution builders, and all have shaped the myths of Pushkin that circulate in modern Russian culture' (P. 174). Chapters five and six analyse in detail the Pushkin-inspiredpoetry and essaysof Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva, paying particularattention to their gender-specificqualities. The final chapter and Afterword discuss works on Pushkin by Bitov and Siniavskii. Sandler sharesJane Grayson's view that Siniavskii'sStrolls withPushkin bringsthe poet backto life throughthe freeplay of imagination and intellectual inquiry (p. 3IO).Sandlerwould undoubtedly have approved of the echoes of Siniavskii's neo-avant-garde approach in Viktor Pelevin's blockbusternovel T7he ClayMachine-Gun, in which Petr Void encounters the bronze Pushkinof I9I8, his breast covered with a red apron bearing the inscription 'Long Live the FirstAnniversaryof the Revolution!' Yet the relevance of the dichotomy between museum cultureand live culture, central to avant-garde ideology and cultural politics in post-Soviet Russia, remains outside the parameters of Sandler's provocative and penetrating discussionof the processesof forgettingand rememberingPushkin. Sandler's encyclopaedic volume on the presence of the Pushkin myth in Russian cultureis underpinnedby solid knowledge of secondarysources and personal interviews with Russian scholars. Despite the admirable diversity and richness of the materials scrutinized, there are some minor gaps in her study which some readerswould find disappointing. For example, Sandler's rather inadequate assessment of Zhukovskii'sresponses to Pushkin's death that echo the metaphysical discourse of Derzhavin's odes, and her failure to consider the memoirs of Prince Gagarin and Smirnova-Rosset in which Hekkeren and Dolgorukov are cited as responsible for Pushkin'sdemise something never mentioned in Soviet textbooks. Also, the omission of Khotinenko's 2000 film, PassionBoulevard, in which post-Soviet longing for Pushkinis entwinedwith nostalgiaforthe Soviet era. Sandler'sbook will be appreciated by students of Russian culture, history and literature as well as specialists in Pushkin studies. It also makes an important contribution to contemporary Russian studies, for it provides a disturbingaccount of Soviet and post-Soviet relianceon artificial,ratherthan lived memory. Department ofRussianStudies ALEXANDRA SMITH University ofCanterbugy, JNew Z,ealand Moeller-Sally, Stephen. Gogol's Afterlife. TheEvolution ofa Classic inImperial and SovietRussia.Studies in Russian Literature and Theory. Northwestern UniversityPress,Evanston,IL, 2002. 208 pp. Illustrations.Notes. Index. $79.95. 'WHAT are we doing to our classics?'is a lament one often hearsin reaction to the alternatingand overlappingwaves of idolatry, repressionand blasphemy REVIEWS 125 that Russian classicalliteraturefaced in both the Imperialand the Soviet era. Ratherlessfrequentlyone comes acrossthe question:'Whatis a literaryclassic (anyway)?' And yet this question is so vital to our understanding of the workingsof modern culture that one can only wonder how literaturecan be taught and studied without prior systematic and critical reflection on its historicallycontingent, socially and institutionallygenerated symbolic value as 'classical',on which itsvery capacityto produce meaning is so dependent. Moeller-Sally'sanalysisof the institutionof 'classical'authorshipin Russian culturegoes some way towardsfillingthis methodological gap. TakingGogol' as a rich and telling case-study,Moeller-Sally sets out on a Foucault-inspired 'genealogical' investigation into the socio-cultural construction of a literary classic in late Imperial and Stalinist Russia. He ventures beyond traditional reception studiesand systematicallyframeshis analysisin a historicalaccount of the institutionalcontext of Russian literaryproduction and processing. He explores the space of interactions between state and civic institutions, commercial and cultural establishments, the intelligentsia and the masses, conceiving this space as a '"market" for symbolic goods in which the classic servedas currency'(pp. 9- IO). Moeller-Sally'shistory spans more than a century, starting,by means of a preamble, with an analysisof Gogol"sauthorialstatusduringhis lifetime,and ending with the Soviet celebration of the centenary of his death in 1952. The study begins with an examination of the social conditions of 'authorship'in Russia during the I83os and I840s, when Gogol''maneuvered himself' (sic) into literary prominence (p. i8). Here Moeller-Sally juxtaposes Belinskii's moulding of Gogol...