Russian Realisms: Literature and Painting, 1840–1890 by Molly Brunson (review)

Abstract

SEER, 95, 4, OCTOBER 2017 744 dotoshnotyi Vnuk Iura soslezami pianyi’ becomes ‘My favorite Grandson Iura’s come in drunk and crying’ (p. 135). Part Three makes, arguably, this study’s most significant contribution to scholarship on memoir literature by examining the accounts of dreams that are a recurrent trope of Soviet life-writing. Although this is the most densely theoretical section — inevitably, given the critical baggage that any academic discussion of dreams must contend with — Paperno makes a clear and convincing argument for seeing dream narratives as constituting, in a certain sense, facts, or historical evidence. They have the status of experience, are sources of ‘intangible knowledge’, and possess the capacity to express ‘the aporias of living faced by those who lived under terror’ (p. 163). They are also, as she remarks, ‘used as a type of story fit to communicate “truths” about the self’ (p. xiii). Some have an obvious literary basis, as Paperno notes (pp. 192 and 202), and similar dreams — including ones with an intertextual dimension — were dreamt by different individuals. Here, as elsewhere, this rich study provides valuable material for potential future scholarship. Its unassuming title emphasizes the idea of story, and overall it underscores the importance of narrative for creating community in the present. School of Modern Languages and Cultures Alexandra K. Harrington Durham University Brunson,Molly.RussianRealisms:LiteratureandPainting,1840–1890.Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb, IL, 2016. xvii + 263 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $59.00 (paperback). The spirit of this book is to challenge. Molly Brunson takes issue with existing views on Russian realism. Her target is the relative significance accorded the prose writing and painting of realism, particularly the thought that the writers are more significant than the painters. Many passages open up new perceptions, particularly of Russian painting, but Brunson also adds to our understanding of some globally known novelists of Russian realism. A summary of the choice of material whets the appetite, but does also show one or two limitations. The analysis covers the fifty years 1840–90, and includes key players. Chronologically, it deals with the writing of the Natural School (Nekrasov, Grigorovich and the popular ‘physiologies’ of city life), Reform literature (Turgenev), Tolstoi and Dostoevskii. In these topics and writers Brunson finds dialogue both positive and negative with painting’s response to realism, principally in the work of Fedotov, Perov and Repin. She includes significant reference to the Peredvizhniki (Wanderers) both en masse and as REVIEWS 745 individuals. Brunson eschews, thankfully, traditional approaches, such as biographical links as a basis for comparison. This tactic, though, leads her to exclude Chekhov and Levitan (pp. 23, 199), perhaps unfortunately, when both individually contributed so much to the diversity of realism (the ‘realisms’ of the title). The study is structurally rather unbalanced. At first the comparisons are paired: Fedotov and the Natural School, who both explore the trope of windows opening onto formerly private, urban spaces. Then she turns to Turgenev and Perov and their exploration of the ‘road’ in their relative metiers. The road functions as an evocative image, singular to the journeys of all kinds engaged by the great Reforms and the eruption of the radical movement. So far so good, then Tolstoi and Repin are paired as practitioners of realism, but analysis leads to division. Each strained to defend his own practice within the ‘interart encounters’ (p. 4) or moments which demonstrate how a work of art imagines (italics in original) its artistic ‘other’, posited as the platform for these comparative analyses. As a result of this division, and possibly due to the time lag involved, Tolstoi (War and Peace, 1864), and Repin (The Barge Haulers on the Volga, 1870–73, Tsar Ivan and his Son Ivan, 1885 and The Zaporozhian Cossacks Writing a Letter to the Turkish Sultan, 1880–91) are treated in separate chapters. Repin, Brunson demonstrates, certainly makes paintings such as The Barge Haulers as much about ‘the figures themselves as it is about the process of representation’ (p. 140), the two key interests of realism. Dostoevskii is then also given separate treatment, this time unallied to any particular painter. Close analysis of the painterly aspects of The Idiot (1868– 69) shows how he...