S. A. Vengerov: The Identity of Literary Scholarship in Late Imperial Russia

Abstract

THE SLAVONIC AND EAST EUROPEAN REVIEW Volume 8 I, Number i January 2003 S. A. Vengerov: The Identity of Literary Scholarship in Late Imperial Russia ANDY BYFORD RESEARCH in the West has so far devoted little attention to the rise of literaryscholarshipin late imperialRussia.Although a few scholarsare regularly cited as potential precursors of Symbolist and Formalist ideas,' the majority are treated as positivist compilers of historical material, offering little of interest to anyone studying the theory and criticismof thisera. BestrememberedforhisunfinishedKritiko-biograficheskii slovar' russkikh pisateleii uchenykh,2 an over-ambitious attempt at systematizing the history of Russia's cultural production in a vast bio-bibliographical dictionary, Semen Afanas'evichVengerov epitomizes this approachto literature,and indeed, what appearsto be its ultimatefailure.Such an evaluation, however, hardly exhausts the role this prolific bio-bibliographer ,editor, critic,and academic played in Russianliterarystudies at the turn of the twentieth century.Most importantly,it overlooksthe sphere in which literaryscholarshipof this period conducted its most importantsymbolicwork. This was not so much in literatureitselfbut Andy Byford is a doctoral student at Wolfson College, Oxford. 1 For example, A. A. Potebnia and A. N. Veselovskii. See P. Steiner, RussianFormalism. A A,etapoetics, Ithaca, NY, and London, I 984 (hereafter, RussianFormalism), esp. pp. 49, 53-55, 63-64, I 40-4 I; V. Erlich, RussianFormalism. History-Doctrine, New Haven, NJ, and London, i98i, pp. 23-32. Erlich also briefly discusses Vengerov's role in the history of Russian Formalism (pp. 57-58). 2 S. A. Vengerov, Kritiko-biograficheskii slovar'russkikh pisateleii uchenykh.l ot nachalarusskoi obrazovannosti donashikhdnei,6 vols, St Petersburg, I886- I904 (hereafter, Vengerov, Kritikobiograficheskii slovar'). 2 VENGEROV: LATE IMPERIAL LITERARY SCHOLARSHIP more the 'science' of literature,whose identity, autonomy and status were at stakeduringthis time. This article will examine Vengerov's role in the constitution of academic culture as a socio-symbolic context vital to the development of Russian literary scholarship in this period. I shall begin by considering severalcontemporarytexts that establishedVengerov as a 'scholar', including Vengerov's own projection of his scholarly selfimage in his studyon Gogol'. I shallthen examine Vengerov'sprefaces to his two best-knownpublications:the Kritiko-biograficheskii slovar' and his edition of Pushkin'scomplete works.I shallanalysetheseasprojects exemplifying the drive of the literaryacademy to organize and define itselfas a professionaland culturalpracticein late imperialRussia. WhowasS.A. Vengerov? Whatwashe? In the past couple of decades, whereveryou turnedyou came acrossthis name. No literarycelebrationcould be held without his presence;no event in literaturewas conceivable withouthim.3 i) Vengerov 'benediktinets russkoi nauki' As a historian of literature and writer of critical biographies Semen Afanas'evich Vengerov had a journalist's weakness for punchy titles that encapsulated in a single image or phrase his conception of the literary-historicalsignificanceof his subjects.The rhetoricof his essays largely revolved around these labels. Belinskii, for example, became Velikoe serdtse ('The Great Heart')4 Gogol' the Pisatel'-grazhdanin ('The Citizen-Writer' ).5 It was appropriate, therefore, that Vengerov, himself a subject of critical and biographicaldiscourse, should be encapsulatedin a single phrase of similar catchiness and, one must add, competing triteness. WritingVengerov'sobituaryfor Vestnik literatury in I920, A. E. Kaufman entitledit Vliublennyi vliteraturu ('InLove With Literature').6 The phrase was subsequently borrowed, without a shadow of irony, by A. G. Kalent'eva, who used it as the title of her i 964 monograph, the most 3 L. K. Jl'inskii, 'S. A. Vengerov', Izvestiia ORIaS RossiiskoiAkademiinauk, 28, 1923 (hereafter, Il'inskii, 'S. A. Vengerov'), p. 85. All translations of the Russian texts that follow are my own and I take full responsibility for any mistranslations. I have striven to convey the spirit of the texts and have on occasion had to sacrifice word-for-word accuracy. 4 S. A. Vengerov, Ocherki po istorii russkoiliteratugy,second edn, St Petersburg, I907, pp. 247-377. 5 S. A. Vengerov, Pisatel'-Grazhdanin.Gogol',St Petersburg, 19I3 (hereafter, Vengerov, Pisatel'-Grazhdanin). 6 A. E. Kaufman, 'Vliublennyi v literaturu' (hereafter, Kaufman, 'Vliublennyi v literaturu'), Vestnik literatugy, 1920, 9, pp. 6-8. ANDY BYFORD 3 extensive study to date of Vengerov's life and work as a biobibliographer .7Both in his lifetimeand posthumously,the ascriptionof a 'loveof literature'was one of the tributespaid to Vengerov'sscholarly projects. Vengerov was, of course...