Selected Essays by Viacheslav Ivanov , Michael Wachtel , Robert Bird (review)

Abstract

MLR, ioi.i, 2006 305 Mandelker's 'Teaching Anna Karenina' points to the challenges and difficulties of teaching this novel in the twenty-firstcentury: 'Those of us who teach the novel regularly find that it persistently detonates heated classroom debates of issues that continue to be topical: sex and sexuality, gender roles, social constriction of indivi? dual self-expression and fulfilment' and so on (p. 3). At the same time, she continues, students nowadays wonder why Anna did not just get divorced, while also objecting to Tolstoy's didactic moralizing. Her account of the spatial aspects of the novel is excellent, while Liza Knapp also has very interesting things to say about the charac? ters' names. The jointly written sections on editions, translations, and recommended reading will provide an invaluable resource. Turning to the main body of the book, not one of the twenty-one essays proper may be considered a weak link. Some follow the rubric of the title very closely, and discuss actual classroom experiences in detail. A second group pay only perfunctory service to this criterion, while others ignore reference to teaching entirely. In the view of the present reader, this last group?whether coincidentally or not?provide the most sophisticated, interesting, and original readings. Space does not allow consi? deration of all the essays, so I shall cherry-pick those which particularly impressed. William Mills Todd opens proceedings with an account of the serialization of the novel, which is both erudite and highly practical. Harriet Murav accomplishes some? thing very similar in her discussion of law in Anna Karenina. Caryl Emerson, as one would expect, offers a subtle, sensitive, and innovative reading of an old topic in her 'Tolstoy versus Dostoevsky and Bakhtin's Ethics of the Classroom'. Donna Orwin writes illuminatingly on the paradoxes of Tolstoy's approach to philosophy, while Judith Armstrong points to another key paradox, namely that, although Anna is commonly read with and against other classics in the context of 'adultery and the novel', in Russia it is almost without precedent in dealing with this topic. Best of all, though, are two very differentessays. Gary Saul Morson offersa brilliantly simple exposition of Tolstoy's world-view through the microcosm of Levin's struggles to improve farming methods. In a typically virtuoso performance of verbal pyrotechnics, Helena Goscilo gives us a superbly polemical demolition of Tolstoy's obsessions with breastfeeding and motherhood, among other things, coming to the uncompromising conclusion: 'The problem with Anna Karenina is not the wayward heroine's doom but the novel's inflexible closedness fromthe very outset to alternative plot developments and resolutions. In questions of gender, Anna Karenina combines structural rigor with conceptual rigor mortis' (p. 89). The editors and publishers are to be applauded for bringing together such a rich variety of excellent contributions. Keele University Joe Andrew Selected Essays. By Viacheslav Ivanov. Ed. by Michael Wachtel, trans. by Robert Bird. (Studies in Russian Literature and Theory) Evanston, IL: Northwest? ern University Press. 2003. xx +328 pp. $99.95; ?68.50 (pbk $24.95; ?17.50). ISBNo-8ioi-i522-o(pbko-8ioi-2o83-6). In the past five years or so there has been a steady progression of publications on the Russian poet, critic, and philosopher Viacheslav Ivanov, including monographs, previously unpublished works, and conference proceedings. Among them, Western contributions have been rather fewer in number than previously, so the appearance of this collection of translations of Ivanov's essays is a particularly welcome attempt to introduce him to a wider, English-speaking audience, given the breadth and depth of his engagement with classical and Western European literatures, thought, religion, and art as well as his pre-eminent place in contemporary debates on the history and development of Russian culture. 306 Reviews However, the extent of Ivanov's erudition was such that the editor of a volume such as this is faced with the problem of either choosing essays dealing with subjects familiar to the Western reader, thus distorting the range of Ivanov's interests at the expense of making them more immediately approachable, or making a selection more representative of his work as a whole. Wachtel has chosen the latter approach, paying particular attention to...