The Poetry of Prose: Readings in Russian Literature. Slavica Bergensia, 8 by Jostein Børtnes (review)

Abstract

SEER, Vol. 88,No. 3, July 2010 Reviews Bortnes, Jostein. The Poetryof Prose:Readings in Russian Literature.Slavica Bergen sia, 8. Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen, Bergen, 2007. 211 pp. Index. Notes. Index. NOK 150: $27.00: ?14.00: 19.00. The eighth volume in the Slavica Bergensia series, published by theDepart ment of Foreign Languages at theUniversity of Bergen, comes with a tide that is,at best, uninformative and, at worst, misleading. The 'poetry' of prose is to be understood here as indicative of a quality ofwriting similar to that suggested by the vague Russian epithet in the expression khudozhestuennaia proza. Indeed, the adjective 'poetic', which may be read as synonymous with 'artistic', 'literary',or 'aesthetic', is much more in evidence in the volume than the noun 'poetry'.We read of'poetic image' (p. 104), 'poetic creation' (p. 116), 'poetic potential' (pp. 120, 157), 'poetic system' (pp. 127, 188), 'poetic universe' (p. 157), 'poetic code' (p. 160), 'poetic devices' (p. 168), 'poetic structure' (p. 173), 'poetic logic' (p. 183) and 'poetic juxtaposition' (p. 191),but only rarely of 'poetry' per se.We are informed on one occasion (p. 103) of the author's determination 'to read the novel in theway we read a poem, forward and backward simultaneously'. The process alluded tomay strike the reader as not so much a poetic way to read a novel as a novel way to read poetry! The book, then, isnot about thepoetry of prose, but rather, as we learn in thefirst paragraph of the Introduction, the essays it contains share a common theme thatmay be described as 'prose poetics'. As the sub tide declares, the book focuses on readings inRussian literature. There are ten chapters, six ofwhich offervariations on a common approach to Dostoevskii's major novels. These central chapters are flanked by two surveys,which precede them, on 'Medieval East Slavic Literature 988-1730' and 'Religion and Art in theRussian Novel', and twomore specific studies, which conclude the volume, on Turgenev and Evelyn Waugh. It will not escape the attentive reader that the last-named author isnot Russian but, as we are informed in the Introduction, the 'main concern here is not Russian literature,but Russian literary theory' (p. 13).All the chapters have appeared before as articles or essays. Acknowledgments are made to publishers and journals for all but one of thepieces in this collection of re-edited writings, the exception being a piece on Stavrogin and the symbolic structure ofDemons. This ispresumably an oversight, since 'The Last Delusion in an Infinite Series ofDelusions' appeared originally in 1983 in volume four ofDostoevskyStudies. The bias of the volume is towards theological or,more specifically, hagio graphical readings inwhich theprimary device is that of figurai interpretation ('a literary expression of the idea of Christian self-realisation in imitation of Christ', p. 11).The historical and thematic accounts offered in the first two chapters serve tomap out the terrain and themethodology for the remainder of the book. Thus, the symbolic structure of 'storyand projection', which is repeatedly referred to in the first chapter, is applied to major characters of nineteenth-century Russian literature in the next one: Bazarov's journey is 'a communication of the sacred' (p. 64), Raskol'nikov 'restorfes] his own 530 SEER, 88, 3, JULY 20I0 self in the image of the archetype [ofChrist]' (p. 68), and Tolstoi, through Nekhliudov, offers 'the possibility of a new communitas, a resacralisation of society' (p. 85). At the centre of the collection of essays are six chapters that focus exclusively on the laterworks ofDostoevskii: one on The Brothers Karamazov, two on The Idiot, one on Demons, with the remaining two ranging more broadly on the function of hagiography and on holy (and unholy) fools. The stimulus for several of the essays is a key idea or concept taken from an earlier critic that is first summarized and then extended or qualified in meaning by the author: Bakhtin, Auerbach and Girard are the threemost prominent sources in this respect. These exercises, all well informed by an extensive knowledge of text and context, possess the depth and dexterity to provide valuable insights for an undergraduate readership but, because theywere not originally conceived as...