The Word Made Self: Russian Writings on Language by Thomas Seifrid

Abstract

MLR, I02.2, 2007 607 Lyngstad also informsus in the foreword that thiswill be a subjective account: 'I shall not flinchfrom making value judgements about thenovels' (p. xiv). Nor does he; after a patient unpacking of the layersofmeaning in a novel, he is forthrightabout his own evaluation of it.Since he has provided us with the evidence, this is fairenough, and one is free to disagree as Iwould, forexample, with his conclusion about Pan, that the novel's meaning, 'in the final analysis, appears to be undecidable' (p. 65). At times he is a littlemoralistic in his judgements, as when in the final chapter he laments thedeplorable dearth of 'highervalues' inHamsun's novels (p. 333), or 'the absence of an all-encompassing logos,or telos, to his novelistic production' (p. 327), as ifsearching, touse Virginia Woolf's expression, fora line down the centre tohold itall together.Hamsun does not provide such a thing-and given his artistic credo, why should he? He reinvents himselfwith each novel. It is a pity thatLyngstad has decided thatHamsun's short stories, poems, and plays falloutside the scope of this study; although his works in the latter two genres do not bear comparison with the novels, a brief look at themwould have given the book amore satisfying completeness. Nevertheless, this is a volume which conveys a fuller sense than any other study inEnglish ofHamsun's importance as a world writer, a novelist who, forall his faults,was amaster of language, whose prose echoes down the corridors of themind. Let us hope that itcontributes, belatedly, to awider recognition of his genius. Like all perceptive criticism, itshould at thevery least send us back with freshenthusiasm to thenovels themselves. UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA JANET GARTON The Word Made Self: Russian Writings on Language. By THOMAS SEIFRID. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press. 2005. 240 pp. $45. ISBN 978-o 80I4-43I6-9. The differences and similarities of theplace of literature inRussia vis-ai-vis Western Europe have been the subject ofmany studies. The place of philosophy inRussian culture, however, has receivedmuch more summary treatment; indeed, the existence and even desirability of a Russian tradition of analytical philosophy have sometimes been questioned. In thisbook Thomas Seifrid shows that,with an established liter ary language and tradition, thought on language and selfhood began to develop in Russia once the stiflingcensorship ofNicholas I's reign had passed, and was stopped only by Stalinist repression. He acknowledges the disparity between the twomain influences on the thinkers he discusses: Western thought on language, particularly that deriving fromGerman Romanticism, and native Orthodox-based thought on the Word (logos). He explains this background with admirable thoroughness, as he does the contemporary developments which illuminate the debates of the philoso phers under discussion. References are similarly comprehensive and are helpfully presented in footnotes rather than endnotes. Thus both theRussianist with only a basic knowledge ofWestern philosophy and the philosopher wanting to know more about Russian interpretations of familiar concepts arewell served. Seifrid begins by arguing that theKharkov linguistAleksandr Potebnia was one of the first to attempt to link the two traditions of thoughtmentioned above. His innovation consisted of his development ofAlexander von Humboldt's definition of the formofwords: the 'outer form' consisted of theirphonetic qualities; these in turn express themeaning or 'content' of a word; but-Potebnia maintained-the word's 'inner form' isdetermined through theetymological origins of the roots ofwhich it is constructed. He claimed that thisdemonstrated how individuals perceived theirown thought, and that theword was therefore amanifestation of selfhood in theworld. 6o8 Reviews Andrei Bely and Velimir Khlebnikov saw the convergence of the qualities of the sign and the referent in theword as a point where the particular and the universal coincided. Both attempted toallocate absolute meaning to lexical units inanticipation of the revelation of an absolute language. Osip Mandelshtam's and Vladimir Ern's more personalistic views of logos round off what, among other things, is a very useful survey of philosophical developments parallel to the literary and aesthetic reactions of the Silver Age to civic thought of the I86os and I870s. We then see how twoof themain figuresof the religious renaissance inRussian phi losophy, Pavel Florenskii and Sergii Bulgakov, developed theTrinitarian...