Up from Bondage: The Literatures of Russian and African Soul by Dale E. Peterson (review)

Abstract

1044 Reviews development of Chekhov's approach to these issues through the course of his oeuvre. Moreover, such a structure can sometimes leave the impression that a single abstract model derived from philosophy and theology is being imposed on a writer who changed considerably during his career, yet always assiduously avoided philosophical templates. None the less, the argument put forward is generally very persuasive. By focusing on Chekhov's consistent use of the pattern of the journey through time and of motifs of 'sacred', commemorated space, Kirjanov shows how the writer establishes a distinction between static memory (in which the past is cut adrift from the present and posited as the realm of nostalgic longing or bitter regret) and dynamic memory (in which the protagonist actively engages with the past, integrating it into his present surroundings, opening up channels of communication with others and with the future). In so doing she indicates how memory in Chekhov can serve as a bridge between the material and the spiritual. One would perhaps have liked to see a more detailed account of the relationship between memory in consciousness and memory in art. The lack of reference to a theory of how, specifically, fictional narrative works as memory means that one is never sure when the literary examples are merely illustrating philosophical axioms and when they are transforming them according to the principles of narrative. This also means that Kirjanov is unable fully to account for complexities in Chekhov's use of narrative voice which on occasion undermine her readings. For example, she chooses to ignore the subversive implications of Chekhov's modalizing use of the phrase 'seemed' in the apparently exultant ending to 'The Student', endorsing the hero's naively optimistic view of the wholeness of the chain of life (p. 23). Despite these flaws and the excessive number of typographical errors, for which the publishers must take some responsibility, Daria Kirjanov has produced a useful addition to Chekhov scholarship that will be of interest not only to Chekhov specialists but also to those concerned with the influence of the Orthodox tradition on Russian literature. University of Surrey Stephen C. Hutchings Upfrom Bondage: The Literatures ofRussian and African Soul. By Dale E. Peterson. London and Durham: Duke University Press. 2000. 256 pp. ?37 (pbk ?12.95). Any book which has the words 'Russian' and 'soul' on its cover risks being treated with some suspicion by Western Slavists. However, any fears that this is going to be some exercise in windy Slavic emotionalism are soon allayed. Dale Peterson has in fact produced an excellent example of the somewhat neglected art of compara? tive literature, by juxtaposing a series of Russian texts and Afro-American texts (it comes, incidentally, as a surprise to discover that the term 'Russian soul' was used by W. E. B. Du Bois as early as 1897). The Russian texts are a mixture of the familiar and the neglected. Du Bois, whose The Souls of Black Folk is a seminal and contentious text, is set alongside the 'social thinkers' Chaadaev and Kireevskii, as well as Dostoevskii, as represented by his semi-autobiographical Notes from the House ofthe Dead. Dostoevskii is also represented by Notes from Underground, tellingly compared with J.W. Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man. The Westernizing trend in Russian literature is also examined, in the shape of Turgenev's Notes of a Hunter. For a work that was a sensation in its day and is alleged by some to have persuaded Alexander II to abolish serfdom (in 1861, two years before the abolitionof slavery in the USA), the work has received surprisingly little critical attention. It is noteworthy that among the most important articles devoted to it is one by the author ofthe work under review. Here he develops the theme by comparing Turgenev's book MLR, 97.4, 2002 1045 with both Chestnutt's Plantation Tales and Zora Neale Hurston's anthology Mules and Men (1935). Peterson does not confine himself to the nineteenth century. Gorkii's fictionalized autobiography Childhood (1913), N. S. Trubetskoi's little-known treatise Europe and Mankind (1920), and Valentin Rasputin's modern classic Farewell to Matyora are all analysed...