History Of Russian Literature Research Articles

“Russian author” in 1739: Gottlieb Bayer, Ivan Taubert and the First Steps of Russian School Literary Canon

In the 1730s, the administration of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences redesigned the program of study at the Academy’s gymnasium. Their goal was to create an institution capable of preparing specialists not only for the Academy itself, but also for the civil service, which required people educated in both Russian and German. The regulation ( reglament ) developed by Georg Krafft in 1739, besides preserving the previous division of the gymnasium into Latin and German departments, redesigned the instruction offered by the German department to form a full curriculum, in which Russian-style instruction was as important as mastering the German language. This visionary project put together classes in which pupils whose native language was Russian would study in the same classroom as students whose native language was German, which led the Academy to develop a corpus of bilingual (German/Russian) textbooks. A key element of the syllabus was the study of “a Russian author” (analogous to the well-developed system of “reading authors” in European Latin schools), the first time this method had been introduced in a Russian school. Gottlieb Siegfried Bayer’s “Azov History” ( Begebenheiten von Azow , 1736–37), translated into Russian by Ivan Taubert (1737), was chosen as the set text. The whole syllabus provided by Krafft’s 1739 gymnasium regulation, as well as the book-selling practice of the Academy in the early 1740s, makes it clear that the selection of Bayer's book was not coincidental — it corresponded well to the Russian reading public's ideas about proper verbal composition. The marginal status of verse (poetry) in this structure, combined with the actors’ attention to questions of style, provide the basis for a new narrative for Russian literary history of the 1730s, centered around the collective work of the translators of the under-studied Russian Society ( Rossijskoe sobranie ), established in 1735. Such a narrative would consider the whole catalogue of books published by the Academy, whether in Russian or in other languages. DOI: 10.31168/2305-6754.2019.8.2.6

" NİKOLAY GUMİLYOV UN "AFRİKA GÜNCESİ" ÜZERİNE BİR DEĞERLENDİRME"

Looking at the history of Russian literature, the image of “the east” is one of the prominent themes in the works of poets and writers such as A.S.Pushkin, I.Bunin, M.Kuzmin. It is the poet and short story writer Nikolai Gumilyov who made this theme a fundamental feature of literary art in twentiethcentury Russian literature. Gumilyov (1886-1921) is one of the important poets of the Silver Age in the history of Russian literature and is considered to be the founder of Akmeizm. African-themed poems and travel writings, embellished with exotic and mystical elements in the early days of the twentieth century, are an important factor in the poet's recognition and getting attention. “Constantinople,“ Giraffe ”“ Algeria ”, “Tunisia“ are just some examples of his poems Gumilyov also writes his impressions about his journeys to the eastern countries at different times as travel notes. These notes include African Diary (Afrikanskiy dnevnik) and African Hunt (Afrikanskaya ohota). In his travel notes ,he also expresses the geographical and cultural impacts of the places he visited. African Diary, which belongs to Gumilev's last voyage to Africa, is among the realist works of prose literature. Diary consists of four parts and expresses his interest and admiration to people who have very different cultures, traditions and way of life. However, it is seen that this admiration does not prevent the objective view in his work. The aim of this study is to reveal how Gumilyov describes the Eastern culture and people in his African Diary.

Lost in Translation: Trediakovskii's <em>Journey to the Island of Love</em> and Its Courtly Context

Vasilii Trediakovskii's Journey to the Island of Love occupies a special place in the history of Russian literature: it is often credited with creating a new vocabulary of love and amorous intercourse, an innovation that would pave the way for much of the poetry and prose of the eighteenth century. This article explores the actual courtly context in which this work was introduced to its Russian readers. The reconstruction of the amorous practices of the post-Petrine Russian elite focuses on the poet's two most important patrons in those years, Ekaterina Ioannovna, the Duchess of Mecklenburg, and Prince Aleksandr Kurakin, who had recently returned from his embassy to France.

On the Meaning of 17th Russian Literature in the History of Russian Literature

On the Meaning of 17th Russian Literature in the History of Russian Literature

Oz Behind the Iron Curtain: Aleksandr Volkov and His Magic Land Series by Erika Haber

Reviewed by: Oz Behind the Iron Curtain: Aleksandr Volkov and His Magic Land Series by Erika Haber James H. McGavran III (bio) Oz Behind the Iron Curtain: Aleksandr Volkov and His Magic Land Series. By Erika Haber. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2017. Erika Haber's study, a recent addition to the University Press of Mississippi's Children's Literature Association series, presents a fascinating and largely unexplored case of Cold War intertextuality. In 1939, just after Stalin's Great Terror subsided, an unknown Soviet mathematician, teacher, and aspiring children's author named Aleksandr Volkov (1891–1977) managed, through one of those publishing miracles that seem strangely common in the history of Russian literature, to bring out a free adaptation of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Volkov called his book Wizard of the Emerald City, and despite a fine-print line on the copyright page identifying it as a reworking of the American story, most readers took it to be Volkov's original work (which in some ways it was, given the liberties that he took with Baum's text). He went on, in the 1960s and '70s, to write five original sequels to his initial adaptation. Volkov's Magic Land series, as it is now known, was as beloved throughout the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc as the Oz series was in the West, but during the Soviet period, at least, their readerships remained predictably separate; even now, as Haber notes, the generations of Russian children raised on Volkov's books "know little about the Soviet author and even less about L. Frank Baum" (4). Haber's study, for its part, does much more than introduce Volkov and his work to Western scholars not yet familiar with this author: it provides biographies of both authors, historical context regarding children's literature in the US and the Soviet Union, and a comparative analysis of the two series in terms of plot, characterization, and style. Haber draws convincing parallels between the life experiences and careers of Baum and Volkov, two unlikely giants of children's literature whose books still enjoy far more name recognition than their creators have found as authors, and she also examines their complex creative legacies. [End Page 491] Haber prefaces her book with a personal account of the coincidences that spurred and sustained her interest in the project. A professor of Russian at Syracuse University, she lives just ten miles from Baum's hometown and stumbled in 2009 upon the Baum family plot in a local cemetery. Her work on Volkov, in contrast, took her across the world to Tomsk, in Siberia, where she forged ties with a group of scholars who maintain a museum and university archive dedicated to the author. Haber's introduction lays the groundwork for her book by establishing the comparable popularity of the two series and the extent to which each became a cultural phenomenon on its own side of the Iron Curtain. As Haber acknowledges, large print runs in the Soviet Union didn't necessarily indicate popular demand, nor was demand itself a criterion in publishing decisions, which were instead based on political priorities and timing (7–8). She aptly argues, however, that timing and extraliterary concerns were equally important to Baum, who was under pressure, for example, to bring out a new Oz book in time for Christmas almost every year (8). Both authors, in fact, felt compelled at various points to continue their series, though they would have preferred to turn to other projects. Haber's first two chapters present biographical essays on Baum and Volkov. Her research into both authors is impressive, and her accounts of their eventful lives are full of details both entertaining and telling (Haber's writing is eminently readable throughout). There are no biographical monographs on Volkov, so Haber constructed her narrative from primary-source research at Tomsk State Pedagogical University (36). In the case of Baum, she focuses perhaps a bit too much on metabiography, belaboring the paucity of reliable, scholarly work on his life and the attempts of his son Frank Joslyn Baum to mythologize parts of his father's biography. Nevertheless, the parallels that Haber draws...

«Музей» С. М. Даниэля: Текст и структура аудитории

This article applies the method of Yuri Lotman’s article “The Text and the Structure of Its Audience” to the study of Sergei Daniel’s autobiographical novel Muzei (2012). It shows that the ideal reader of Muzei should be competent in a) the topography of Leningrad (St. Petersburg), b) Russian history, c) Greek mythology, d) history of philosophy, e) technicalities of the profession of a painter, f) history of arts, g) theories of art, h) history of Russian literature, and many other fields. Keywords 21st-Century Russian Literature, Sergei Daniel (b. 1949), Literature and Visual Arts, History of Literature.

И. С. ТУРГЕНЕВ И СОВРЕМЕННАЯ РУССКАЯ ЛИТЕРАТУРА

The article reveals the connections of contemporary Russian literature (the late 20 th – early 21 st century) and the mythologized concept “Turgenev”, which carries a semantic load of creativity and biography of the classic, raises questions of the influence of the classic’s image and his works on work of postmodern writers. An attempt has been made to study the manifestation forms and the meaningfulness of this myth in the texts analyzed. Works non-uniform in genre, style, degree of artistry, ethical and aesthetic views of contemporary authors are considered: works by A. Korolyov, L. Petrushevskaya, M. Galina, S. Dovlatov, V. Pietsukha, M. Gigolashvili, A. Bilzho. Interest in the “Turgenev” myth lies, on the one hand, in the generally recognized authority of I. S. Turgenev in the history of Russian literature, his indisputable greatness (which is seen by modern authors as undeserved), on the other – in the contradictory personality of the classic, and also in the non-standard life of the writer “on the edge of another’s nest”. Korolyov, Petrushevskaya and Galina, who introduce Turgenev as a character in their work, see powerlessness, fear of life and the lack of will in the classic. However, this accentuation of Ivan Turgenev’s inability for a normal, from their point of view, existence, for freedom of choice opens up deeper layers of the text: Korolyov comes to the philosophical theme of choosing between good or evil; through the image of the writer in the bank Petrushevskaya shows her vision of the place of the classic today, and Galina in the style of horror presents Turgenev as a mystically gifted person, who is on the verge of madness caused by emotional tension. Views of Dovlatov, Gigolashvilli and Pitsukha allow one to “reduce the bar” and to discern the legacy of the classic without unnecessary piety, detailing all the pros and cons. The text by Bilzho allows one to turn to canonical for understanding the modern without tension, with humor.

Коммуникативная культура в свете противопоставления полемического и проповеднического начал

The article focuses on the problem of the influence of rhetorical genres of cultivating communication. This influence varies polemical and epideictic genres. The first affect the cultivation of horizontal social relations. Second on the - on the development of vertical ones. Epideictic kind of eloquence interpreted expanded. This takes into account those new genres, which could not have known Aristotle defined the function epideictic speeches as “praise or blame”. It is about propaganda, advertising, homiletics and didactics. At the same time the controversy is associated not only with the dialogic, but also with the monological texts. This raises the question about the role of literature in the cultivation of controversy. The material is mainly the history of Russian literature and language. The conclusion is that the excessive development of some sorts of eloquence at the expense of others can be counter-productive for the culture.

The prospects of teaching comparative literature (Russian-Serbian cultural parallels)

The article is devoted to the problems of studying comparative literature, especially regarding the history of Russian literature from the end of the nineteenth century onwards as a part of the world literature. Comparative approach allows us to use diverse methodologies and study the specificities of the Western European national literatures, as well as to identify the typological convergence in texts of different authors and characterize their stylistic manners. Reviewing the works of Russian and Serbian writers, the author aims to identify their common views on historical events. The basis of text selection is not only thematic preoccupation with World War I, but also the genre. Diary as a genre is of particular interest, as it allows the author to illustrate the inner world of the hero and reflect upon the peculiarities of national mentality. Ego-document is the evidence of private life and, when included into the narrative, it serves as a document of a certain epoch. Examining Fedin's Cities and Years, L. F. Kertselli's War Diary and M. Crnjanski's The Diary of Čarnojević, the author has identified 'points of contact' within the texts and deepened the understanding of the links between Russian and Serbian literatures.

Формирование литературного образа И. М. Муравьева-Апостола

The formation of the literary image of Ivan Matveyevich Muravyov-Apostol is discussed, who entered the history of Russian literature as the author of a journalistic series “Letters from Moscow to Nizhny Novgorod” and “The Journey in Tauris in 1820.” It is noted that I. M. Muravyov-Apostol is famous for being “a scholar and lover of antiquity.” The author of the article explores the translation activity of I. M. Muravyov-Apostol, his enthusiasm for the work of the Roman poet Horace. It is shown how the translations of satirical works and odes of Horace by Muravyov-Apostol influenced the formation of his literary interests and, accordingly, the creation of the literary image of the writer. The critical works devoted to the translation activity of Muravyov-Apostol are considered. The role of friendship is noted between the writer and G. R. Derzhavin with whom they were united by similar attitude to the literary and civil issues, as well as interest in ancient culture and translation of satirical works and odic poetry of Horace. Excerpts from their correspondence are given, as well as opinions of other writers about the creative activities of Muravyov-Apostol. The author concludes that special influence on the formation of Muravyov-Apostol’s literary image had self-presentation of his translations at meetings of the society “Beseda lyubiteley russkogo slova.”

Быль сказки: история русской детской литературы в историко-социальном контексте

The paper reviews the monograph by the Finnish philologist Ben Hellman, Fairy Tales and True Stories: the History of Russian Literature for Children and Young People , released by the publishing house “New literary review” (Moscow) in 2016 in translation from English by O. Bukhina. The book is a systematic study of the history of Russian children’s literature from its beginnings to the first decade of the 21st century. The development of each genre of children’s literature is presented in the book chronologically. Special attention is paid to periodicals and children’s magazines and, accordingly, to the texts of writers of the “se­cond row”, which is of a particular scientific value. The monograph also studies the problem of foreign influences on the work of Russian children’s writers. The specificity of the approach in the monograph by the Finnish scholar is that children’s literature of Russia is considered in historical, social, and aesthetic contexts. The periodization of children’s literature is connected with the main literary movements (sentimentalism, romanticism, realism, modernism). Chapters on the Soviet period in Russian children’s literature contain analysis of the socio-political discourse of the era. The monograph analyzes the impact of ideology on such levels of the artistic text as the style, image of the author, and plot. The last chapter of the book is a study of Russian children’s literature of recent years (1991–2000). In this period, Ben Hellman sees the willingness of the writers to experiment in genres and their hybridization. On the whole, the monograph under review is focused on the problems of interaction between literature and socio-cultural environment, political and social discourses, offering a new look at the development of Russian children’s literature.

Transnational literary history? Dutch-speaking writers in Karel van het Reve’s ‘ventistic’ Geschiedenis van de Russische Literatuur [History of Russian Literature

AbstractIn his Geschiedenis van de Russische literatuur [History of Russian Literature, 1985] the famous Dutch Slavist and essayist Karel van het Reve, links Russian writers, such as Gavriil Derzhavin and Aleksei Pisemskii to Dutch and Flemish ones, such as Vondel and Willem Elsschot. Further on, in the chapter on Lev Tolstoi, Multatuli’s Max Havelaar is cited, although it is clear from the start that none of these Dutch-speaking authors could have had any influence on the Russian writers to whom Van het Reve devotes his colourful chapters. In this article I explore the ‘transnational’ potential of Van het Reve’s self-willed literary-historiographical approach. It turns out that Van het Reve mentions most of these Dutch-speaking authors rather to indicate - directly or indirectly - that he (dis)likes them, than to contribute to the achievements of comparative literature. Both in his choice of authors and his way of practicing literary historiography Van het Reve manifests himself as a proponent of the vent (cf. the well-known vorm of vent or manner or man discussion). Nevertheless, some of his observations could be considered as transnational constellations (in the world-literature sense of the term).

Skaz and Russian formalism: Boris Eichenbaum’s articles on Nikolai Gogol and Nikolai Leskov

From The illusion of skaz (1918) to An ‘excessive’ writer (1931), via How Gogol’s ‘overcoat’ was made? (1918) and Leskov and contemporary prose (1925), the formalist critic Boris Eichenbaum produced a significant part of his theoretical work through conceptualizing skaz and fitting it into the history of Russian literature. As a form of stylization based on oral speech, skaz is normally considered not a literary but a communicative genre. Using the phono-philological (or phono-stylistic) method inspired by the German school of ‘auditory philology’ (Ohrenphilologie), Eichenbaum analysed the return of written literature to the ‘living spoken language’. Therefore, the skaz could be reduced to the phonic speech and a series of purely acoustic phenomena. Nor does Eichenbaum forget that sound – the voice – has a physical origin: in skaz the melody of speech is able to suggest a whole set of gestures. Hence the ‘illusion of skaz’ is also an illusion of presence.

Славянский вопрос в русской поэзии: от Пушкина до Достоевского

A.S. Pushkin is one of the first poets who raised his voice in support of Russia's foreign policy concerning to the Slavic peoples who were suffering from Turkish authorities’ humiliation. He also declared that Europe should not interfere in the activities of the Slavs, who protected their national interests and the national and historical traditions. The problem will be a landmark for the next generation of Russian thinkers- slavophiles such as A.S. Khomyakov, Y.F. Samarin, I.A. Aksakov, N.M. Iazykov and others. Pushkin’s creative communication with the future Slavophiles was the development of the principles of historicism and nation in the history of Russian literature and determining the vector of Russian social thought. Appeal to the historical past of the Fatherland and national ideals was the basis for the formation of the Orthodox-Slavic ideology of the early Slavophiles. The idealization of the cultural and historical base was transformed into a kind of spiritual and educational program. Under the influence of the Pushkin’s poetry there were defined literary-aesthetic and historiosophical criteria. The poem by F.M. Dostoevsky «On the European events in 1854» was poured into a single voice of the conservative wing of the writers.

Icebreakers in Anglo-Russian Relations (1914–21)

ABSTRACTForeign supply to Russia in the First World War is familiar terrain, but although the present paper engages to some degree with the military, diplomatic, and especially economic aspects of the subject, its primary affiliations lie elsewhere. Its principal purpose is to discuss the icebreakers on which it concentrates not only just before but also just after Russia's withdrawal from the First World War, with a view to contrasting the first phase of the ships' history with the second and so highlighting the perennially ambivalent character of the Anglo-Russian relationship. On the way, it touches on questions of geography, English local history, environmental history, the history of technology, and, even, towards the end, Russian literary history.

Fairy Tales and True Stories: The History of Russian Literature for Children and Young People (1574–2010). Ben Hellman. Boston: Brill, 2013. 575 pages.

Fairy Tales and True Stories: The History of Russian Literature for Children and Young People (1574–2010). Ben Hellman. Boston: Brill, 2013. 575 pages.

Russian Reception of Christopher Marlowe’s Creative Work in the 1830 – 1850-s

The article comprehends circumstances of the appearance of a wide range of translated articles (mostly anonymous, in some cases with the names of F.Eckstein, Th.Show) in the Russian press in the 1830 – 1850-s in which a general characteristics of the English dramatist Christopher Marlowe’s creative work in the context of his epoch was presented for the first time. It also gives short opinions of Christopher Marlowe which appeared in the 1840 – 1850-s in the articles on literary criticism and publicistic articles, created by the leading Russian writers I.S.Turgenev (“Faust, a Tragedy. Goethe’s Work. The Translation of the First Part and Summary of the Second One. M.Vronchenko. 1844. Saint-Petersburg”, 1845), N.A.Nekrasov (“From the Editor”, 1850), A.V.Druzhinin (letters XXIII and XXV of the cycle “Letters of the Nonresident Subscriber”, 1851; an introduction to the translation of Shakespeare’s “King Lear”, 1856). The article presents the experience of Christopher Marlowe’s creative work study in the history of Russian literature of the second part of the XIXth century allowing to comprehend circumstances of genesis and development of interest to his creative work among Russian writers, translators, literary critics, literature researchers, art critics, explain his poetic’s elements penetration into Russian literature and culture. In the process of the analysis the articles of the given period devoted to the development of Elizabethan drama are taken into account; the use of these materials allowed to comprehend Marlowe’s works in important for their understanding historical and literature context. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n3s3p391

E.B. Kulman’s Creative Work in the Context of the History of Russian Literature and Russian Poetic Translation

In the article the facts of influence of German literature and art on the formation of a creative person of the Russian poetess and translator of the first third of the XIXth century E.B.Kulman are for the first time elicited, and also echoes of her creativity in German art culture of the subsequent time are systematized. The facts of the appeal of E.B.Kulman to the translations of works of antique authors, to free interpretations of the texts of I.-V.Goethe, I.-G. Foss, S.Gesner, etc., and also influence of the first edition of her “Poetic attempts” on the Russian literature are noted (“imagination” in A.V.Timofeev’s verses “Elizabeth Kulman”, B.M.Fedorov’s poem “To Elizabeth Kulman’s portrait”, etc.). As the most considerable event in posthumous history of E.B.Kulman’s works is considered the appeal to them of the composer R. Schuman who created two vocal cycles in 1851 – “Maiden songs” (op. 103, for two voices and a piano) and “Seven songs” (op. 104, for a voice and a piano). The special attention in the article is paid to a question of possible influence of E.B.Kulman’s fairy tale “The fisherman and his wife” (along with the fairy tale of the same name of brothers Grimm) on A.S.Pushkin in the period of creation of “The tale of the fisherman and a small fish”. In E.B.Kulman’s fairy tale “The fisherman and his wife”, as well as in the earlier work of brothers Grimm, heroes of the fairy tales – not so much characters, as elements of plot making; at A.S.Pushkin’s work the plot becomes simpler and fantastic motives are filled with the lyrical contents, the accent is transferred from the plot to the general lyrical action, characters and pictures. The authors of the article for the first time establish community and distinctions in the text of three fantastic works, and in each text both traditions of national culture and poetry, and rich art world of the German and Russian writers are found. Finally in the article the considerable materials allowing to speak not only about a bilingualism of E.B.Kulman, but also about the development of her creativity on a joint of Russian and a number of West European cultures are generalized, the specified value of her creativity for the development of the Russian literary translation of the XIXth century, the Russian translated fiction, need of preparation of the scientific publication of works of E.B.Kulman which exit could become the beginning of a new stage in studying of works of the talented poetess is noted. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n3s3p139

Fairy Tales and True Stories: The History of Russian Literature for Children and Young People (15742010). By Ben Hellman. Russian History and Culture, vol. 13. Leiden: Brill, 2013. xi, 588 pp. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. $199.00, hard bound.

Fairy Tales and True Stories: The History of Russian Literature for Children and Young People (15742010). By Ben Hellman. Russian History and Culture, vol. 13. Leiden: Brill, 2013. xi, 588 pp. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. $199.00, hard bound.

Goldberg, Stuart. Mandelstam, Blok, and the Boundaries of Mythopoetic Symbolism (review)

SEER, 92, 3, JULY 2014 522 Realism was first outlined by Robert Russell in an article published in this journal in July 1982. Dralyuk’s final chapter essentially expands the argument adumbrated by Russell thirty years earlier, for which the latter could be more explicitly acknowledged; a rare oversight in this genuinely engaging, exhaustively researched book. University of Exeter Muireann Maguire Goldberg, Stuart. Mandelstam, Blok, and the Boundaries of Mythopoetic Symbolism. The Ohio State University Press, Columbus, OH, 2011. xi + 305 pp. Appendix. Notes. Selected bibliography. Indexes. $51.95. Russian literary history, or the version of it that has traditionally been presented to undergraduate students, parcels up the early years of the twentieth century as a succession of ‘isms’: students learn that first there was Symbolism, which experienced a crisis and was supplanted by Acmeism, all of which took place alongside the emergence of Futurism, until the declaration of Socialist Realism put a stop to any further ‘isms’. This simplified picture turns the messy entanglements of actual artistic life and creativity into a neat package. Stuart Goldberg’s study of Osip Mandel´shtam’s distancing from Symbolism, and from the person of Aleksandr Blok in particular, anatomizes the younger poet’s complex relationship with a movement that dominated Russian poetry at the time when he began his career. Goldberg succeeds admirably in showing how Mandel´shtam was able to ‘generate distance from Symbolism in order to create the aesthetic tension required for an effective and palpably new return’ (p. 4). Readers are guided through a broadly chronological sequence of Mandel´shtam’s ‘overcoming and assimilation of the Symbolist legacy’ (p. 6), which ranges from his earliest work in the various editions of his collection Kamen´, through the poems of Tristia, to end with a discussion of his critical prose in the 1920s. The time-frame of Goldberg’s investigation is determined by Mandel´shtam’s reassessment of his relationship with Symbolism in the years around 1912, the date of his ‘conversion’ to Acmeism, and by his responses to Blok’s death. As Goldberg convincingly demonstrates, Mandel´shtam’s attitudes towards Blok and Russian Symbolism developed along a complex trajectory. In his fourth chapter, for instance, Goldberg gives an intriguing account of the way Mandel´shtam’s decision to present several of his poems in the second edition Kamen´ as contrasting pairs, which show the poet’s oscillation between the poles of Symbolism and Acmeism. It would be surprising if a study which investigated one poet’s creative response to another poet did not bring in Harold Bloom’s theory of ‘anxiety of REVIEWS 523 influence’,andGoldbergdulydoesso.Yetheshowsthatearlytwentieth-century poets do not entirely conform, in their response to this anxiety, to Bloom’s model. Not only did the Symbolists celebrate the poetic past and borrow freely from it, but Blok showed little if any sign of poetic anxiety. Mandel´shtam, conscious of his status as a ‘latecomer’ and an ‘outsider’, deals with his anxiety without recourse to concealed Freudian rivalries, making poetic borrowings from his predecessors a source, not of anxiety, but of creative liberation. Nevertheless, Goldberg does make it clear that for Mandel´shtam, a certain anxiety was sparked by the persona and actual person of Blok, prompting him to deflate Blok’s tragic and prophetic stance, and to represent him as essentially a literary conservative, imbued with the attitudes of the aristocracy, bound to the nineteenth century. Goldberg is very much at home in his subject, and is an engaging guide through the texts that he analyses in support of his argument. He gives lucid close readings of Mandel´shtam’s poems, for example, of ‘Pust´ v dumnoi komnate, gde kloch´ia seroi vaty’, which is patiently revealed as a ‘goodnatured assault’ (p. 98) on Blok’s Symbolist lyric hero, and of ‘V Peterburge my soidemsia snova’, arguing, on the basis of changes from draft versions, that the ‘ty’ of the final line can be identified as Blok himself, whose ethos is challenged as unequal to the times. It is clear from Goldberg’s account that Mandel´shtam was far from a simple rejection of, or disagreement with Blok, but involved both polemics with Blok’s vision, and a...