498 SEER, 8o, 3, 2002 appearin unit I .4, but an explanationof how the patronymicsareformedand applied is not given until unit 6.I. On severaloccasions the traditionalorder of introducing cases is disturbed:the genitive plural of the noun is given in unit 4, while the instrumentalsingularof nouns is explained only in unit I o. In the same block one may find the instrumentalof pronouns, as well as the dative, instrumental and prepositional plural of nouns, adjectives and possessives. The heavy concentration of grammar in a single unit may discourageeven the most motivatedlearners. The book's main shortcoming lies in the insufficientamount of language practice it offers, involving an active generation of utterances in Russian. Since the textbook covers reasonably broad material, activities promoting both the development of language structureand conversation skillsare very thinly spread. They tend to illustrate linguistic points rather than build a strongfoundationforlanguageproficiencyat beginners'level. The book's subtitle ('The easiest way to learn Russian') suggeststhat it can help a complete beginner make a leap to the intermediatelevel. It is truethat the definitionof intermediatelevel in language pedagogy is very vague, but if we consider, for example, the definition of the Intermediate Low level in speakingused in theAmerican Council on the Teaching of ForeignLanguages (ACTFL) Proficiency Guidelines (i999), it is hard to see how the available amount of practice in speaking can take the learner as far as the level presupposed. In spite of these minor criticisms, TakeOffinRussianis accessible and wellorganized , particularly useful for students working alone and all those interestedin modern approachesof learningauthenticRussian. UniversityofDurham MARIANNA TAYMANO VA Rubins, Maria. Crossroad ofArts,Crossroad of Cultures. Ecphrasis in Russianand French Poetgy. Palgrave, New York and Basingstoke, 2000. ix + 302 pp. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography.Index. $55.00. THE stated aims of Maria Rubins's Crossroad ofArts,Crossroad of Cultures are ambitious; in this wide-ranging interdisciplinarystudy Rubins sets out both 'to provide an overview of Frenchand Russian literarytraditionrich in texts informed by visual art' (p. i) and to offer a detailed exploration of ecphrasis (defined by Rubins as 'the verbal rendering of sculpture, architecture and painting' [p. 2]), specificallyby comparingecphrastictextsproducedby poets of 'the entire [Russian] Acmeist movement' (p. 3) with those of their nineteenth-centuryprecursors,the FrenchParnassians. Rubins opens her studywith an analyticaloverview of the currentcritical debate on ecphrasis before moving on to an interesting examination of the genealogy of ecphrasis in European literature that takes the reader back to Homer's Iliad and Virgil's Aeneidand then forward through the poetry of (among others)Catullusand Anacreon to the Romantics and beyond. This is no mere exercise in literary detective work, however, for Rubins illustrates throughthissurveythe differentdefinitionsattributedto ecphrasisthroughout its history and charts changes in its function, which she links to shifts that REVIEWS 499 occurred in the hierarchy of the arts throughout the centuries. She then proposesher own structuralmodel of ecphrasis(pp. 28-29). Chapter two is devoted to the ecphrastic tradition in French literature. After surveying the uses of ecphrasis in pre-Parnassianworks drawn mainly from the Medieval, Renaissance and Romantic periods, Rubins outlines the Parnassians'main theoretical statements. Of particularinterest, however, is the section in which Rubins illustrateskey elements of Parnassianpoetics by analysing their poetry; her discussion of their elaboration of 'pictorialist poetics' (pp. 62-73) is particularlysuccessful,for it embraces a large number of individualpoets and poems and strikesthe right balance between detailed explication and general comment. In chapter three, Rubins switches her attention to Acmeism, providing a brief history of the movement and its key theoretical publications which, although undoubtedly familiar to many readers, is neverthelessuseful. Also usefulin thischapteris Rubin's analyticalsurveyof previouscriticalcomment on the similaritiesbetween Acmeist and Parnassianpoetics. Here, however, Rubins occasionally allows her determinationto prove the 'francophileorientation' (p. 102) of Acmeism to obscure the differencesthat, as she admits elsewhere (p. 244), inevitably exist between the poets of the Frenchand Russian movements. Forexample, seeing similaritiesbetween the image in Mandel'shtam's'Ia nenavizhu svet. . .' (I 9 I 2) in which he addresses stone, commanding 'Neba pustuiu grud' / Tonkoi igloiu ran", and that in Gautier's 'Un Vers de Wordsworth'which describes '"spires whose silent fingerpoints to heaven"' (p. 97), Rubins assumessimilaritiesof sentimenttoo; she suggests that as 'Gautier establishes a connection between poetry and heaven throughthe medium...