Russian Symbolists Research Articles

ПОЭТИКА «ВОЗВЫШЕННОГО» В ПОЭЗИИ ЮРГИСА БАЛТРУШАЙТИСА

Although many aspects of J. Baltrušaitis’ works (e.g., themes of transcendence, eternity, infinity and mystery) are directly or indirectly related to the problematics of the sublime, various researchers analyzing his texts haven’t problematized it yet. In this article, it is shown that it is present both in Baltrušaitis’ ideas of aesthetics and his poetry in Russian and Lithuanian languages. The poetics of the sublime here is mainly analyzed through the topos of silence. The author distinguishes two types of the sublime in his poetry: the “empty sublime” (its element of “bad infinity” makes part of the “diabolical” paradigm peculiar to early Russian symbolists), expressed in quite a small number of his poems in Russian, and the religious one – in the broad sense – that has a special meaning in all his poetry and, on the one hand, is articulated through the rhetoric of moral duty, thus approaching the mode of the tragic, and, on the other hand, it is disclosed through the prayerful feeling of “the miracle of being”, thus drawing nearer the paradigm of beauty.

Theory of Symbols by the second generation of Russian Symbolists & the Archetypal Theory: Religious, Anthropologic, Cultural Aspects of Succession

The article is about the Theory of Symbols by second generation of Russian Symbolists and the Archetypal Theory. Both of theories were researched as related religious and philosophical forms of the XXth cent. Western civilization crisis reflection and as attempts to foresee the ways of European mentality transformation. Admitting common cultural genesis of the theories, the author determined Jungian Archetypal Theory in succession to the Theory of Symbols by Andrey Bely. Also the author traced development of several of the Russian Modern Anthropological ideas at the American Post-modern Cultural Anthropology.

“Северная любовь” (вместо предисловия от составителя)

This paper is devoted to one of the semantic elements of “Finnish discourse” in Russian literature, so-called “Northern love”. This notion includes the paradoxical love for austere Northern nature and for the unfriendly but attractive Northern (Finnish) girl as well. Both components were prepared and well elaborated within the poetry of Russian Romanticism but kept their actuality during the Modernist era. After Vladimir Solovʼevʼs linking of the love for Lake Saimaa with his permanent seeking for the Eternal Feminine, Russian Symbolists of different sorts and generations made the “Northern love” an essential part of the image of Finland.

Pionierski niedosyt

The book Twórczość Leśmiana w kręgu filozoficznej myśli symbolizmu rosyjskiego written by Sobieska is a pioneering attempt at combining a discussion on the literary output of the author of Dziejba leśna with the reflection stemming from the tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The book, notwithstanding its shortcomings and self-imposed limitations, comprehensively discusses views and opinions hitherto unknown to the Polish reader, introduces and explains the context of the findings of such thinkers as Soloviov or Biely, compares texts written by Russian symbolists with Leśmian’s poems. Sobieska categorizes the problem issues into subsequent thematic ranges (epiphany insight into the nature of being, musicality and the notion of poetical metre, creative imagination, mystical femininity) in order to point at potential sources of the recontextualization of Leśmian’s poetical sensitivity. The findings, being an example of classic comparatistic studies, have been enhanced by iconological and musicological observations as well as by some additional guiding elements facilitating the understanding of Orthodox theology. The present sketch discusses the book and is complemented with a polemics with some of its methodological solutions.

The Reception of W. B. Yeats in Europe by Klaus Peter Jochum

1128 Reviews incarnation sets out the concepts which will be deftly applied in the following chapters. The mid-section study of epiphanies and interiormonologue as mani festations ofmeaning and of being in both writers is themost convincing and enlightening. O'Sullivan cogently states that 'Joyceprivileges the interhuman event, not by naturalistically detailing tics of conversation, but, by plumbing the depths of interiority for a shared "corporeity within"' (p. 67). As in Pierce, Modernist writing is interpreted in terms of a new covenant, of a desire tomake writing a "form of life'" (p. 56).What Beckett saw in Joyceand in Proust is developed into a coherent reinterpretation of incarnation which sheds light on writing's capacity to reveal the 'thing itself, the 'immediate mediation that is the essential matter of human beings' (Agamben, quoted inO'Sullivan, p. 56). The implications of the ideas propounded in this book will no doubt trigger further investigations, but in themselves theyprovide a verywelcome philosophical reading of Proust, Joyce,and Modernism. Magdalene College, Cambridge Hugues Azerad The Reception ofW. B. Yeats inEurope. Ed. by Klaus Peter Jochum. London: Continuum. 2006. xxxvi+359 pp. ?160. ISBN 978-0-8264-5963-3. In his 1934 survey 'Recent Irish Poetry' Beckett places W. B. Yeats at thehead of the Celtic antiquarians' resisting European Modernism. While this judgment neglects to consider Yeats's latervolumes ofwriting, itreflects awidely held belief thatYeats preferred to engage with traditional Irish culture rather than European modernity. As The Reception ofW. B. Yeats (part of theAthlone Critical Traditions' series of 'The Reception of British and IrishAuthors inEurope') reveals, this is an issue that fundamentally influenced, at times even determined, the reception ofYeats's work by reviewers, translators, and academics in Europe. IfYeats was only marginally (although at times crucially) influenced by European culture, then in turnhis work was not afforded the same kind of reception given towriters such as Joyceor Beckett. The fourteen essays of this volume, scrupulously edited by Klaus Peter Jochum, chart thehistorical reception ofYeats's work by analysing theway it was transmitted and received in reviews, translations, performances, and scholarly studies across Europe. As with previous volumes in the series, the essays collected here draw attention to a general tension between documentary and interpretative approaches within reception studies. Most of the contributions in The Reception ofW. B. Yeats fall into the former category. However, the attempt to cover all aspects of Yeats's reception comprehensively within specific territories effectivelydrowns out any cri tical engagement with the specific and general problems underlying the dynamics of cultural exchange?or perhaps inYeats's case, the lack thereof. While Jochum's introduction does well to outline the cultural, political, and tex tual difficulties posed byYeats's work, few contributors offera sustained analysis of the relative absence of amore generous reception ofhis oeuvre (especially as regards performances of his plays). It isperhaps unsurprising that essays concentrating on specific aspects of the reception history yield more interesting discussions, for the MLR, 104.4, 2009 1129 simple reason that theyhave room to address thequestion ofwhy rather than simply stating thewho, where, and when. Thus Jacqueline Hurtley has interesting things to say about theway inwhich Catalan, Galician, and Basque communities appropri ated Cathleen niHoulihan in translations and performances between 1920 and 1936, thus connecting Yeats's own national ideals to an aspired cultural independence within these Iberian regions. Similarly, Jochum's analysis of theGerman reception is illuminating, in that he argues that the lack of overall engagement with Yeats's work was partly due to theuneven quality of translations byHerbert E. Herlitschka, who acquired the exclusive German translation rights as early as 1928 and retained them until the late 1960s. Carle Bonafous-Murat perceptively examines themerits and demerits ofvarious French translators (especially Yves Bonnefoy), and shrewdly remarks thatYeats's reception was subject to the changing attitudes toMallarme. Roger Keys astutely outlines theway early Russian symbolists engaged with Yeats. But on thewhole this reader lamented the absence of any reception theories (even ifonly Jauss's concept of Erwartungshorizonte, the 'horizons of expectation' thatgovern theway inwhich texts are culturally appropriated) within these essays, as the paucity of reception (forwhatever reason) is just as telling as a more suc cessful reception when analysing theway...

Ezra Pound, Language and Persona. (Quaderni di Palazzo Serra, 15) by Massimo Bacigalupo, William PrattIn Venice and in the Veneto with Ezra Pound by Rosella Mamoli Zorzi, John Gery, Massimo Bacigalupo, Stefano M. Casella

MLR, 104.4, 2009 1129 simple reason that theyhave room to address thequestion ofwhy rather than simply stating thewho, where, and when. Thus Jacqueline Hurtley has interesting things to say about theway inwhich Catalan, Galician, and Basque communities appropri ated Cathleen niHoulihan in translations and performances between 1920 and 1936, thus connecting Yeats's own national ideals to an aspired cultural independence within these Iberian regions. Similarly, Jochum's analysis of theGerman reception is illuminating, in that he argues that the lack of overall engagement with Yeats's work was partly due to theuneven quality of translations byHerbert E. Herlitschka, who acquired the exclusive German translation rights as early as 1928 and retained them until the late 1960s. Carle Bonafous-Murat perceptively examines themerits and demerits ofvarious French translators (especially Yves Bonnefoy), and shrewdly remarks thatYeats's reception was subject to the changing attitudes toMallarme. Roger Keys astutely outlines theway early Russian symbolists engaged with Yeats. But on thewhole this reader lamented the absence of any reception theories (even ifonly Jauss's concept of Erwartungshorizonte, the 'horizons of expectation' thatgovern theway inwhich texts are culturally appropriated) within these essays, as the paucity of reception (forwhatever reason) is just as telling as a more suc cessful reception when analysing theway inwhich texts and ideas are disseminated across cultural, linguistic, and political spaces. Moreover, itappears as if the absence of a more sustained (exciting?) reception ofYeats's work in continental Europe resulted in the editorial decision to include three essays on the Irish reception, which seems rather disproportionate in the larger context of thevolume. These three essays are undoubtedly interesting,but in a curious way undermine thewhole enterprise since they return us to the cultural and political engagement with Ireland we know Yeats preferred. On thewhole, thisvolume is surely a valuable research tool forYeatsian scholars (not least because of itsuseful timeline and bibliographies), but offers less to readers baffled by the complex process of literaryand cultural exchange across Europe. University of Reading Mark Nixon Ezra Pound, Language and Persona. Ed. byMassimo Bacigalupo andWilliam Pratt. (Quaderni di Palazzo Serra, 15) Genoa: University of Genoa. 2008. 447 pp. 15. ISSN 1970-0571. In Venice and in theVeneto with Ezra Pound. By Rosella Mamoli Zorzi, John Gery, Massimo Bacigalupo, and Stefano M. Casella. Venice: Supernova. 2007. 91pp. 14. ISBN 978-88-88548-79-1. Ezra Pound, Language and Persona collects papers from a conference of that title which took place in 2005 in Rapallo. As such collections go, this is an unusually rewarding series of contributions by twenty scholars from the United Kingdom, Italy,Germany, Finland, Japan, theUSA, etc.: a truly international gathering that approaches from various perspectives themuch-debated question of modernist personae and of the polyglot writing Joyce, Pound, and Eliot have accustomed H30 Reviews us to. In their introduction (pp. 19-29) the editors suggest, following the lead of Donald Davie, that Pound isverymuch a personal and autobiographic poet?that essentially it is his voice that we hear, whatever the mask he chooses to wear. Thus, 'some commentators have wasted their time trying to prove thatMauberley [rather than Pound] is the speaker of Part 1 [ofHugh SelwynMauberley], which makes no sense' (p. 26). On the other hand, it is true that Pound will express his dearly held beliefs in archaic language which is itselfamask, as in the famous 'Pull down thyvanity' passage, or in his diatribes against 'usura'. The witty epigraph of Part 1of this book, 'Personae', from Huck Finn's description of the King's and Duke's play-acting, implies that Pound's medieval trappings should not be taken too seriously. In fact, Fabian Ironside devotes an essay (pp. 153-80) to Pound's sources in Jacksonian humour (with some funny illustrations of Sut Lovingood and Birdofreedom Sawin). Pound very often exchanged themask of thebiblical prophet for that of thevernacular humorist (or demagogue, as in theRome broadcasts). He never lost the desire to address awide audience and educate it with his conclusions about theworld at large. But theCantos remain a long and discontinuous autobio graphical project, held together by Pound's own conviction and by the intermittent strength of his delivery. So much we gather from Walter Baumann's paper...

Über Čechov und über die Zeit: Eine literaturwissenschaftliche Erörterung

In A. P. Chekhov's play Three Sisters the concept of time is crucial to the meaning of the text. This concept has undergone dramatic changes in philosophical and especially scientific theories at the turn of the 19 th to the 20 th century. Therefore this essay focuses on the relations between text and context, foregrounding the so called Fourth Dimension and its impact on Chekhov's play. On this basis, it is possible to compare Chekhov's writing with that of the Russian Symbolists because they share the same historical background.

“The Discourses of Love”: Some Observations Regarding Charles Baudelaire in the Context of Brjusov's and Blok's Vision of the “Urban Woman”

The paper deals with some aspects of the “discourse of love” in Russian poetry of the Silver Age, in particular with regard to the description of the “urban woman”. There are clear parallels between the methods employed for this imaginary figure as developed by the Russian Symbolists Blok and Brjusov and their French predecessor Baudelaire.

Vladimir Solov'ev on Symbolism and Decadence

^/^adimir Solov'ev occupies a puzzling place in the history of Russian Symbolism. On the one hand, he wrote devastating critiques of Valerii Briusov's Russian Symbolists. On the other hand, he played the role of mentor to Vyacheslav Ivanov and was viewed by Ivanov, Aleksandr Blok, Andrei Belyi?and even by Briusov himself?as a proto-Symbolist. In the present essay, I trace the development of Solov'ev's position vis-?-vis Symbolism by looking closely at some of his lesser-known literary criticism and as well as archival texts. Ultimately, I show how this seemingly minor issue had major consequences for the broader development of Russian Symbolism. Solov'ev's lengthy essay Buddhist Mood in Poetry (Budiiskoe nastroenie v poezii) supplies the first link in our chain. The intriguing title notwithstanding, this essay concerns the poetry of Arsenii Golenishchev-Kutuzov, a poet now all but forgotten, but whose verse Solov'ev genuinely admired. The essay appeared in two parts, in May and June of 1894 in The Herald of Europe (Vestnik Evropy). In its final section, Solov'ev assesses some of the weaknesses of Kutuzov's poetry, complaining that it lacks power and breadth. However, when placed in the context of his contemporaries, Kutuzov's virtues stand out: Bo bchkom cAynae caMoe CAaGoe h pacnAbmnaToe craxoTBopeHHe Haniero aBTOpa HMeeT ropa340 6oAee o?mero c hcthhhoio no93Hio, Hence ah TaKoe, HanpHMep, pa3ManiHCToe npoH3Be4eHHe HOBenmero 4eKa4eHTCTBa.1 Solov'ev then cites (without attribution) a passage from a poem by Konstantin Fofanov, beginning KaK yncacHO boiot nepHbie coGaKH / Ha 4Bope coro4Ha!2 and ending with the line HoHb noBHTa KpenoM, mwc?k nan hohk meMHa..3 Solov'ev comments:

Küsimus „vene mõjust” Friedebert Tuglase artiklis „Valeri Brjussov”. The Question of Russian Influence on Friedebert Tuglas’ article ”Valeri Brjussov”

This article undertakes to examine a problem that has interested many Estonian scholars for at least a century and a half – the question of the role of Russian literature in the development of Estonian literature. Friedebert Tuglas, leader of the Young Estonia movement, and recognized prose writer, critic, and literary historian, was significantly engaged with this question. In his essay on Valeri Brjussov, published in the 9th issue of the literary magazine Looming in 1924, Tuglas presents an unusual summary of the arguments over ”Russian influence”. As indicated in the subtitle, (”On the Occasion of his Death”), Tuglas’ essay on Brjussov grew out of a talk he gave in the Tartu University main hall on the anniversary of the death of the leader of the Russian symbolists. On closer examination, however, one can see a rich texture of connections between this essay and many of Tuglas’ literary-historical and critical articles in which he engages in polemic with the opponents of Young Estonia’s aesthetic program. As we know, this polemic was not limited to the first two decades of the 20th century, but continued in the 1920s and 1930s, ”when the proponents of new realism came to criticize Young Estonia’s perspectives on art”. One of the main disputed topics was the question of literary ”influences” (”borrowings”). Many of the critics of the Young Estonians accused them of the lack of literary and cultural autonomy, and of dependence on foreign models. From the beginning of the Young Estonia, the sharpest of these polemics concerned relations with Russian literature. According to Tuglas, Young Estonia, which aligned itself first and foremost with the literature of western Europe, also sought the same ”Europeanness” in Russian modernist literature; this can be seen in Estonian literature of the decade 1905–1915. With this approach to the literary process one can interpret the question of ”Russian influence” on Young Estonia as a conscious choice, not an unconscious submission to and copying of a foreign tradition. In literary-historical terms, instead of imitation, choices were made from among a range of parallel phenomena or models. Finally, before drawing far-reaching conclusions prematurely, it should be kept in mind that the conception presented in Tuglas’ article belongs to the sphere of self-description, and does not extend to all aspects of the contacts between the Young Estonians and other ”foreign” literatures.

Plagiarism or Russian Symbolist Intertextuality? Hawthorne's 'the Snow Image' and Sologub's 'snegurochka'

In early 1909, the Russian symbolist Fedor Sologub was accused of plagiarizing his short story 'Snegurochka' from Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Snow Image'. For several months this case and others were discussed in the Russian press. A comparison of the two texts reveals that, while the plots are almost identical, Sologub's text contains a host of alterations that make it a truly 'Symbolist' work and, given the context in which it was created, make a charge of plagiarism difficult to prove.For several centuries the concept of 'plagiarism' has been debated; many great authors — including several who influenced Sologub — have been accused of it, yet no definitive definition of his 'literary crime' has been reached. The Russian Symbolists were among the many who rejected traditional notions of originality; they instead actively engaged the literary past in various ways. Sologub perhaps was more active than most and made daring use of others' texts a cornerstone of his carefully crafted literary persona. While determining 'guilt' is most likely impossible, this episode does reveal much about Sologub and his literary methods.

Chinese Europe: Alexander Herzen and the Russian Image of China

Chinese Europe: Alexander Herzen and the Russian Image of China Susanna Soojung Lim W H E AT O N C O L L E G E , M A S S A C H U S E T T S Alexander Herzen (1812-70), aleading nineteenth-century Russian thinker, memoirist, journalist, and novelist, spent the majority of his active professional life in exile in Europe, primarily England. Portrayed to genera¬ tions of Russians as the “father of Russian socialism,” Herzen is also known for his astute observations of the European scene and his reflections on Rus¬ sia’s relationship to the West. On the significance of Europe for Russia, he once declared, “We need Europe as an ideal, areproach, agood example; if she were not these things it would be necessary to invent her” (11:66). Yet Herzen’s thoughts on the West also lead us to an unexpected, reverse, direction: to the Far East and China. The present study examines the idea of China in the writings of the Russian thinker, in particular its sig¬ nificance as the source of adistinctive Russian discourse on China and Japan, one in which these Far Eastern nations figure not as clear signifiers of the exotic “Orient,” but rather as potent metaphors for considering Russia’s own place in history and its relation to the West.^ The first part discusses some specifics of Russian perceptions of China leading up to Herzen, fol¬ lowed by an analysis of his original contribution to the predominant nine¬ teenth-century idea of China. It then concludes with an examination of Herzen’s influence on Fyodor Dostoevsky and the Russian Symbolists. Beginning in the nineteenth century, the image of China in Russian thought and literature functioned as adual metaphor. On the one hand, it representedstagnationandconservatism,servingasastand-infortheRuss¬ ian self, in the way European thinkers used it to criticize their own societies. Ontheotherhand,beginninginthe1840s,Chinaalsobecameasymbolfor the other, the West. This counterintuitive conflation of China and Western Europewasshapedbywriters’awarenessofRussia’speculiarstatusbetween E a s t a n d W e s t . Thepasttwodecadeshaveseenagrowingnumberofstudiesdevotedto the question of Russia and the East in the theoretical context of postcolo¬ nialism and Orientalism. These studies have focused on the ways the Russian state and its intellectuals, writers, and artists have understood and described the empire’s eastern and southern peripheries.The need to readjust Edward Said’s notion of Orientalism when considering the Russian experience of the East has been noted by several critics.According to Mark Bassin, Russia’s ambivalent position is characterized by “a sort of existential indeterminacy between East and West, averitable geo-schizophrenia” (1998, 58); IntertextSy Vol. 10, No. 12006 ©Texas Tech University Press 5 2 I N T E R T E X T S Nathaniel Knight, in questioning the direct applicability of Said’s theory to Russia, writes that “when Russian scholars turned to the East it was often with asharp awareness of their own supposed backwardness and inferiority in the face of the grand civilization of Britain, France and Germany.” (77) This national insecurity has shaped Russian orientalist discourse: schol¬ arship on the treatment of the Caucasus in nineteenth-century Russian liter¬ ature, for instance, has shown how the creation of the south as Russia’s own Orient was significantly motivated by the desire to underscore Russians’ sim¬ ilarity to Europeans as colonizers and orientalizers.^ Like the use of the Cau¬ casus, the use of China reveals Russian perceptions of its “own supposed backwardness and inferiority in the face of the grand civilization” of Western Europe, but in adecidedly different manner. China in the writings to be examined below functions as astand-in not for an exotic or Romantic other that satisfied Russian imperial needs, but as afamiliar and contemptible Western other, and consequently as aweapon for critiquing the evils of Western modernity and stressing Russia’s distance from Europe. Russian thinking on China, then, becomes acomplex interaction among three ideas: Orientalism, Occidentalism^, and Russia. From Kitaishchina to “Chinese Europe” Although Russia was the first “western” nation to sign aformal treaty with China in 1689 (Treaty of Nerchinsk), its engagement with the Middle King¬ dom as atopic of cultural and intellectual life developed in the eighteenth century and simulated...

Pavel Florenskii i simvolisty. Opyty literaturnye. Stat'i. Perepiska by E. V. s> Ivanova (review)

740 SEER, 83, 4, 2005 Ivanova, E. V. (ed.). Pavel Florenskii i simvolisty. Opyty literaturnye. Stat'i.Perepisk:a. Sostavlenie, podgotovka tekstov i kommentarii E. V. Ivanovoi. lazyki slavianskoikul'tury,Moscow, 2004. 670 pp. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliographicalreferences .Tables. Index. Priceunknown. A treasure-chest of hitherto unpublished and partially published materials, this book affords new insights into Florenskii'spath from rebellion agairnst determinism and positivism through an exalte, lyricalphase of 'god-seeking' to the heart of the Russian Orthodox Church. Particularlyover the yeaLrs 1904-05, this path crossedand re-crosseddiverseways troddenby individual RussianSymbolistsand, as he alwaysacknowledged,could scarcelyhave been embarked upon without the impetus of the movement as whole. It was t:he Symbolists,he wrote to K. N. Kiselev in I9I9, who cleared the way for that mighty whirlwindfrom another life to which, 'in spite of differencesof detail and technique, we shouldhold fastas to the mostpreciousachievement of our time' (Sochineniia, I, p. 367). Unfortunately, this book, the declared aim of which is to assemble 'all known materials relevant to Florenskii and the symbolists' (p. I 2), is not a neutralcontributionto knowledge.Florenskiihasbecome abone ofcontention to at least three factions:those who find him too European to be Orthodox; those who maintain his exemplary and unquestioning Orthodoxy; and those who, at their most extreme, depict him as an anti-Western, reactionary Savanorola-figure,a 'neanderthal in a cowl'. These polemics should not be allowed to become self-perpetuating;under their influence the enquiring mind, free and bold in its quest for truthfor its own sake,investigativerather than didactic, is selectivelyadapted to this or that point of view;the thinkeris diminished; the man demeaned. In the 'Zapisnaia tetrad' (I904-05)', a diary of impressions,observationsand 'workin progress'publishedhere for the first time (pp. 323-429), Florenskiinotes that the peasantshe met and talkedwlith on vacation in the Volga regions 'lookat the world objectively,as a child does [... .]. Only for the child or the old hermit,the peasant or the philosopher,is it possible to go straightto the heart of the matter and not make plausibleplay with facts and theories, adapting them to preconceived desiderata of "class truth",the kindof truththatwill serveforself-justificationand thejustification of one's own existence' (p. 406). Florenskiihimself never took up pen in selfdefence and the agendabehind thebook underreviewwould have been betiter confined to polemical articles such as the editor's spirited 'Nasledie o Pavla Florenskogo:a sud'i kto?' in the Proet Contra series published by RkhGI (St Petersburg, I996, pp. 609-24). E. V. Ivanova, though equally qualified as a specialist on Florenskiiand on Russian Symbolists, appears to see it as her duty to protect the former from the latter, claiming in the introduction that, throughthe close earlyassociationso well documented in thisbook, the future priest 'acquiredimmunity from certain errorsrife among the symbolistsand the religiously inclined intelligentsia' (p. I2). To this end, in the section 'Dubia', she republishes the much discussed, judgemental 1926 article 'O Bloke' 'as a distinctive "post-scriptum"to the theme "Florenskii and the symbolists"' (p. 14). This article was first published as the work of an anonymous but deceased 'Petrogradpriest' by Berdiaev in Put' (26, 1931, REVIEWS 74I pp. 86-i o8) and then (in ignorance of the original publication, from a typescripton which someone had written Florenskii'sname and which is said to have reached Parisvia Harbin)by Nikita Struvein Vestnik RK/zD,I I4, I974, pp. I69-92 as 'by Florensky'. The attribution was questioned by P. V. Florenskii on the basis of there being no trace of it, or of any preparatory work,in his grandfather'sarchive.The authorof thisreviewexpresseddoubts on the grounds of style and content (Blokovskii sbornik,I2, Tartu, I993, pp. 54-79) and N. A. Fateevput the case for the more probable authorshipof the hard-pressed losiflianin Father Fiodor Andreev, a friend and pupil of Florenskii's who was a Petrograd priest, who did die before the 1931 publication and who had good reason at the time to combat the near-iconic status accorded to Blok by the Obnovlentsy, confusing literature, theology and politics ratherthan institutinga dialogue between cult and cultureas was the way of his teacher (see Trudy gosodarstvennogo muzeiaistoriiSankt-Peterburga, Vyp. 4, SP6, I999, pp. 269-87...

Sons, Lovers, and the Laius Complex in Russian Modernist Poetry

In this introduction to the articles written by Jenifer Presto and Stuart Goldberg that focus on the psychosocial tensions between Russian modernist poets of slightly different generations, Sibelan Forrester explores the distinct options of filiation and affiliation as ways to imagine or describe poetic choices, modeling textual relationships on the familial or genetic, with the interest in personal psychology characteristic of the period. These modes of thinking are reflected in creative writing, diary entries or poetry, as well as in scholarship. The anticarnal bent of Russian symbolists, particularly of Aleksandr Blok, springs from the religious philosophy of the time. Imagining poetic creation as maternity turns out to be less threatening—at least, for a male poet—than treating it as paternity, which raises other concerns too close to home. Both Presto and Goldberg suggest that Blok rightly considered the Acmeists, especially Osip Mandel'shtam, a threat to his own poetic intentions.

Mikhail Bakhtin, Vyacheslav Ivanov, and the Rhetorical Culture of the Russian Third Renaissance

Mikhail Bakhtin, Vyacheslav Ivanov, and the Rhetorical Culture of the Russian Third Renaissance Filipp Sapienza Although Mikhail Bakhtin figures centrally in multiculturalism, community, pedagogy, and rhetoric (Bruffee 1986; Welch 1993; Zebroski 1994; Zappen, Gurak, and Doheney-Farina 1997; Mutnick 1996; Halasek 2001, 182; see also Bialostosky 1986) many of his major ideas remain enigmatic and controversial. The elusive aspects of Bakhtin's theories exist in part because rhetoricians know little about Bakhtin's own rhetorical culture. Theorists recognize this problem and call for a reworking of Bakhtin more on his own terms. This call has been made to resolve concerns about Bakhtin's ambivalence toward rhetoric. Since Bakhtin disliked rhetoric, any use of Bakhtin in rhetorical theory is largely a hybrid synthesis of his distinct ideas on poetics, prose, satire, the epic, the novel, and so forth. John Murphy proposes a reconception of Bakhtin closely built around his ambivalence and guided by the question, "what do we [rhetoricians] mean by the concept of a rhetorical tradition?" (2001, 259). The suggestion encourages rhetoricians to take Bakhtin more on his own terms than has been done in the past. Unfortunately, as the word "we" indicates, Murphy reworks Bakhtin primarily in terms of Western ideas about rhetoric. Slavists and "Bakhtinologists" in Russia argue that when talking about Bakhtin, "we" has often meant Western, obscuring the Russian cultural roots of his theories (Kozhinov 1993; Miller and Platter 1993, 118). The privileging of Western perspectives has also been criticized by scholars of other discourse cultures. Discussing American Indian rhetoric, Malea Powell argues that "we" means a Rhetorical Tradition that begins "with the Greeks, goes Roman, briefly sojourns in Italy, then shows up in England and Scotland, hops the ocean to America and settles in" (2002, 397). Differences in interpreting Bakhtin also proceed from translation difficulties between Russian and English. The Russian reader views Bakhtin in more essentialist ways as opposed to the "post-modern give-and-take" theorist of many Western [End Page 123] interpretations (Emerson 1990, 113). Read in the Russian language and from that cultural context, Bakhtin's vocabulary contains "conspicuous" elements of Orthodox Christianity and Slavic nationalist ideas (Kozhinov 1993; Mihailovic 1997) that reveal a Russian theological subtext to his ideas about community and dialogue. In this essay, I provide a reading of Bakhtin against the background of his own rhetorical culture. More specifically, I offer an analysis of an intertextual dialogue about language and community between Bakhtin and the symbolist writer Vyacheslav Ivanov. Scholars identify Ivanov as a poet, philosopher, and teacher who profoundly impacted Bakhtin (Mal'chukova 1992, 55). The Russian symbolists upheld strong nationalist ideals and a linguistic theory rooted in metaphysics (Mirsky 1972, 188). Many Slavists and Russian readers of Bakhtin suspect that Ivanov strongly influenced Bakhtin's rhetoric even though, for reasons unknown but that are suspected to be political, Bakhtin understates his debt to him (Ivanov 2001, 3). Bakhtin was not unlike his contemporaries in sharing an interest and vocabulary that addressed the major threads of symbolism. Read side by side with Ivanov's essays in Russian, Bakhtin's rhetoric displays a mixture of the European, Slavic, and Christian ideals that were in parlance among many Russian theorists in early twentieth-century Russia. Bakhtin and Ivanov give us a glimpse of this rhetorical culture. More specifically, they help us to better understand our appropriations of Bakhtin based on an elucidation of the meaning of specific terms as they existed among Bakhtin's contemporaries. The method that I use requires translation of specific Russian passages into English. Terms and phrases are interpreted against the usage background of others in early twentieth-century Russia. Bakhtin's Slavic-theological connections become evident through the elucidation of these intertextual references. Through this method, a common and accepted practice in Slavic literary studies, the use of key words and phrases are traced in and among texts to identify a discourse among authors and explicate its meaning.1 As Steven Mailloux points out, a "rhetorical hermeneutics" focuses on "the historical sets of topics, arguments, tropes, ideologies, and so forth" that give meaning to rhetoric (1988, 15-16). The approach is necessary due to the unique political and artistic circumstances during the early...

Poetry of the Swamp: Blok’s “Folks” Cycle Bubbles of the Earth

magical song and spell seem to to be primeval form of poetry. -Nietzsche, The Gay Science Bubbles of Earth (Puzyri zemli) comprises first lyric cycle in Aleksandr Blok's Second Book, book that contains his poetic output for years 1904-1908.1 The poems of Bubbles of Earth seem oddities, owning little by way of linkage to rest of Blok's oeuvre. The setting in most of poems is swamp; their diction derives from folk vernacular; and their narrative orientation is toward folk genres. In his 1907 review of cycle, Andrei Bely did most, perhaps, to damage reputation of poems by encouraging subsequent critics to regard them as horrid, painful, childish, and idiotic.2 Commentary on cycle, overall, has settled for slightly dismissive verdict of playfulness to account for Blok's interest in swamp creatures. This fate is undeserved by poems that in fact engage rather serious philosophical problems concerning powers of language and Symbolist attempt to reconcile and experience. While thirteen poems of Bubbles of Earth, composed in 1904 and 1905, present a thematic domain uncommon in Blok's properties associated with swamp locale directly engage his interest in an article of 1908, Poetry of Spells and Incantations (Poeziia zagovorov i zaklinanii). In that essay, Blok regards charms cast by sorcerers as gold of genuine poetry, and maintains that in art of incantation, word and act become indistinguishable and identical, subject and object, magician and nature, sweetness of complete (5:37, 47).3 The sorcerer's ability to effect a synthesis between language and physical surroundings represents an ideal of unity cherished by Symbolists. In Bubbles of Earth, Blok seems to experiment in imagining a world in which poet exercises wizardly powers. This essay will consider folk context of cycle, in particular, intimations of spells and incantations. I would like to suggest that route into center of swamp, represented by cycle's central poem, is created by poet's sorcerer-like use of language, but that poems in second half of cycle move away from this organic wholeness of world and word, becoming riddled with an irony that sunders totality of sought by poet. The ambition to unite proves unachievable for modern artist. Paul de Man writes that language of Romantic poetry seems to in desire to draw closer and closer to ontological status of object, but that language is incapable of achieving absolute identity with itself that exists in natural object. That cohesive identity is elusive because poetic words move beyond common meanings to originate anew over and over again. Because of this disjuncture, he claims, for most post-Victorian poets, the priority of nature is experienced as a feeling of failure and sterility.4 The Russian Symbolists shared with Romantic poets not only idea of an intimate harmony between nature and humankind (which artist can bring to consciousness with his supernatural gift-an intuition of ideal form of world5), but also a common interest in customs, language, songs and riddles of folk. Blok has often been identified as a Symbolist cognizant of his ties to Romanticism. What Blok finds in spells and incantations appears to take on dilemma outlined by de Man by positing a world in which subject and object experience sweetness of complete unity. …

Apollo and Dionysus in Andrei Belyi's Petersburg

M uch has been written about the Russian Symbolists' debt to Nietzsche and to the Apollo-Dionysus opposition which he formulates in The Birth of Tragedy.I Russian translations of Nietzsche's writings began to appear in the 1890s, and around the turn of the century the Russian literary avant-garde began to respond to Nietzsche's Dionysian call, led by writers such as Viacheslav Ivanov and Dmitrii Merezhkovskii, whose obvious debt to Nietzsche can hardly be exaggerated.2 Eventually, Nietzsche's impact came to be felt in the realm of literary criticism when Mikhail Bakhtin helped to promulgate the concept of the carnivalesque-a notion which plainly mirrors Nietzsche's concept of the Dionysian principle.' Andrei Belyi, a contemporary of the young Bakhtin, wove Nietzsche's ApolloDionysus opposition into the thematic center of his greatest novel, Petersburg.4 Dionysus becomes a metaphor for the violent historical forces which push Russia toward the Bac-

Secret Truths and Unheard-Of Women: Poliksena Solov'eva's Fiction as Commentary on Vladimir Solov'ev's Theory of Love

oliksena Sergeevna Solov'eva (pseudonym Allegro; 1867-1924) was well known in her lifetime as a lyric poet, children's writer, and founder of the fine-arts and literature journal for children, The Path (Tropinka, 1906-12).1 Like most of the Russian Symbolists who were her close literary associates, she was deeply inspired by the religious philosophy and poetry of Vladimir Solov'ev (1853-1900). It was not merely because Solov'ev was her brother that contemporaries felt a strong affinity between his work and hers, mainly in the metaphysical themes and images of their poetry.2 As a poet and writer Solov'eva shared not only Solov'ev's yearning for transcendent reality but also a vision of the Eternal Feminine as mediator between the immanent and the transcendent.

Poets of Hope and Despair: The Russian Symbolists in War and Revolution (1914-1918). By Ben Hellman. Helsinki: Institute for Russian and East European Studies, 1995. 421 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Paper.

Poets of Hope and Despair: The Russian Symbolists in War and Revolution (1914-1918). By Ben Hellman. Helsinki: Institute for Russian and East European Studies, 1995. 421 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Paper. - Volume 56 Issue 4

Poets of Hope and Despair: The Russian Symbolists in War and Russian Revolution (1914-1918)

Poets of Hope and Despair: The Russian Symbolists in War and Russian Revolution (1914-1918)