ii8o Reviews 'Ibsen's bleakest work' (p. I23), he finds in it a salient, 'profoundly anti-Dionysian' message (p. I I5). But Lovborg isno Dionysian celebrant, but rather a pitiable alco holic, Hedda is a sexual coward, and Brack a sexual hypocrite. Their petty, sordid existence isworlds away fromwild Dionysian eros, and it is this thatmakes Hedda's notion of 'vine-leaves' so naive and so pathetic. Locating moral uplift or simplemoral lessons in Ibsen's plays is a riskybusiness. But Binding's imaginative, learned, and devoted engagement with thehistoricity of the artists ofGhosts, TheMaster Builder, and Hedda Gabler is a delightful achievement. LONG ISLAND UNIVERSITY JOAN TEMPLETON Ivan the Fool: Russian Folk Belief. A Cultural History. By ANDREI SINYAVSKY. Moscow: Glas. 2007. 4I6 PP. ?I2.99. ISBN 978-5-7I72-0077-6. Those looking foran introduction toRussian folkculture would be advised to avoid this book. Despite promising a study of 'most everything the Russians have ever believed in' (back cover), it contains little of substance and is riddled with errors, inaccuracies, and gross generalizations. Part of the problem is that the book tries to straddle two genres. Although it is structured as a work of cultural history for a broad audience, the author has also attempted towrite amore literary meditation on a subject which is close tohis heart, as he notes in the introduction (p. I2). The book frequently slips into the firstperson and includes a number of personal anecdotes, such as the author's encounter with a water spirit on a river in the farnorth (pp. I23-24). Such stories might have added a new perspective to a more coherent and well researched volume, but in this case they aremerely distracting. A cultural history of folk belief, even one written for a general audience, needs a much stronger critical foundation than this book offers.On themost basic level,Andrei Sinyavsky never attempts todefine termswhich he uses frequently, such as 'folktale', 'fairytale', 'folk lore', 'folkbelief', and 'the folk'.With no explanation of these slippery concepts, the discussion becomes vague. Sinyavsky also throws around phrases such as 'olden times' or 'ancient times'without specifyingwhat they mean. He remarks, forexample, that '[t]he custom of not interrupting the folktalegoes back, of course, to those distant timeswhen folktaleswere meant not only forpeople, but for spirits' (p. 85). In the context of the proceeding discussion, this could refer to Indo-European antiquity, theKievan era, or perhaps any period before thenineteenth century.The continuous use of such amorphous phrases does not lend coherence to thediscussion, nor do the personal asides. Worse, Sinyavsky never discusses his sources. The footnotes indicate thathe drew heavily on late imperial and Soviet ethnographic studies, but he seems to have taken them at face value, and does not mention themethods used by the researchers or their possible political and ideological motives. He treatsmany of the folktales he studies as canonical texts in themanner ofmodern short stories, rather than snap shots of an evolving tradition takenby ethnographers with theirown agendas. Indeed, Sinyavsky's talents as a literarycritic are clear inhis study of folktalemotifs, and this section of the book (Part I) contains many useful insights into their structures and themes. Unfortunately, without more critical discussion of the sources, the depth of these analyses remains unclear. Parts ii and III, covering paganism and folkChristianity, respectively, continue in the same vein. Many unsubstantiated claims are made, particularly about Slavonic paganism, a notoriously poorly documented subject. Part iv, covering theNikonian Schism, theOld Believers, and other sects, ismore accurate but has a tendency to become tangential and lose any connection with the subject of folkbelief. MLR, I03.4, 2008 ii8i Finally, one should mention the frequent errors in the text and the poor quality of the translation. For example, it is no longer acceptable to use the terms 'Russia' and 'Russians' when referring to themedieval period, and neither the author nor the translator explains that the correct name for the early East Slavonic state isRus. Many terms are incorrectly translated. Thus we find 'newmarrieds' fornewly-weds (p. 3 19), 'John theGolden Mouthed' forJohnChrysostom (p. I68), and 'Marya the Egyptian' for Mary of Egypt (p. 209), to name but a few.Perhaps most annoying is the...
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Feb 16, 2012
Shinsuke Kawagucci + 15
Open Access
