Опубликовано в журнале НЛО, номер 3, 2005
INTELLECTUALS AND REVOLUTION
This section begins with an article by Igor S. Dmitriev (University of St. Petersburg) entitled “▒The Union of Mind and Fury’: Scientists and the French Revolution”. The article deals with the various strategies of behaviour adopted by scientists during the social cataclysms that took place in post-1789 France: Jacobean revolutionary (Fourcroy, Hassenfratz), escapist (Laplace), socially involved, and ▒expert’ (Lavoisier). Dmitriev discusses what the scientific elite lost during the Jacobean terror as well as the reasons for, and consequences of the dissolution of academic institutions in 1793. The most important institutional outcome of the revolutionary transformations was the Grandes Ecoles system established in Napoleon’s time and a concentration on technology and engineering in French science from that time onwards. The article also deals with the general connection between revolutionary ideology and the calculating, mathematical spirit that permeated science at the time.
Alexander Etkind’s (European University and Smolny Сollege, St. Petersburg) article is called “Biography, Subjectivity, and the Hot Memories of Revolution” and touches upon the much-debated ideas of the so-called Stalinist subjectivity and the comparison of Soviet “strategies of individualization” with the European “process of civilization” of modernity (Igal Halfin, Jochen Hellbeck). The author argues that while the liberal subject was and still is real, the Soviet New Man is only a utopian project. Using the works of Jan and Aleida Assman, Etkind demonstrates the way in which ▒hot’ and ▒cold’ regimes of revolutionary memories alternated in Russian history. The primary source for Etkind’s reflections on the invention of revolutionaries’ biographies is a biographical dictionary compiled by the Granat brothers entitled “Portraits of leading Soviet figures and Russian revolutionaries”. The author shows that those biographical narratives employed a rhetorical strategy which he calls “stretching”: opposing exotic and adventurous episodes of revolutionaries’ biographies to their stale duties in post-revolutionary times.
PALESTINE/ISRAEL IN RUSSIAN CULTURE:
A LITERARY TOPOS AND A CULTURAL AREA
This section is guest edited by Vladimir Khazan (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
The articles and essays included in the present section deal with the problem of dialogue between the Russian and the Jewish cultures in various socio-historical, national, and biographical contexts. The phenomenon of Russian-Jewish cultural interaction has deep roots in Russian history and was reflected, for example, in the 19th century literary practice of Romanticism (this is explored by Michail Weisskopf (Jerusalem): “▒Strange Prophets’: the People and the Land of Israel in the Eyes of the Russian Romantics”), before appearing in new forms in the 20th century. Ethnically Russian and Jewish members of the Russian intelligentsia emigrated to the West and formed relationships there (made friends, fell in love, engaged in creative projects), which often went beyond the scope of personal biographies and became significant facts of cultural history and literature (see Konstantin Azadovsky’s (St. Petersburg) “Balmont and the Jews”. Russian émigré literature includes a Russian-Jewish branch, which was not directly associated with the theory and practice of Zionism even in the literary works of leading Zionists (this point is made by Brian Horowitz (Tulane University, New Orlean) in his “Salutation of Assimilation, or Zionism as Controversy”, an analysis of Vladimir (Ze’ev) Zhabotinsky’s novel The Five). The emerging concept of “the Jewish national homeland” in Palestine (November 1917) and the emigration of Russian Jews there were significant factors for Russian-Jewish dialogue in the 20th century. Documents preserved in Israeli and Russian archives furnish interesting material on both Russian literary history and the history of Israel and Israeli literature (see the articles by Zoya Kopelman (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), “Jewish Tablets and Russian Fetters (a Russian Voice in the Works of the Hebrew Poetess Rachel)” and by Vladimir Khazan “Two extracts on ▒Zionism and the Russian Culture’”. The translation and reception of Israeli literature in Russia in the 1980-2000s is analyzed by Abram Reitblat (New Literary Review, Moscow).
TO MIKHAIL LEONOVICH GASPAROV
ON HIS 70th BIRTHDAY
The section headed “About Gasparov” contains sketches and essays about the works of Mikhail Gasparov, an outstanding philologist, writer, and poetry translator. It features an article by Oleg Proskurin (Moscow) entitled “The Godfather”, Olga Sedakova’s (Moscow State University) essay “Mikhail Leonovich Gasparov”, an article by Yury Leving (George Washington University, Washington DC) “Pro captu lectoris: M.L. Gasparov’s Department of Necessary Things”, an essay on Gasparov’s aphorisms by Manfred Schruba “Science Sharpens One’s Mind, Education Sharpens One’s Memory”, an article by Kirill Kobrin (New Literary Review magazine and Radio Liberty, Prague) entitled “The Universal Book”, a piece by Alexandre Dmitriev, Ilya Kukulin, and Maria Maiofis (New Literary Review magazine, Moscow) called “The entertaining M.L. Gasparov: an heretical academician”. This section also presents photopgraphs of Mikhail Gasparov taken by Alexey Levinson (Levada Center, Moscow), with an accompanying text by the photographer.
A second sub-section entitled “Around Gasparov” features articles on themes that have been important in Mikhail Gasparov’s research: classical philology, the works of Ossip Mandelshtam and other XXth century Russian poets, poetic translation, poetic prosody, commentaries on literary works: Andrey Rossius (Moscow State University), “Once Again on the Homeric Question and on the Rise of the Philological Method”; Jury Orlitsky (Russian State University for Humanities), “Heteromorphic Verse in Russian Poetry”; Irina Kovaleva (Moscow State University), “Psyche at Persephone’s: on the Origins of an Ancient Myth in Mandelshtam’s Verse”; Nikolay Bogomolov (Moscow State University), “▒No-one understands this poem’ (on Vladislav Khodasevich’s poem Bacchus)”; Grigory Dashevsky (Russian State University for Humanities), “Translating in a minus mode…”; Sergey Kozlov (Moscow), “Charles Baudelaire’s Au lecteur: translation and commentary”; Elena Tolstaya (The Hebrew University, Jerusalem), “Having Got Used to Pluck Out the Raisins”; Mikhail Weisskopf (Jerusalem), “Excerpts (A birthday gift to the author of Notes and Extracts)”
EUROPEAN THEATRE OF THE 2000s:
SOCIAL CRITICISM AND THE POETICS OF MYSTERY
Mark Lipovetsky (University of Colorado) “Тhe Theatre of Violence in the Society of Spectacle: The Philosophical Farces of the Presnyakov Brothers”. In this article Mark Lipovetsky proposes to examine ▒new Russian drama’, a broad movement that emerged over the past five or seven years, as a manifestation and at the same time a deconstruction of Soviet and post-Soviet rhetoric and displays of violence. Lipovetsky focuses on the plays of Vladimir and Oleg Presnyakov, two young playwrights whose work has attracted a lot of attention both in Russia and in Western Europe. According to Lipovetsky, these plays mockingly deconstruct the social performances of violence through which their characters manifest their longing for their lost identities and for the “sacred”. In the Presnyakovs’ phantasmagorias, violence appears as a universal simulacrum of the sacred, which, despite its performative nature, produces an effect of utmost reality through pain, destruction, and death.
Maya Mamaladze (Moscow) “A theatre of catastrophic conscience: on Vyacheslav Durnenkov’s philosophical tales/plays against the background of the myths surrounding the ▒New Drama’”. This article deals with the plays of Vyacheslav Durnenkov (b. 1973). Durnenkov’s poetics has its roots in Russian magical fairy-tales. Rich in metaphors, his dramatic writing deconstructs the catastrophic and apocalyptic conscience characteristic of crisis-ridden contemporary Russian society. Dur-nenkov’s plays parody conceptions of the “end of history”; they portray history as a fantastic hallucinatory narrative existing either in characters’ visions, or as a computer model created by alien civilizations.
The section also includes an interview with Valère Novarina (Paris) by Mischa Gabowitsch (Neprikosnovenny Zapas, Moscow and EHESS, Paris): “Theatre can teach us not only language, but also the essence…”. The outstanding French playwright, director and artist explains how comedy films and circus influenced his work, discusses the influence his drawings have on his dramatic writing, talks about his view of the mass media, and reflects on whether his plays can be translated into foreign languages. In this section we also publish a translation of Novarina’s recent essay “The sacrificing actor”, in which the work of the actor is interpreted as a radical way of questioning personality (the actor’s as well as the spectator’s) and language.
The issue also includes an extensive review of books in fiction, literary criticism, and the humanities (sociology, philology, and other disciplines).