Опубликовано в журнале НЛО, номер 5, 2010
POLITICS OF KNOWLEDGE:
INSTITUTIONS AND STRATEGIES
This section acquaints the reader with various strategies for the institutionalisation of knowledge pertaining to the humanities, which have been put into practice during various historical periods. In his article addressing the problems of American universities, “Debating disciplinarity”.
In his article “Modernisation and German school education at the turn of the twentieth century”, Kirill Levinson (Institute of General History, RAS) describes teaching orthography at XIX century German schools as a process of instilling obedience in children. Discipline and obedience were among the principal values for the German educational system of the time, so much so that teachers sought to make children obey spelling rules even when these rules were not yet officially established. For children who spoke diverse dialects at home, learning the contradictory and illogical German spelling rules meant abandoning the idea that writing was a way to put down what they thought. Instead, they had to learn to obey what the teacher or the dictionary prescribed. As a result, in the time of rapid modernization of Germany▒s economy, several generations of German schoolchildren were trained in a way that ran against what modernisation theory regards as indispensable principles of ▒modern’ society, such as free thinking, self-reliance, rational choice, and tolerance.
A conversation between sociologist Aleksandr Bikbov (Logos magazine; Pushkin magazine, Moscow) and Aleksandr Dmitriev (New Literary Observer; State University — Higher School of Economics), “People and Propositions” is devoted to finding an answer to the question: how and why the attitude of openness towards the West characteristic of the humanities community during the perestroika and the early reform periods ended up being replaced by conservative and isolationist attitudes in the 2000s. The authors link that shift not so much to the general political changeover but rather to the “micropolitics” of modern academia. In Russian academic life of the 2000s, both Soviet ideological censorship and the Western collegiate outlook were superseded by the principle of loyalty to one’s immediate academic superior. That factor also predicates the derivative nature of the intellectual product generated within these institutions.
As an appendix to this section of articles, we have included S.N. Shil’s (the pseudonym of S. Orlovsky, 1863—1928) manuscript from the MGU Research Library’s department of rare books and manuscripts, “Towards a history of Kamen, the Moscow literary-artistic circle” represented by Irina Ovchinkina. The circle, which became known as the “Kamen studio” through registration documents, was active in Moscow between 1922—1928. Its aim was to enlighten, educate and develop the creative potential of young people in the face of socialist reality.
FROM THE HISTORY OF 18th CENTURY JOURNALISM:
CULTURAL POLITICS AND THE FORMATION OF IMAGES
OF RUSSIA
This section opens with an article from Vladislav Rzheutsky (Université Paris-Ouest — Nanterre — La Défense), “In Shuvalov’s shadow. Baron de Tschoudy, French cultural liason in Russia”. Rzheutsky outlines the biography of one of the most dramatic personalities of the Enlightenment era — Baron Théodore-Henri de Tschoudy, an adventurer, cultural figure, and publisher of Literary Chameleon, the first Francophone journal in Russia. This journal became an important tool for cultural politics: it helped to bring about a change in ideas about Russia abroad, forming a positive and progressive image. One of the methods used was idealisation of the rule of Peter the Great. An article from Vera Proskurina (Emory University, Atlanta), “The argument over ▒free language’: Fonvizin and Catherine the Great” discusses the polemics between Denis Fonvizin and Catherine II that unfolded on the pages of the journal Interlocutor of Lovers of the Russian Word. Fonvizin anonymously posed a series of questions to the Empress that related directly to the political situation in Russia. In her answers, Catherine (who was not able to determine Fonvizin’s identity right away) strove to create the “true” image of her rule, as well as a new cultural language “invoked to unite cultured society and present her authority in a new light”.
INTERPRETATIONS
In the article “Typo, or The key to the author’s name”, Igor Peshkov (Labyrinth Publishing House, Moscow) declares his support for the popular speculation, among Shakespeare circles, that the real author of “Shakespeare’s” compositions is Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. Peshkov proceeds from the idea that de Vere’s name is cleverly encoded on the pages of the First folio, and particularly, that the pagination was disrupted precisely for this reason: the number 993 on the last page is de Vere’s “signature”. Peshkov maintains that decoding the signature “requires only a very simple code — the Latin alphabet used at the time, plus a few simple principles of gematria, which was also known in the upper circles of European society”. In the article “Voltaire and Feofilakt Kosichkin: on the epigraph to the ▒Triumph of Friendship’ pamphlet”, Konstantin Dushenko (RAS Institute for Scientific Information on the Social Sciences) inquires into the “long-standing” quality of the words In arenam cum aequalibus descendi, which stand as epigraph to Aleksandr Pushkin’s 1831 pamphlet and are there ascribed to Cicero. This locution was also thought to belong to Seneca, as well as being considered abstract “ancient counsel”. Dushenko claims that Pushkin took the phrase from a letter of Voltaire to Abbé Trublé (1761). This letter contains the “most ▒noticeable’ citation of this aphorism — also the earliest one known”. Evgenii Soshkin’s article “Ruslan and Liudmila and the Polish uprisings of 1831 and 1863 in the patriotic poetry of Pushkin and Tiutchev” explores the origin of the “burdensome sleep” motif in a poem by Fyodor Tiutchev written in the summer of 1863, during the suppression of the Polish uprising. This poem “quickly became and long remained the standard depiction of suppressed rebellion as a recurring apparition”. The aforementioned motif would later be encountered in the work of Nikolai Nekrasov, Mikhail Zenkevich and Sergei Solovyov — but it traces back to Aleksandr Pushkin’s Ruslan and Liudmila.
IN MEMORIAM
ALEKSEI PESKOV (1953—2009)
This section is devoted to the memory of the philologist and MGU professor Aleksei Peskov. Peskov was the author of books on Pavel I, Evgenii Baratynsky (the subject of Peskov’s most in-depth scholarly and publishing projects) and on Russian historiosophy. At MGU, he taught the history of 18th-century Russian literature, Russian poetry of the first third of the 19th century, history of Russian culture, and philosophy of history in 19th–20th century Russia. Vera Milchina, Natalya Mazur and Alina Bodrova have recorded some of their reminiscences of Peskov. Included in this section are some of Peskov’s humorous compositions written under the pseudonym Alex Sendow, and an excerpt from a chapter of his unpublished book on the pre-history of cyclisation in XVIII and early XIX century Russian poetry.
D.A. PRIGOV’S (POST)THEOLOGICAL PROJECT
This section was timed to coincide with the 70-year anniversary of the birth of Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov (5.11.1940 — 16.07.2007) and the publication of his play God’s Place (1973) and cycle of poems The pre-coming of post-sanctity (1992) in the “Belles-lettres” section. At first glance, Prigov’s work — which presents itself as a ceaseless textual game with masks, images and role-playing strategies — treats religious and metaphysical motifs exclusively from a position of ironic distance or with the aim of dethroning or devaluing. However, a significant series of texts (among them the play God’s Place) attest to the existence of Prigov’s own “theological project”. Prigov’s highly unusual and grotesque “(post)theology” is extraordinarily distant from ecclesiastical and doctrinal explanations for the world order, orthodox views and confessional models. The focus here very often turns out to be the search for the transcendental, and the (im)possibility of communion with it in a postmodern situation.
In the article ”No place: Prigov and disparities”, Igor Chubarov (RAS Insitute of Philosophy, Moscow) reads Prigov’s early play as a satirical social psycho-drama, describing the “ruptured” consciousness of the Russian-Soviet intelligentsia that required “metaphysical crutches” — whether the “one true doctrine” (scholarly communism) or becoming a churchgoer — in order to gather the disintegrating elements of the world into a cohesive picture. In his article “A monster’s place is never empty: the divine and monstrous in
D.A. Prigov’s theological project”, Dmitry Golynko-Volfson (Russian Institute of Art History, St. Petersburg) conducts an original cataloguing of theological topics in Prigov’s work. His research focuses on the “anthropological turn” connected with computerisation and the appearance of new electronic media and biotechnologies. These generate new “monstrous” forms of the Other, and new, frightening and yet inviting archetypes of religious (self)consciousness, sometimes more eschatological than the persistent Judeo-Christian or Buddhist conceptions. The section closes with a memorial piece by Grisha Bruskin (New York), “Second friendly epistle to the dead-for-real Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov from Bruskin Grigory Davydovich”.
CHARLES OLSON AND “OPEN FORM”
Charles Olson (1910—1970), whose 100-year anniversary is presently being marked in the United States, was an eminent poet and theoretician and a major (after Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound) reformer of poetic language. His views on poetic practice, language and culture irrevocably changed the postwar American literary situation. Yet, he is virtually unknown in Russia. This section seeks to fill in this lacuna. In his famous essay-manifesto “Projective Verse” (1950), published here, Olson formulates a concept of poetry as open form, as an “open field composition”. Recalling the reactions of Olson’s contemporaries to his essay, Robert Creely wrote: “It was an excitement many of us shared, because what confronted us in 1950 was a closed system indeed, poems patterned upon exterior and traditionally accepted models. The New Criticism of that period was dominant and would not admit the possibility of verse considered as an “open field”. Next is Charles Bernstein’s “A note on Charles Olson’s ▒The Kingfishers’ for Arkadii Dragomoschenko’s translation”, followed by a translation of this central Olson poem and “Notes” by Arkadii Dragomoshchenko. In form a detailed commentary on the translation of “The Kingfishers”, the “Notes” are actually an outline of Olson’s life and poetics, his place in post-war American poetry. The section closes with a selection of Olson’s poems from the late 1940s — early 1950s.