Russian Literature: A Very Short Introduction

Although this book is not meant to be a conventional literary history, I am determined to follow convention in one respect: by thanking those who helped with the writing of it. George Miller gently bullied me into the idea of writing a ‘very short’ introduction in the first place, and offered an exemplary mixture of commitment, constructive criticism, and technical guidance as the book took shape. Catherine Humphries and Alyson Lacewing saw the typescript through to press. Several anonymous readers made suggestions that helped me improve the first draft; more general help with lines of approach came from conversations with friends such as Mikhail Leonovich Gasparov, Barbara Heldt, Stephen Lovell, David Shepherd, Gerry Smith, and Alexander Zholkovsky, as well as from the studies of Russian literature and culture listed in my suggestions for further reading. Martin McLaughlin’s gift of his Calvino translation was a great help with Chapter 1.

In an introductory book of this kind, though, it is above all one’s teachers that one thinks of. In my undergraduate days at Oxford, Anne Pennington’s wise tolerance and deep love of Russian poetry was complemented by Ronald Hingley’s fierce expression of enthusiasms and detestations, and insistence that Russian writers must be seen as part of a wider literary world. I hope this book is a worthy tribute to them, and also to the students I have taught in Oxford and at the University of London, whose sceptical questions, creative ideas, and refusal to take anything for granted are a constant delight and an unfailing inspiration.

Contents

List of illustrations

List of Maps

1 Testament

2 ‘I have raised myself a monument’: writer memorials and cults

3 ‘Tidings of me will go out over all great Rus’: Pushkin and the Russian literary canon

4 ‘I shall be famous as long as another poet lives’: writers’ responses to Pushkin

5 ‘Awakening noble feelings with my lyre’: writers as ‘masters of minds’

6 ‘And don’t dispute with fools’: men, women, and society

7 ‘Every tribe and every tongue will name me’: Russian literature and ‘primitive culture’

8 ‘O muse, be obedient to the command of God’: the spiritual and material worlds

Further reading

Index

List of illustrations

1

Portrait of Aleksandr Pushkin by Vasily Tropinin (1827) Novosti (London)

2

Statue of Pushkin, Pushkin Square, Moscow (A. M. Opekushin, 1880) Catriona Kelly

3

Ilya Repin,

Pushkin Reciting his Poem ‘Reminiscences of Tsarskoe Selo’ at the Lyceum Speech Day, 8 January 1815

(1911) Art Collections of Prague Castle, Inv. Nr. 0538

4

A Pushkin-shaped bottle of vodka S. Librovich,

Pushkin v portretakh: Istoriya izobrazheniya poeta v zhivopisi, gravyure, i skul’pture

(St Petersburg, 1890); Taylor Institution, Oxford

5

Graffiti showing Woland from

The Master and Margarita

in ‘Margarita’s house’, Moscow John Bushnell

6

Double statue of Pushkin and Natalya, unveiled for the bicentenary in 1999, Arbat, Moscow Novosti (London)

7

Front cover of

Evgeny Onegin: Chapter One

(1825) By permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University

8

Front cover of

Apollo

, no. 6, 1913

Taylor Institution, Oxford

9

Pushkin, draft of

Tazit

(1830), with scored-out self-portrait in laurel wreath

10

Aleksey Remizov, ‘A Dream of Pushkin’ (1937)

11

V. Klutsis, poster for the Pushkin Jubilee of 1937

David King Collection

12 Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, design for the final act of Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen of Spades

R. Fülöp-Miller and J. Gregor,

The Russian Theatre

(Harrap, 1930)

13 Sergei Eisenstein’s staging of Ostrovsky, Too Clever By Half (1923) R. Fülöp-Miller and J. Gregor, The Russian Theatre (Harrap, 1930)

14 Cartoon of two writers by Yu. Gorokhov (Krokodil 18, 1952) Taylor Institution, Oxford

15 Pushkin declaiming his verses to ‘The Green Lamp’ literary society Hulton Archive

16 Aleksandr Pushkin, self-portrait in female dress 17 Igor Geitman, Portrait of Aleksandr Pushkin

18 A Circassian warrior W. Miller, The Costume of the Russian Empire (1803)

19 A Cossack soldier

Stapleton Collection/Bridgeman Art Library (London)

20 ‘Don’t Weep for Me, Mother’: The Saviour not Made by Human Hands with Saints. Icon for Holy Week State Russian Museum, St Petersburg

List of Maps

1 The Russian Empire, showing places with literary associations

2 Central Moscow, showing some of the main monuments and museums

Map 1

The Russian Empire, showing places with literary associations.

Map 2

Central Moscow, showing some of the main monuments and museums.

Key

Chapter 1

Testament