Mandelstam, Blok, and the boundaries of mythopoetic symbolism / Stuart Goldberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Goldberg, Stuart, 1971-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Blok, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, 1880-1921.

Mandelʹshtam, Osip, 1891-1938.

Russian poetry--20th century--History and criticism.

Russian poetry.

Symbolism in literature.

Mandelʹshtam, Osip, 1891-1938--Criticism and interpretation.

Mandelʹshtam, Osip.

Blok, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, 1880-1921--Criticism and interpretation.

Blok, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

xiii, 305 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Columbus : Ohio State University Press, [2011]

Summary:

"Mandelstam had no teacher," marveled Anna Akhmatova, reflecting on his early maturity and singularity. But Mandelstam himself spoke of the need and even duty to study a poet's literary roots. So how did this consummately complex, compelling, multiresonant poet navigate and exploit the burden of the Russian Symbolist movement from which he emerged? How did this process change and augment his poetry?

Through a series of illuminating readings, Stuart Goldberg explores the ongoing role that the poetry of Russian Symbolism played in Osip Mandelstam's creative life, laying bare the poet's productive play with distance and immediacy in his assimilation of the Symbolist heritage. At the same time, Mandelstam, Blok, and the Boundaries of Mythopoetic Symbolism presents the first coherent narrative of the poet's fraught relationship with Alexander Blok, the most powerful poetic voice among the Symbolists. This dialogue, which was largely one-sided, extended beyond poetic intertext into the realms of poetics, charisma, and personality.

Goldberg's study pushes theoretical boundaries, exploring the juncture between pragmatics and intertext, adapting and challenging Bloom's anxiety of influence theory, and, ultimately, tracing a shift in the nature of sincerity and authenticity that divided poetic generations. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I

Chapter 1 Introduction 3

Immediacy and Distance 3

"The living and dangerous Blok ..." 6

Symbolism and Acmeism: An Overview 8

The Curtain and the Onionskin 15

Chapter 2 Prescient Evasions of Bloom 21

Part II

Chapter 3 Departure 35

Chapter 4 The Pendulum at the Heart of Stone 49

Chapter 5 Struggling with the Faith 56

Ambivalent Irony and the Word 57

Inverting the Symbolist Heresiography 64

Stumbling into a New Poetics 71

Stealing the Sanctuary 79

Part III

Chapter 6 Bedside with the Symbolist Hero 85

Chapter 7 The Superficial and the Profound 100

Fodder for Parody 100

Modernist Time Poetics 105

The Mythopoetics of Tristia 109

Chapter 8 Blok's Theater Poems 130

Chapter 9 Boundaries Erected, Boundaries Effaced 147

Masquerade Bounded 148

Theatrical Wonder Breaks Free 153

Part IV

Chapter 10 "To Anaxagoras" in the Velvet Night 167

Visions Apart 172

"To Anaxagoras" in the Velvet Night 176

Chapter 11 From Theatricality to Tragedy 185

Chapter 12 Of Badgers and Barstvennost' 197

Chapter 13 Conclusion: Whence (and Whither) Authenticity? 211.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN:

9780814211595

0814211593

OCLC:

713834563