Realizing metaphors : Alexander Pushkin and the life of the poet / David M. Bethea.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bethea, David M., 1948-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Metaphor.

Poets, Russian--19th century--Biography.

Poets, Russian.

Derzhavin, Gavriil Romanovich, 1743-1816--Influence.

Derzhavin, Gavriil Romanovich.

Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich, 1799-1837.

Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (264 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Madison : University of Wisconsin Press, c1998.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Readers often have regarded with curiosity the creative life of the poet. In this passionate and authoritative new study, David Bethea illustrates the relation between the art and life of nineteenth-century poet Alexander Pushkin, the central figure in Russian thought and culture. Bethea shows how Pushkin, on the eve of his two-hundredth birthday, still speaks to our time. He indicates how we as modern readers might "realize"- that is, not only grasp cognitively, but feel, experience-the promethean metaphors central to the poet's intensely "sculpted" life. The Pushkin who emerges from Bethea's portrait is one who, long unknown to English-language readers, closely resembles the original both psychologically and artistically. Bethea begins by addressing the influential thinkers Freud, Bloom, Jakobson, and Lotman to show that their premises do not, by themselves, adequately account for Pushkin's psychology of creation or his version of the "life of the poet." He then proposes his own versatile model of reading, and goes on to sketches the tangled connections between Pushkin and his great compatriot, the eighteenth-century poet Gavrila Derzhavin. Pushkin simultaneously advanced toward and retreated from the shadow of his predecessor as he created notions of poet-in-history and inspiration new for his time and absolutely determinative for the tradition thereafter.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgements

A Note on Translitreration

Abbreviations

Part 1: Realizing Metaphors, Situating Pushkin

Why Pushkin

The Problem of Poetic Biography

Freud: The Curse of the Literally Figurative

Bloom: The Critic as Romantic Poet

Jakobson: Why the Statue Won't Come to Life, or Will It?

Lotman: The Code and Its Relation to Leterary Biography

Part II: Pushkin, Derzhavin, and the Life of the Poet

Why Derzhavin?

1814-1815

1825-1826

1830-1831

1836

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780299159733

0299159736