The irony of the ideal : paradoxes of Russian literature / Mikhail Epstein ; translated by A.S. Brown.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Epstein, Mikhail, author.

Contributor:

Brown, A. S. (Avram S.), translator.

Series:

Ars Rossika.

Ars Rossica

Standardized Title:

Ironii͡a ideala. English

Language:

English

Russian

Subjects (All):

Russian literature--History and criticism.

Russian literature.

Paradox in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (456 pages).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Boston : Academic Studies Press, 2018.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

This book explores the major paradoxes of Russian literature as a manifestation of both tragic and ironic contradictions of human nature and national character. Russian literature, from Pushkin and Gogol to Chekhov, Nabokov and to postmodernist writers, is studied as a holistic text that plays on the reversal of such opposites as being and nothingness, reality and simulation, and rationality and absurdity. The glorification of Mother Russia exposes her character as a witch; a little man is transformed into a Christ figure; consistent rationality betrays its inherent madness, and extreme verbosity produces the effect of silence. The greatest Russian writers were masters of spiritual self-denial and artistic self-destruction, which explains many paradoxes and unpredictable twists of Russian history up to our time.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Translator's Note

Introduction

Part I: The Titanic and the Demonic: Faust's Heirs

1. Faust and Peter on the Seashore: From Goethe to Pushkin

2. The Bronze Horseman and the Golden Fish: Pushkin's Fairy Tale-Poem

3. The Motherland-Witch: The Irony of Style in Nikolai Gogol

Part II: The Great in the Little: Bashmachkin's Offspring

1. The Saintly Scribe: Akaky Bashmachkin and Prince Myshkin

2. The Figure of Repetition: The Philosopher Nikolai Fedorov and His Literary Prototypes

3. The Little Man in a Case: The Bashmachkin-Belikov Syndrome

Part III: The Irony of Harmony

1. Childhood and the Myth of Harmony

2. The Defamiliarization of Lev Tolstoy

3. Soviet Heroics and the Oedipus Complex

Part IV: Being as Nothingness

1. A Farewell to Objects, or, the Nabokovian in Nabokov

2. The Secret of Being and Nonbeing in Vladimir Nabokov

3. Andrei Platonov between Nonbeing and Resurrection

4. Dream and Battle: Oblomov, Korchagin, Kopenkin

Part V: The Silence of the Word

1. Language and Silence as Forms of Being

2. The Ideology and Magic of the Word: Anton Chekhov, Daniil Kharms, and Vladimir Sorokin

3. The Russian Code of Silence: Politics and Mysticism

Part VI: Madness and Reason

1. Methods of Madness and Madness as a Method: Poets and Philosophers

2. Poetry as Ecstasy and as Interpretation: Boris Pasternak and Osip Mandel'shtam

3. The Lyric of Idiotic Reason: Folkloric Philosophy in Dmitrii Prigov

The Cyclical Development of Russian Literature

Conclusion

Works Cited

Index of Subjects

Index of Names

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-61811-633-9

OCLC:

1028941744