Philosophy of Russian Literature

This paper explores Sigmund Freud's concept of repression in the existential strife exhibited by two main characters, Makar Alexyevitch and Varvara Alexyevna, in Fyodor Dostoevsky's "Poor People." To demonstrate this, I psychoanalyze of how they handle their repressed desires, emphasizing the necessity of Freud's main rule for this method: Openness. Dostoevsky's "Poor People" presents an existential crisis handled through openness and mishandled when an individual represses one's desires. In delving into Dostoevsky's first novel, I demonstrate a link between the existential (...) and psychological, wherein individuals strive to overcome themselves. Surprisingly, this link has a common influence between Dostoevsky and Freud: Immanuel Kant. I briefly discuss this shared similarity to show the basic idea of an "existential middle" derived from a Freudian psychoanalysis of Dostoevsky's "Poor People.". (shrink)

This article is a review of the latest edition of the Encyclopedia of Russian Philosophy, the result of the work of a team of Russian specialists in philosophy and human sciences, edited by M. A. Maslin, professor of History of Russian Philosophy at Moscow University. However, it is also intended to be an assessment of the conditions that legitimate the denomination ‘Russian philosophy’, and a reflection on the character and orientations of Russian thought, especially in the period before and after (...) the Revolution of 1917. (shrink)

Zamyatin and Kantian Ethics: Freedom and Happiness in We Resumen: Nosotros cumple un siglo y, a diferencia de otras distopías, no existen muchos estudios en español sobre ella. En este trabajo se analiza la perspectiva de la ética retratada en la novela y en especial el conflicto entre libertad y felicidad como una dicotomía en la cual se privilegia a la felicidad sobre la libertad. Tras analizar las referencias a Kant en la obra, se concluye que es verosímil considerar que (...) la postura del escritor ruso se asemeja a la de la ética kantiana. Finalmente, se sostiene que la dicotomía entre libertad y felicidad es una falsa dicotomía.: Since a century ago when it has been written, We has not been the focus of the Spanish critical attention, in contradistinction to other dystopias This work analyzes the perspective on ethics portrayed in the novel and especially the conflict between freedom and happiness as a dichotomy in which happiness is privileged over freedom. After analyzing the references to Kant in the work, it is concluded that it is plausible to consider that the position of the Russian writer is similar to that of Kantian ethics. Finally, it is argued that the dichotomy between freedom and happiness is a false dichotomy. (shrink)

Se Radiščev occupa un posto considerevole nella storia del pensiero russo lo deve non al suo trattato Sull’uomo, la sua mortalità e immortalità [O Čeloveke, o ego smertnosti i bessmertii] bensì al Viaggio da Pietroburgo a Mosca [Putešestvie iz Peterburga v Moskvu], opera che gli procurò la condanna a morte da parte di Caterina II, commutata poi nel lungo esilio in Siberia. Qui egli scrisse il suo trattato filosofico che non poche perplessità ha suscitato nei critici, i quali ne hanno (...) denunciato incongruenze e discontinuità, quando non lo hanno definito un’opera compilativa di nessun valore propriamente filosofico. Eppure, nonostante l’evidente diversità strutturale e stilistica, tra le due opere c’è una continuità che non va ignorata. In entrambi gli scritti il tema fondamentale è l’uomo e l’analisi muove sempre dalla situazione concreta ed esperita del suo vivere, in cui il sentimento gioca un ruolo essenziale. (shrink)

In this paper I intend to argue that Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, one of the lead characters of the novel War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy, can be taken as a Schopenhauerian hero.

SUMMARYMachine Translation is now ubiquitous in discussions of translation. The roots of this phenomenon — first publicly unveiled in the so-called ‘Georgetown-IBM Experiment’ on 9 January 1954 — displayed not only the technological utopianism still associated with dreams of a universal computer translator, but was deeply enmeshed in the political pressures of the Cold War and a dominating conception of scientific writing as both the goal of machine translation as well as its method. Machine translation was created, in part, as (...) a solution to a perceived crisis sparked by the massive expansion of Soviet science. Scientific prose was also perceived as linguistically simpler, and so served as the model for how to turn a language into a series of algorithms. This paper follows the rise of the Georgetown program — the largest single program in the world — from 1954 to the collapse of MT in 1964. (shrink)

In the article the influence of Russian literary criticism on writings of Mikhail Naimy, the world renowned figure in modern Arabic literature, is studied. Together other Arab-American men of letters he founded the Pen Association, a literary league in New York that lifted Arabic literature from the quagmire of stagnation, imitation and old classicism. They also promoted the new generation of Arab writers and made it an active force in Arab nationalism. In this article the author touches upon the only (...) one aspect of Naimy’s multifaceted literary efforts, his literary criticism. The article is focused on the key role of the Russian influence in its development. We would claim that along with Arabic influence the American and Western Europe literary traditions played a secondary role in Naimy’s development. Only the Russian school had produced a developed theory of criticism and an understanding of literature that positioned the critic, along with the writer, as a social reformer, and viewed criticism along with writing as a social labor. It was Russian literature that had the most important impact on Naimy. This influence has still only been studied superficially aside from some Soviet era analyses. The article makes a much-needed contribution to this blank spot, since the Russian authors contributed greatly to the foundation of the modern Arabic literature. It also sheds light on global literary processes, as Naimy was able to synthesize Russian, European and American literary and critical traditions into his native Arabic heritage. The study has significant methodological value, as it will identify the typology and significance of cultural contacts, based on the example of influence mentioned above. It will also contribute to an important topic of the renewed interest in the academy - Russian influences and impacts in the Middle East and in Arabic culture and literature. (shrink)

Playing with the reader is one of the main characteristics of V. Nabokov’s creativity. His books is a ‘literary crossword puzzle‘, charade, and mystification that demand parity, intellectually equal, and with the similar art preferences reader. Reader equally participates with author in an esthetic process. The reader follows the writer-‘wizard‘ in the text, and first, enters game process to take esthetic ‘pleasure from the text‘; second, he is getting involved in the ‘composite games by rules‘. The main means of the (...) organization of literary game in Russian-language novels of V. Nabokov is a play with ‘someone else’s word‘. V. Nabokov addressed to someone else’s texts to mock social writers or to degrade a certain hero in parodic and ironic ways. The writer in ‘someone else’s word‘ did not mock predecessors similar to his own spirit, but discredited a modern person who disappeared from the world of the real culture. One of the important composition elements of game in V. Nabokov’s novels is symbolics of key. The theme of keys obviously or indirectly sounds both in the debut Nabokov’s novel ‘Mashenka‘, and in later books: ‘Invitation to execution‘, ‘Luzhin’s Protection‘, ‘Feat‘, and ‘Gift‘. A number of motives is connected with the theme of keys and the closed doors: wandering, homelessness, downtime, initiation, and crossing. The process of searching for those keys is an attempt to find answers to ontological questions, and this is essential for V. Nabokov. (shrink)

The author focuses on the functioning of intertextemes with omocomplex ‘it‘ in the works of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, Z. Gippius, A. Belyi. The various literary interpretation of the phrase ‘it came‘ from the novel ‘The Story of a City‘ that depend on the historical and cultural context reading of the work are given. The author contends that the nominalized pronoun it in the lyrics Z. Gippius transforms to diffuse the image of the crowd-element that helps lyrical works in 1905 to (...) convey a sense of danger and the meaninglessness of natural rebellion. Sound-letter mimetism is found in the works of A. Bely, the founder of the direction of ‘ornamental prose‘, which continues to develop the theme of the apocalypse. The authors note that omocomplex ‘it‘ can be represented by a pronoun-noun. It is immutable word, distributed segregated agreed definition. This gives the author the opportunity to speak about the terminological use of omocomplex as omocomplex unit presented in the text segment in opposition to another terminological nominalized addicting third person pronoun: ‘not me‘ and ‘it‘. (shrink)

The problem of teaching and learning of Russian language and literature in schools with native language of teaching related to the implementation of the principle of dialogue between cultures. The article draws on the results of the survey of graduates of the two high schools of Kazan: School #2 with teaching in Tatar language and school #37 with teaching in Russian-language. The results of the survey are associated with the problems of bilingualism, multiculturalism and bimentality. Graduates from Tatar language gymnasium (...) are bilingual and fluent in Russian and Tatar languages. 97% of graduates of Tatar gymnasium speak, read and write free in their native language and 96% in Russian. Bilingualism acts in this case like one of the manifestations of inter-ethnic interaction, a particular manifestation of biculturalism. In the National School dialogue of cultures passes through a system of parallel study of both Russian and Tatar languages and literatures: the formation of a bicultural, bilingual, bimental personality able to perceive not only the native culture, but also other culture as the native is taking place. (shrink)

In this article, the author concentrates on the space of contemporary Russian poetry and through the means of allusive proper names specifically focuses upon reflections of international culture. In this regard, expressive possibilities, text-formation role, as well as typological, semantic and functional characteristics of allusive proper names are considered. Attempts are made to analyze, formulate basic mechanisms of intertextual connections and identify the readers’ role in the creation of meaning of precedent anthroponyms in accordance with the context of the world (...) cultural heritage. The corpus of the texts, which we deal with, demonstrate that precedent anthroponyms function as an implement of parody and a way of ciphering some semantic of the intentions. Thus, a mechanism of contextual augmentation of cultural implications comes into effect at the readers’ perception of a connotative meaning of precedent names. Here at a close interaction between some common cultural and author’s individual connotations, which is provoked by consciousness of poet and reader and their creativity, are realized. References to ancient and Biblical heroes, as well as to other famous people, have a rich spectrum of connotations as a consequence and form a wide space for semantic games, interweaving and variations of meanings, which are typical for postmodern discourse and present day human’s world view. Such frames of mind on the one hand, explain the high frequency of desperate motives, ironic or sometimes even cynical attitude of the lyrical subject to the reality in which he lives. On the other hand, applying precedent names, using such anthroponyms, contemporary authors try to use cultural basic units, in order to save significant constants, guiding line, which the cultural inheritance of the past centuries generously provides. (shrink)

"Mikhail Bulgakov: Heart Of A Dog – A Reading" is an allegory of a dog read trough the historical and political context of the Soviet reality.

Quest’opera di Karsavin, di cui si presenta qui la prima traduzione e che viene riedita per la prima volta a Mosca dopo la sua pubblicazione a Berlino nel 1923, è senza dubbio la meno fortunata tra quelle dell’autore, a giudicare dal lungo silenzio che l’ha accompagnata. Ciò naturalmente suscita qualche interrogativo, dal momento che la maggior parte degli scritti di questo autore, non soltanto quelli pubblicati all’estero, ma anche quelli già pubblicati in patria prima dell’espulsione, sono stati riediti negli anni (...) ’90 e alcuni di essi sono stati tradotti in italiano, in francese e in lituano. Il libro su Giordano Bruno non appartiene certo alle opere minori di Karsavin, e non soltanto per l’ampiezza, ma soprattutto per l’impostazione che lo colloca nel periodo della riflessione filosofica più matura dell’autore. (shrink)

This book explores Dostoevsky as a political thinker from his religious and philosophical foundation to nineteenth-century European politics and how themes that he had examined are still relevant for us today.

According to the Russian tradition literature is something more than only literature. In the special situation, the writers take over functions of scientific disciplines such as philosophy, ethics, the press or the political parties. These trends intensify during critical periods when Russia has to solve a problem of its national identity. The aim of the present text is an attempt to present how contemporary Russian “patriotical” literature is insistently fighting to keep monopoly on spiritual leadership in democratizing Russia. Petrifying specific (...) tradition, the writers are diagnosing all signs of evil, tracing either actual or potential wrongdoers. Their wish is to realize the vision of an autarchic Russia as a special being. Literature not only supports ideology—especially conservative, right—wing ideology, but also becomes the ideology itself. (shrink)

"In this book, Evgenia Cherkasova brings the philosopher Kant and the novelist Dostoevsky together in conversations that probe why duty is central to our moral life. She shows that just as Dostoevsky is indebted to Kant, so Kant would profit from the deeply philosophical narratives of Dostoevsky, which engage the problem of evil and the claims of human community. She not only produces a novel reading of Dostoevsky, but also guides us to later, often neglected Kantian texts. This study is (...) written with scholarly care, penetrating analysis, elegance of style, and moral urgency: Cherkasova writes with both mind and heart." Emily Grosholz, Professor of Philosophy, The Pennsylvania State University Social Philosophy (SP), in conjunction with the Center for Ethics, Peace and Social Justice, SUNY Cortland, explores theoretical and applied issues in contemporary social philosophy, drawing on a variety of philosophical traditions. (shrink)

Vasilij Zhukovskij’s Sel’skoe kladbische, a translation of Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, occupies a special place in Russian literary history. First published in 1802, it was so widely imitated by later Russian poets that it came to be regarded as a “landmark of Russian literature”, not only at a boundary between two cultures but also at a boundary within Russian culture itself — the transition from Neoclassical to Romantic aesthetics. Zhukovskij’s translation of Gray can be read as (...) the end result of a long process of personal education in the sign system of Sentimentalism, in both its European and its Russian variants, which then reproduced itself in an impersonal way within his culture as a whole. Zhukovskij did not merely reinscribe Gray’s poem into Russian. Rather, he used it to deploy the developing Russian Sentimentalist style within a wide range of lyric registers, thereby providing models for other Russian lyric poets. In this sense, his work exemplifies Juri Lotman’s dictum that “the elementary act of thinking is translation” — it made itpossible for Russian poets to think within an entirely new, though by no means foreign system of signs. (shrink)

The second half of the nineteenth century was a turbulent and momentous time in Russian history, during which were sown the seeds of the revolution that would rout the monarchy and transform Russian society in the next century. In literature, this was the age of the great Realist novel, of the novelists and novels that first put Russian literature on the map of European culture.

This brief text assists students in understanding Dostoevsky's philosophy and thinking so they can more fully engage in useful, intelligent class dialogue and improve their understanding of course content. Part of the Wadsworth Notes Series,, ON DOSTOEVSKY is written by a philosopher deeply versed in the philosophy of this key thinker. Like other books in the series, this concise book offers sufficient insight into the thinking of a notable philosopher, better enabling students to engage in reading and to discuss the (...) material in class and on paper. (shrink)

This study is devoted to the authors who began the revival of the Russian avantgarde tradition, which was suppressed by the Soviet authorities in the 1930s. Most of them emerged from obscurity in the early 1990s. This book aims to fill in gaps in the scholarship on the Russian literary avantgarde during its least investigated period.

Dostoevsky is one of Russia's greatest novelists and a major influence in modern debates about religion, both in Russia and the West. This collection brings together Western and Russian perspectives on the issues raised by the religious element in his work. The aim of this collection is not to abstract Dostoevsky's religious 'teaching' from his literary works, but to explore the interaction between his Christian faith and his writing. The essays cover such topics as temptation, grace and law, Dostoevsky's use (...) of the gospels and hagiography, Trinitarianism, and the Russian tradition of the veneration of icons, as well as reading aloud, and dialogism. In addition to an exploration of the impact of the Christian tradition on Dostoevsky's major novels, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov, there are also discussions of lesser-known works such as The Landlady and A Little Boy at Christ's Christmas Tree. (shrink)

Sots-art, the mock use of the Soviet ideological clichés of mass culture, originated in Soviet nonconformist art of the early 1970s. An original and provocative guide, Endquote: Sots-Art Literature and Soviet Grand Style examines the conceptual aspect of sots-art, sots-art poetry, and sots-art prose, and discusses where these still-vital intellectual currents may lead.

This dissertation is an attempt to find a single framework for understanding two seemingly conflicting aspects of Nabokov's Russian novels---the metaphysical and the existential. The metaphysical aspect is analyzed according to Leibniz's "Monadology," with its key concepts of the monad, pre-established harmony, the optimization of the universe, and sufficient reason. The existential aspect is examined according to Sartre's theory of the gaze from "Being and Nothingness"; its main notions are being-for-another, radical individuation and intersubjective struggle. Concern with the level of (...) being is assumed to be the most basic and unifying element of the Nabokovian worldview. It is shown that Nabokov conceives individual being as value, and that he understands self-authorship as self-ownership. The value of individual being is threatened by intersubjective contact: the other, via the gaze, can undermine its property status, and eventually alienate it. All particular plots are derived from these underlying premises. The key Nabokovian themes of blindness, non-transparency, loss, memory and art are demonstrated to refer back to the root concepts of the gaze and self-protection. ;The dissertation develops two original conceptual tools: a theory of unreliable focalization and a theory of paranoid experience ;Close readings of Nabokov's texts have resulted in several philological findings. Structural and textual parallels have been discovered between "Mashen'ka" and Shakespeare's "Hamlet," as well as between "Priglashenie na kazn'" and Descartes' "Meditations." It has also been shown that the protagonist's story in "Zashchita Luzhina" is repeated four times and not two. (shrink)

Charlatan, magician, heroic man of action, revolutionary... Gurdjieff's rich and vivid life conjures up conflicting images. But who was the real Gurdjieff? On the fiftieth anniversary of Gurdjieff's death, James Moore draws on a lifetime's contact with Gurdjieffian pupils to tell the compelling and extraordinary stow of this eclectic revolutionary: his studies with the Red Hat Tibetan Lamas at the turn of the century, his travels disguised as a dervish, and how he was shot and almost killed twice. This inveterate (...) and restless seeker of the truth coaxed from archaic sources relevant philosophy that drew tides of men and women to his cause. Through the humanity and dry humor of his writing, and through scholarship evidenced in an unprecedented note section, Moore offers the reader an entertaining and reliable introduction to one of the most remarkable men of this century. (shrink)