AATSEEL 2000: Washington, DC Conference Program

Non-Panel Events

Time: December 27, 2:00–5:00 p.m. Event: Executive Council Meeting Time: December 27, 3:00–9:00 p.m. Event: Exhibitor Setup (Exhibitors Only) Time: December 27, 4:00–8:00 p.m. Event: Conference Registration Time: December 27, 5:00–7:00 p.m. Event: Program Committee Meeting Time: December 27, 7:00–9:00 p.m. Event: AWSS Interviewing Workshop (Open to the Public, Preregistration Not Required) Time: December 28, 7:30 a.m.–7:00 p.m. Event: Conference Registration Time: December 28, 9:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Event: Exhibits Open Time: December 28, 5:00–7:00 p.m. Event: ACTR Board Meeting Time: December 28, 7:00–9:00 p.m. Event: Reception for Friends of the Middlebury and Norwich Russian Schools Time: December 28, 7:00–9:00 p.m. Event: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Reception Time: December 28, 7:30–8:30 p.m. Event: Committee on College and Pre-College Russian (CCPCR) Meeting Time: December 28, 9:00 p.m. Event: AATSEEL President’s Reception and Awards Recognitions, with entertainment by the Luther College Balalaika Ensemble (Laurie Iudin-Nelson, Director) Time: December 29, 7:30 a.m.–7:00 p.m. Event: Conference Registration Time: December 29, 8:00 a.m.–10:00 a.m. Event: Slava/Olympiada Breakfast for Pre-College Teachers of Russian Time: December 29, 9:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Event: Exhibits Open Time: December 29,10:15 a.m.–10:45 a.m. Event: AATSEEL Business Meeting and General Session Time: December 29, 10:45 a.m.–12:00 p.m. Event: Vision 20/20 Time: December 29, 4:00–7:00 p.m. Event: Indiana University Reception Time: December 29, 5:15–6:30 p.m. Event: ACTR General Membership Meeting Time: December 29, 7:00–11:00 p.m. Event: ACTR Twenty-Fifth-Anniversary Reception Time: December 30, 7:00–10:00 a.m. Event: Executive Council Meeting Time: December 30, 9:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m. Event: Exhibits Open Time: December 30, 12:00–1:00 p.m. Event: Program Committee Meeting Time: December 30, 1:30–2:30 p.m. Event: Silent Book Auction

Panels Time: 28A Panel: 28A-1: Philosophy and Russian Modernism Chair: Jane Gary Harris, University of Pittsburgh Equipment: Overhead projector Slot: December 28, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m.

From the “Blossoming Heart” to the “Rose of the World.” Daniil Andreev and Russian Symbolism Alexei Bogdanov, University of Colorado Daniil Andreev’s recently discovered visionary writings require a thorough examination in the light of the occult tradition in literature and philosophy. The works of Russian symbolists, whom Andreev called “my teachers and my ancient and stainless love,” provide an important link between the author of “The Rose of the World” and earlier sources of his knowledge and inspiration, both Western (Pythagoreans, Gnostics, Neoplatonists, Dante, Swedenborg, Blake, Romanticists, and Vladimir Solov′ev, among others) and Eastern (particularly Hindu and Buddhist). “Frighteningly, to a shudder, Andrej Belyj’s ‘heart is blossoming,’” Aleksandr Blok wrote in 1902. Blok was extolling Belyj’s emerging theory of symbolism as a “renewal of the oppressive Kantian epistemology.” Belyj’s goal was to reconcile the practice of symbolist poetry as spontaneous mystical creation with a conceptual system that would establish symbolism as an elaborate contemporary theory of cognition. In this paper, I argue that Andreev’s account and analysis of his mystical experiences related to artistic expression—his “metacriticism”—serves the same purpose and further develops the conceptual framework of symbolism as visionary art. For example, Belyj employed Solov′ev’s teaching of universal love, with its emphasis on the spiritual meaning of Sophia (the Divine Wisdom, the World Soul—a notion that originated in Ancient and was later embraced by Christianity, especially by Byzantine and Russian Orthodoxy), in his interpretation of Blok’s poetic visions of the Beautiful Lady. Andreev, an admirer of Solov′ev, even acknowledges the Eternal Feminine as one of the three persons comprising the Trinity, but he claims to be able to identify the actual object of Blok’s vision more accurately—as Navna, “the Ideal Collective Soul of the Russian metaculture.” For Belyj, Blok was a true visionary whose poetic revelations of unseen worlds provided ample material for anagogic conceptualization. For Andreev, Blok (who had died long before the conception of “The Rose of the World”) meant even more: he was one of his “friends of the heart,” whose assistance in his transphysical (mystical) journeys Andreev compares to the guidance provided to Dante by . However, Andreev the metacritic does not hesitate to subject Blok to scrutiny, incorporating him and his poetry into a whole panorama of heralds— artists with a special spiritual mission. Andreev’s detailed descriptions of the transphysical planes and events that affect inspired artistic creation supply the kind of evidence that Belyj had been seeking in his anthropological studies under the guidance of Rudolph Steiner. Thus, continuing the occult tradition in literature and philosophy, Andreev adds another interesting dimension to the “profound kind of criticism” attempted by Belyj and other symbolists, his teachers.

Cvetaeva's Ethics of Individuality: An Idiosyncratic Adaptation of Nietzsche's Thought Ute Stock, Cambridge University Well acquainted with his work, Cvetaeva saw Nietzsche as a kindred spirit. Yet this view depended on a highly selective, idiosyncratic reading of him. Analyzing Cvetaeva’s essay “Iskusstvo pri svete sovesti ”(“Iskusstvo”), which demonstrates the seminal influence of her ethical thought on her aesthetics, I highlight significant parallels between her thought and that of the younger Nietzsche. However, Cvetaeva’s refusal of Nietzsche’s later rejection of the transcendental—she actively misreads his last letters, signed as “The Crucified,” as an indication of his longing for the metaphysical—is crucial for an understanding of her ethics. Cvetaeva’s description of inspiration as a Dionysian, intoxicating visitation by the elemental, as the bliss of surrendering one’s own subjectivity, recalls Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy. Yet, stressing the supernatural source of creative energy, Cvetaeva resembles Nietzsche’s “superstitious” creator, the humble mouthpiece of an otherwordly force. Cvetaeva openly admitted her reluctance to share Nietzsche’s denial of the transcendental. Although she was not a spiritual person, Orthodoxy played a significant part in her self-definition as a Russian poet; she saw religion and morality as inextricably linked. Accepting the need for the existing moral standards, she never undertook a Nietzschean wholesale critique of morality, not even in “Iskusstvo.” Yet the insight into the fleeting nature of truth led her to experiment with provisional, individual ways of moral evaluation. In “Iskusstvo”, Cvetaeva undermined her own argument of an overwhelming creative force, by pointing to the poet’s potential for resistance. Locating a salvational element in art, which evokes Nietzsche’s Apollonian moment in tragedy, she recognized the poet’s responsibility, constrained only by the reader’s freedom of interpretation, which Nietzsche neglected. Extraordinary and isolated, Cvetaeva’s poet and Nietzsche’s sovereign individual are alike; they experience both disdain for others and the need to teach. Nietzsche’s master is distinguished by the wish to explore all aspects of human experience, Cvetaeva’s poet by the desire to transcend it, bridging the empirical and the metaphysical realms. Hence Cvetaeva’s readiness for self-sacrifice, clearly recalling the image of Christ. Unwilling to negate the transcendental, Cvetaeva nevertheless doubted the poet’s ability to access it. Destabilizing the categories of good and evil, the violence of the Revolution and the Civil War had rendered the transcendental unknowable. The concept of truth had become problematic: it could no longer depend on an absolute for justification. Instead of abolishing moral evaluation, Cvetaeva put forward an individual way of judging, strongly reminiscent of Nietzsche’s emphasis on the personal nature of evaluation: judgments needed to remain open to revision in the light of further insights into the truth. Her entire oeuvre constitutes a performance of this ethics of individuality: in its elusive character, it enacts the fleeting nature of truth. Cvetaeva’s emphasis on her own self cannot be disqualified as subjectivism; it demonstrates the multiple nature of individuality, prevents it from becoming a static absolute, and constitutes an overt protest against the subjugation of the individual by claims to universal truth. This acquires a political significance in Cvetaeva’s age of totalitarianism and the cult of the collective: much of Cvetaeva’s work is marked by a political engagement out of ethical necessity. Cvetaeva’s ethics of individuality is not without its difficulties: the relation to the Other remains problematic throughout, and Cvetaeva disregards the need for a passage from an ethics of individuality to an ethics of community. From a Nietzschean viewpoint, her desire for the transcendental prevented her from affirming the indeterminable nature of human existence in this world. However, Cvetaeva’s need for metaphysical certainty stems rather from the conviction that she is ultimately unable to solve ethical problems without it. Despite the contradictions in her ethical thought—respect for the Other and the need for self-affirmation, art for art’s sake and the poet as prophet, desire for and suspicion of the otherworldly—, Cvetaeva must be admired for her readiness to explore these contradictions to their full depth, regardless of the tragic personal cost.

Shadows Cast Things: Kržižanovskij and the Epistemological Debate Karen Rosenflanz, Independent Scholar In 1932, Maksim Gor′kij refused to assist Sigizmund Kržižanovskij in his efforts to publish his work. Gor′kij wrote to Kržižanovskij’s friend: “The majority of humanity doesn’t care about philosophy, however it may be expressed … . In our time, it seems, a different epistemology is being created, one based on deeds, not contemplation, on facts, not on words. Therefore, I think that citizen Kržižanovskij’s compositions will hardly find a publisher. And if they do find one, then some young minds will be permanently dislocated—and is the latter really then necessary?” Despite all odds, Kržižanovskij’s works did ultimately find a publisher. The entire corpus of Kržižanovskij’s work is permeated by philosophical contemplation of epistemological questions: they provide the foundation and inspiration for Kržižanovskij’s fiction and non-fiction. In works ranging from short stories such as “Spinoza and the Spider” and “The Thirteenth Category of Reason” to theoretical treatises such as “Filosofema o teatre,” Kržižanovskij drew on the writings of Pascal, Leibniz, Hume, Fichte, Jacobi, Berkeley and, above all, Kant. Indeed, in an analysis of Shakespeare’s drama, Kržižanovskij recalled his first encounter with Kant’s writings as a fifth-grader, and its irrevocable influence on his life. This analysis will focus on three primary examples of Kržižanovskij’s incorporation of philosophy in his work. In “Jakobi i ‘jakoby’” (1919), Kržižanovskij’s first published work, Kržižanovskij presented a philosophical dialogue between Jacobi and the word that swung from the relation of sound and meaning to the essence of truth and being. In his “Kantian cycle” of short stories—“Žizneopisanie odnoj mysli” (1922), “Katastrofa” (1919–22), “Strana netov” (1922) and “Štempl′: Moskva” (1925)—Kržižanovskij examined the impact of Kantian epistemology on the world; one may likewise trace the transformation of Kržižanovskij’s own mirosozercanie. Finally, Kržižanovskij applied the structure provided by Kantian epistemology and Leibniz’s concept of globus intellectualis to create an elaborate between metaphysics and theater in an unpublished work, the treatise “Filosofema o teatre” (1923). The epistemological debate is thus shown to be a central, integral aspect of Sigizmund Kržižanovskij’s fiction and his theoretical writings.

The “Third Truth”: Mysticism and Theodicy in Ivan Bunin's “The Dreams of Čang” Vicki Polansky, Indiana University In the critically acclaimed short story “The Dreams of Čang” (“Sny Čanga,” 1916), Ivan Bunin uses the dream-memories of the dog Čang to recount the intertwined histories of Čang and his master, a sea captain who drinks himself to death out of despair over his wife’s infidelity and his ruined career. In turn, the lives of man and dog serve to illustrate two diametrically opposed attitudes toward human existence, formulated in the “two truths” of the captain: “life is unutterably beautiful” and “life is conceivable only for madmen.” Bunin’s protagonists struggle to reconcile these seemingly irreconcilable “truths” as the vicissitudes of life plunge them from one to the other of the two extremes. In the end, the journey of life leads Čang to a moment of grace, an encounter with a “third truth,” in whose light the first two truths are rendered meaningless. Bunin scholarship has typically related the “third truth” to the writer’s affirmation of memory as man’s defense against the existential despair born of his awareness of time as the agent of death and loss. (1) While Bunin does indeed present Čang’s remembrance of his master as the source of a kind of immortality, the reduction of memory to a purely psychological phenomenon is ultimately unsatisfying in that it fails adequately to address several intriguing issues. First, how can individual memory be said to confer immortality; how can the captain’s place “in that world without beginning and end which is immune to Death” hang on to the slender thread of the ailing Čang’s life? Second, why does Bunin link memory, love, and the “third truth”? Finally, how are these connected to the cosmic and religious images and motifs that appear throughout the story— references to an “ultimate Master” and to the ocean as “womb” and “Abyss-Primordial Mother,” the captain’s excursus on Taoism, and allusions to the books of Job and Ecclesiastes, to say nothing of the fact that Čang’s encounter with the “third truth” takes place at the threshold of a church? In this paper I treat “The Dreams of Čang” as a metaphysical narrative illuminating both the tragic consequences of man’s estrangement from God and the way to reconciliation and fullness of life. I argue that, drawing parallels between Taoism and Orthodox Christian teaching, Bunin presents the revelation of the “third truth” as a mystical experience, an encounter with the One whose Love-Memory brought forth and sustains all of creation. Overawed by the majesty of the divine Presence, assured of the absolute reality of God and of immortality, Čang, unlike his master and like Job and Ecclesiastes, is able to renounce his anger, to submit to God’s unfathomable will, and thus to live. Notes 1. See, for example, V. Ja. Linkov, Mir i čelovek v tvorčestve L. Tolstogo i I. Bunina, [Moscow: Izdatel′stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1991], 153; and James Woodward, Ivan Bunin. [Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1980], 120.)

Panel: 28A-2: Samizdat and Beyond: Implications and Interpretations of the Physical Presence of the Text Chair: Lisa Ryoko Wakamiya, University of California, Los Angeles Equipment: Slide projector Slot: December 28, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m.

Venedikt Erofeev's Moskva-Petuški Tench Coxe, Columbia University As a product of the samizdat era, Venedikt Erofeev’s Moskva-Petuški stands as a notable example of a text which not only self-reflexively exposes the samizdat milieu in which it was produced and circulated, but also self-consciously exposes its own samizdat poetics. This self- consciousness is underscored in the dynamic interplay between the text’s author, Erofeev, and his narrator, Venička, as each struggles with the other to claim himself as author of the very text. As a result, since Erofeev’s death, the two have become fused in the public’s imagination as a composite figure under the common moniker “Venička.” Using Foucault’s essay “What is an Author?” to examine the role of the author in Moskva-Petuški, I will demonstrate how Erofeev implicates himself in the mode of production and circulation of samizdat texts from the very beginning of Moskva-Petuški. Likewise, Venička destabilizes the notion of authorship by performing an author’s role as he distributes his own graphic ruptures throughout the text, and explicitly draws the reader’s attention to their creation. The publication history of Moskva- Petuški also bears examination, first as a samizdat text, into which these graphs and diagrams had to be copied, and later, in a number of editions which differ in their content and representation, precisely at the moments in which Venička asserts his authorship. Finally, we will see how the first literary and cultural canonization in post-Soviet Russia of a samizdat-era author and text, Erofeev and Moskva-Petuški, further blurs the distinction between Venička and Erofeev, between narrator and author.

The Distress of the Text: Samizdat Aesthetics from Glazkov to Prigov Ann Komaromi, University of Wisconsin, Madison This paper contains notes toward a typology of appreciation of the Samizdat text. Most writing about Samizdat has surveyed chronology, composition, or context (Suetnov, Bosiljka and Wertsman, Losev, Anninskij, Alekseeva). Artists’ books and underground visual art have received some attention (Samizdat veka), but the aesthetic significance of the unintended “distress” of Samizdat texts—deformations of the text, mistakes and corrections, traces of inadequate production and overuse—has not. Retrospective evaluation and recent artistic praxis, however, indicates that a more focused study in this area is appropriate. The endowment of aesthetic significance to the Samizdat text is complicated by several factors. Many of these physical texts were not intended to be aesthetically significant. Their deformation due to practical circumstances may seem anti-aesthetic. Additionally, the special aura of truth and moral advantage (Daniel′) surrounding these uncensored communications tended to marginalize aesthetic considerations as inconsequential. In this context, reading the physical Samizdat text aesthetically constitutes an act of transgression in the spirit of Barthes’ “minor myth” of the scandal of aesthetic pleasure as opposed to the correctness of ideology. Put another way, a “dissident” attitude toward the system of Samizdat emphasized its (Jakobsonian) “referential function”, while an aesthetic attitude read an expanded “poetic function” into the physical texts. In this paper, I look at the texts’ “distress” within this dichotomy of apprehension. Nuances and extensions of these attitudes, including attempts to “beautify” the text and the post-Soviet artistic recreation of Samizdat aesthetics, will be addressed. This exploration will posit continuities as well as incongruities, suggesting an enduring spirit of “Samizdat” from Nikolaj Glazkov’s invention of the term, to Dmitrij Prigov’s playful reflection on it.

Discussant: Angela Brintlinger, Ohio State University

Panel: 28A-3: Eighteenth-Century Russia Chair: Julie A. Cassiday, Williams College Slot: December 28, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m.

The Real Life Origin of the Comely Cook Olia Prokopenko-Garrison, Ohio State University Prigožaja Povarixa by Mixail Čulkov was Russia’s first picaresque novel. As such, it has attracted the attention of a number of scholars (Šklovskij, Segel, Garrard, Titunik, Bajkova, to name just a few). Their research focuses on the literary merits and shortcomings of Prigožaja Povarixa, as well as on the role it played in the evolution of Russian novel. My paper investigates the real-life source of the story told by Čulkov, which I believe has its basis in the biography of Russia’s first Empress, Catherine the First. I compare characters in Čulkov’s novel with historical figures and events with episodes from Russian history as described by scholars and witnesses. One of the first elements shared by Prigožaja Povarixa and the life story of Catherine the First is the name: the name of the protagonist resembles the one received by Catherine the First at birth and used by her till she became Peter the Great’s mistress. Another detail in common is the age when they “come into light.” At the beginning of Prigožaja Povarixa we learn that the “comely cook” is a nineteen-year-old widow who has just lost her husband in the battle. Strangely enough, the biography of Catherine the First is documented from precisely the same age: the future Russian Empress was about nineteen when Russian soldiers took her prisoner during the attack of Marienburg. Martona from Čulkov’s novel ascends the social ladder—much like Catherine the First, who became an Empress from a simple peasant. Moreover, there are indications by the end of the novel that the former “comely cook,” like Catherine the First, has become quite wealthy and acquired some cultural sophistication. Both Martona and Catherine profit from their appearance, which together with their shrewdness serves as their main capital. The chain of Martona’s lovers bears a striking resemblance to the list of Catherine’s known “benefactors.” In fact, some of Čulkov’s fictional characters share characteristics with prominent figures from Russian history. Numerous unflattering rumors about Marta/Catherine circulated in the eighteenth century both in Russia and abroad. Some of them were included in books of anecdotes published in France and England. Some sources also suggest ambivalence in Catherine the Great’s attitude towards her namesake, which might explain a certain liberty in Čulkov’s treatment of the subject. Nevertheless, he took every precaution to protect himself against possible repercussions: Prigožaja Povarixa was the only novel by Čulkov that was published anonymously. Yet, the tongue-in-cheek “Preduvedomlenie” gives us a hint, that the novel has more under the surface. If the reader does not take the text too straightforwardly, it will open its subtext, namely, the life story of Russia’s first Empress, who was once nothing but a “comely cook.” Revising the Notion of a “Secular/Religious” Rift in Mid-to-Late Eighteenth-Century Russian Culture Marcus Levitt, University of Southern California This paper argues against the generally accepted picture of Russian culture in the eighteenth century as exclusively secular and rationalist. It suggests that a new cultural synthesis emerged during the fifty-year period from the mid 1740s through roughly the late 1790s, a rapprochement between ecclesiastical and secular culture. The argument here rests upon and elaborates the work of Viktor Zhivov on the development of the Russian literary language. While the Petrine period witnessed a sharp linguistic differentiation between secular and religious languages, which was graphically illustrated in the creation of the new “civic script,” by mid-century the developing literary language had been re-defined as the “Slaveno-rossijskij jazyk,” which as the label suggests, subsumes both and vernacular elements. Živov traces the process by which this language was defined—in essence, the creation of a discourse of synthesis—and provides a powerful framework from which to examine the changing cultural status of religion. The new “Slaveno-rossijskij synthesis” was to be, in Živov’s formulation, “the single language for a single unified culture” (“edinyj jazyk edinoj kul′tury”). The rapprochement between the religious and vernacular traditions may also be demonstrated in a whole series of literary, sociological and institutional phenomena. However, it seems more appropriate to describe this phenomenon as a unique discourse rather than simply a period or movement, insofar as discourse occupies a mediating position between cultural ideology and the embodiment of its conceptions (to whatever degree) in concrete actions, political, social and institutional formations. This approach seems particularly pertinent to the phenomenon under discussion, insofar as the discourse in question was embodied in—and in some sense equivalent to—the very vehicle of communication itself—the new literary language. The paper will trace some of the contours of this discourse in both the secular and religious literary traditions, which (it will be argued) manifested significant parallels, crossovers, and commonalities. Secular writers wrote in various “duxovnye žanry,” while the new generation of Russian (rather than Ukrainian) “enlightened churchmen” who came into authority under Elizabeth and Catherine revived the Petrine tradition of giving sermons, which were acknowledged by the neo-classical genre system, written in the new synthetic language (rather than in Slavonic), and often published by secular presses. An understanding of the discourse of synthesis has important consequences for how we understand such central and disputed notions as a Russian Enlightenment, the role of the church in imperial Russia, and the context in which modern came into being.

The “Sentimental Metaphysics” of Catherine the Great Maria Lobytsyna, University of Sydney This paper discusses Catherine the Great’s interpretation of the sentimental vogue in Europe in the late eighteenth century, and of the works of Laurence Sterne in particular. Anthony Cross has drawn attention to Catherine II’s acquaintance with Tristram Shandy (1759–1767) and A Sentimental Journey (1768), works that were to provoke the cult of sentimentality and to give the word its fashionable run in Britain and on the Continent. Catherine’s interest in Sterne coincided with her search for new literary models. Shandyism as a mode, at once festive and ironic, proved attractive to the authors of the Russian Enlightenment she had been patronising. As well as a complex of cultural determinations, there were personal reasons why Catherine II was inspired by Sterne’s intricate manner of artistic self-representation. These reasons are to be found in her private papers of the 1770s, in which the sentimental reflections create a striking opposition between Catherine the ruler and Catherine the “woman of feeling.” We can trace the Sternean motif of the sensitive intellectual through the Memoirs (French) of 1771 to her confessional letters (Russian) to Potemkin of 1774, many of which have only recently been published and have yet to be translated into English. Perhaps the most poignant instance of this theme appears in a letter to Potemkin in which Catherine refers to the “senselessness” of sentimental affection and the indignity of personal response: “I shall doodle a whole sentimental metaphysics.” Catherine’s determination to fashion the literary mask of a suffering, yet self-mocking, sentimental heroine has yet to be discussed, nor have her papers been considered in the context of the late eighteenth-century politics of sensibility. Young Ivan Krylov and Catherine the Great: Russian Pornography and French Libertinage Vera Proskurina, Scholars of the eighteenth century agree about the exceptional satirical resonance of Krylov’s early works. Some scholars have seen Krylov’s extravagant literary image within the narrow limits of the Russian gentry’s struggle for political rights (G. Gukovskij, P. Berkov). Some have even elaborated the image of Krylov as a tireless plotter against Catherine II and a hidden member of the so-called “Panin opposition,” working for the interests of Paul (Ja. Gordin). However, both the sociological and conspiratorial approaches need to be seriously reexamined, insofar as they obscure Krylov’s more complex political and literary strategy. Constructing his authorial stance, Krylov primarily oriented himself on the models of French libertinage. Among the most characteristic features of a typical French libertine of the eighteenth century were freethinking, an anti-clerical (even atheistic) outlook and an emancipated (even Bohemian) style of behavior. The libertines’ literary life was full of scandals, and their preferred means of communication with literary opponents was the lampoon. Their works combined metaphysical themes with conspicuously pornographic plots (like the most famous libertine novel, Thérèse philosophe by Marquis d’Argent). Krylov was very well acquainted with this tradition: almost half of the letters of his Počta duxov (The Spirits’ Mail) were inspired by the prose by d’Argent and Mercier. The “Voltairian” and atheistic environment of the early Krylov (and his colleagues I. Raxmaninov and A. Klušin) and the personal and literary scandals featuring Krylov’s “lampooning” letters and comedies correspond very well to the Western libertine model. Erotic plots and pictures of the “desacralized king” were among the most popular topics among French libertines. The peculiarities of the Russian situation allowed Krylov to combine both topics. The piquant details of the last years of Catherine the Great and her latest favorite P. Zubov became a permanent subject of Krylov’s works. Thus, Krylov’s story “Noči” (“Nights,” 1792) represents a chain of erotic scenes (associated with Russian court life) linked by the narrator’s ironic meditations and saturated with pornographic linguistic tricks. Krylov invokes the style and the language of French gallant pornography in these texts. He plays with the pornographic connotations of some words and expressions (like “barometer which ascends and descends” or “to converse with a lady”) that correspond with popular metaphors of French argot which were used in well-known texts of French libertine poetry (e.g., the poem “The Jesuits’ Barometer” by Pierre de Beauveset). Krylov’s “oriental story” “Kaib” (1792) not only contains many pornographic expressions, but depicts P. Zubov (under the name “Dursan”) as a pornographic hero. Kaib’s adviser Dursan is endowed with only one admirable feature: he has a big and very well maintained “beard.” The erotic meaning of the “beard” corresponds not only with French tradition (as in the poem “The Power of the Beard” by d’Offerwille), but Lomonosov’s “Hymn to a Beard.” Krylov’s use of French argot as well as his play with pornographic texts of French libertine literature allowed him to conduct a very twisted and complicated game with Empress Catherine the Great.

Panel: 28A-4: Writing the Feminine: Russian and Polish Women's Writing Chair: Maria Hanna Makowiecka, Bronx Community College Slot: December 28, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m.

Decoding Bella Axmadulina's “Sozercanie stekljannogo šarika” Christine Rydel, Grand Valley State University Though principally known as a poet, Bella Axmadulina began her professional career as a journalist. As she continually honed her poetic skills, Axmadulina never abandoned prose, which she has published intermittently since the1960s. In recent years she has been turning more and more to experimenting with various prose forms, combining autobiography and fiction, lyric poetry and narrative sketches, as well as biography and fantasy in an attempt to create new genres. All of her work, whatever the form, is self-referential and deals with what she calls the essence of her inner life: the creative process. Over the past thirty-five years she has developed a symbolic system that simultaneously functions as a vade mecum to her work and as an invitation to her reader to engage in the process of unlocking the secrets of her poetry through contemplation of the sources of her inspiration. In a recent (1997) piece, “Sozercanie stekljannogo šarika” (“Contemplation of a glass ball”), Axmadulina progresses beyond literary criticism, textual commentary, and autobiographical asides by combining all of these forms with a lyric poem to create a work that defies classification in traditional terms. She begins with seven stanzas of a poem that describe the symbiotic relationship her palm establishes with an exquisite, little glass ball which she admits is ultimately indescribable. Axmadulina then informs her reader that these stanzas serve not as an epigraph to the prose but exist independently as the beginning of a poem. However, the remainder of the work alternates prose with more stanzas of the poem and thus forms another symbiotic relationship; the poetry and the prose sections not only cannot exist without each other, but also create each other. By resorting to her already established poetic code, Axmadulina indirectly provides a context for the glass ball and obliquely exposes the process of creation the glass ball engenders. Close reading of the text reveals how Bella Axmadulina engages in dialogue with the glass ball and draws the reader in to what ultimately turns into a three-way conversation. On the surface the various images Axmadulina employs throughout the work bear no relationship one to the other; in fact, they seem random and chaotic. However, the underlying poetic logic that ultimately gives form to the work also reveals the meaning and cohesion of the images as the latest manifestation of the symbolic system Axmadulina first set up in her celebrated “Skazka o dožde”. In that early narrative poem, the elements break through the confines of a house to reach the object of their affection—the poet/lyrical narrator herself. In the 1997 work the poet/narrator looks into an even more confined space, a glass ball, to discover the entire universe in her grasp. The implications of what she holds in the palm of her hand open to her the prospect of an infinite variety of creative sources that serve as her inspiration. What Axmadulina does with those sources of inspiration becomes not only the subject of my paper, but of “Sozercanie stekljannogo šarika” itself.

The Motif of Dance in the Poetry of Halina Poświatowska Anna Gasienica-Byrcyn, University of Illinois, Chicago The core of Halina Poświatowska’s poetry is the myth of the Great Goddess and the Dying/Reviving God. The poet enacts the myth by applying an array of archetypal patterns, which intertwine the opposite forces of love and death, sacred and profane, good and evil, flesh and spirit, fleeting and eternal. The myth expresses a woman’s psychology and sexuality, crystallizing Poświatowska’s views, emotions, and life (Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, Robert Graves, The White Goddess, and Erich Neumann, The Great Mother). Music, the rhythm of the soul and dance the symbol of élan vital, the force of life, defined by Heraclitus as panta rhei, the universal movement, and conveyed by Friedrich Nietzsche (The Birth of Tragedy) as the Dionysian concept of life, possess a sacred and mythical aspect for the poet. Poświatowska understands dance as a magical ritual that has a power to heal one’s soul and body. Music and dance create kátharsis, purifying and renewing joy and energy. They denote celebration of life. Dance embodies the living and regenerative force. It symbolizes the movement of self-realization and self-knowledge. The lyrical subject/the dancing goddess/the poet often proves her existence in the frenzied dance, overflowed with energy and hunger for life. Dance is a flirtation, a game, a form of courtship, and an invitation to love, leading toward sexual intercourse, the sacred act, which produces life, offers ecstatic pleasures, and knowledge of the other. Moreover, the poet turns dance into a metaphor of her poetic creativity. Poświatowska “writes herself” in the dance of her verses. In the sacred dance of life, the dancing goddess, presented in manifold configurations as Gaea/Nekhbet/Mary, Aphrodite/Eve/Madonna, Isis/Cleopatra/Demeter, Rose/Ophelia/Marzanna, or Psyche/Hypatia/Héloïse, unveils her body, casting away rainbow veils of gold/green, red/gold, green/red, violet/gold, silver/red, white/green, and green/brown. The colors reecho different sounds of musical instruments, for instance green and yellow invoke the music of violins, violoncellos, and bass; red and gold recall horns and trombones; while violet suggests the music of flutes, clarinets, and oboes (André Gide, La symphonie pastorale). In addition, the colors evoke the fragrance of the grass, trees, flowers, wild strawberries, and raspberries, resonating with Baudelaire’s Correspondances. Psyche/Salome/the poet reveals her body in a wide spectrum ranging from a turpis image (turpis in Latin means ‘ugly’) to kalokaghatii, the Greek representation of good and beautiful. The poet “writes herself” by using “primordial script” (Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess) such as breasts, hands, eyes, belly, and hair, the symbols of the Eternal Feminine. In that respect, Poświatowska’s poems, like Frida Kahlo’s paintings and Camille Claudel’s sculptures, depict a woman’s body in the primordial archetypes. Moreover, Salome/John the Baptist uncovers her inner body, offering her heart, the symbol of her love, suffering, and poetic wisdom on the golden tray. She metamorphoses into Daphne/Christ by presenting her vascular system as branches and roots. Her inner self turns into a tree, the symbol of knowledge of good and evil, the metaphor of her poetics and her poetical tradition. The poet/the dancing goddess becomes the Dying/Reviving God who in her dance of life searches for the golden bough, or the fern blossom, the symbol of the poetic wisdom and creativity. Knowledge illuminates the poet, gives her joy, strength, and meaning to her struggle in daily existence. Poświatowska’s poems have been compared to the Psalms of David and Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński’s erotic poetry. Tadeusz Baird, captivated by Poświatowska’s verses wrote music to five of her poems. Her poetry has been praised by such poets and literary critics as Stanisłw Grochowiak, Jerzy Kwiatkowski, Anna Nasiłowska, and Tadeusz Nowak. They have lauded her poetry as authentic, delicate, beautiful,and original. For poets like Jerzy Harasymowicz, Stanisław Grochowiak, and Tadeusz &346;liwiak, and many others (Mariola Pryzwan, O Halinie Poświatowskiej), Poświatowska became the subject of their poems; she turned into their Muse, arising in their poetry as a regenerative myth.

A Stranger in the Village Maya Peretz, Independent Translator Halina Poświatowska (1935–1967) was an unusual phenomenon both as a poet and a woman. Her work is very popular in her native Poland; it’s time to introduce her to the wider world. Her personal honesty and the candor of her work were indivisible. Her art presents a different kind of feminism than what has been recognized as such in the West. And her openness certainly brought a breath of fresh air to the straitlaced world of Polish poetry. Critics called Poświatowska’s poetry “the phenomenon of authentic eroticism” and marveled that she, “most likely the first among [Polish women poets]—lacks any element of shame,” with her painful and intense concentration on the miracle of her own body, not only because it was a female body but because it was mortal. Her chronic heart ailment made it impossible for her to live a normal life. Yet while Poświatowska was aware that she might not live long, she nevertheless succeeded in writing enough poems to fill three ample volumes, as well as an autobiographical story and another volume of work which appeared posthumously. She also translated poetry by Joseph Margolis, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Ezra Pound, Paul Éluard, Jacques Prévert and Federico Garcia Lorca. The first heart surgery Poświatowska had undergone in the United States prolonged her life by nine years. She did not survive the second, in Poland, where she died at the the age of thirty-two. Poświatowska’s poetry was not as “asocial and apolitical” as she pretended. She could not have doubted that writing as if there were no censorship displayed contempt for the official rules. After all, she harbored no illusions about the communist system. In 1964 she wrote in her often not quite grammatical English: “I am not allowed to go abroad—and the people (officials) ignore me completely, as if I were a sort of … unwanted insect, there is no decision, but [there] will not be any explanation.” This paper’s focus will be on the poet’s three-year stay in the U.S. as a very young widow, a heart patient and then a student at Smith, and her fascination with the multiethnic and multicultural aspect of life in this country. As the editor of Poświatowska’s bilingual poetry volume (właśnie kocham/indeed I love, Wyd. Lit., Kraków, 1998) and translator of her letters to an American friend as well as her autobiography (Tale for a Friend, in search of a publisher), I propose to use these materials to throw some light on the Polish poet’s feeling about the United States, her relations with people of other races, her enchantment with American art and music, New York City and the night life of Greenwich Village, her brand of feminism and the project to write a dissertation about Dr. Martin Luther King.

Panel: 28A-5: War and Peace Chair: Sarah Pratt, University of Southern California Slot: December 28, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m.

Affirming Determinism in Tolstoj's War and Peace Heather Daly, Brown University This paper proposes a reconciliation between the historical and fictional narrative strains in War and Peace through an examination of Tolstoj’s deterministic philosophy as presented in the novel. Using the concepts of “freedom” and “necessity,” I demonstrate how they serve to bridge the two spheres, underscoring the interconnectedness of the historical and the fictional. “Necessity,” in particular, is fine-tuned, revealing a division into categories of “true” and “false” necessity. “False” necessity is the corrupting social force which characters such a Pierre and Nataša misinterpret as genuine due to a lack of experience or disregard of their instinctual inner voice. Both succumb to social pressures and as a result both experience a sort of fall. In contrast, “true” necessity is a choice informed by both instinct and experience. “Freedom” within War and Peace is primarily illusory, yet within the limited window where freedom intersects with “true” necessity one can take limited action, as does Pierre on the realization that he is to marry Nataša. Using the historical characters of Napoleon and Kutuzov as a starting point, this paper demonstrates how these figures represent “false” and “true” necessity, respectively. On this basis, I examine the parallels that exist between the historical and fictional characters: between Napoleon and Helène and her father, and between Kutuzov and Pierre. I trace Pierre’s development in order to demonstrate how he matures, eventually reaching a Kutuzovian state of enlightenment, where he no longer submits to pressure exerted by others, but to a general, organic will. Pierre’s development leads him to perceive the existence and strength of his will while, in contrast, Nataša’s leads her to see that her will is not infinite. From Pierre’s example in particular we learn that Tolstoj’s deterministic philosophy need not be seen as inherently negative. It can be surprisingly affirmative.

How Does the Seer Make Us See? The Representation of the Body in Tolstoj's War and Peace Petre Petrov, University of Pittsburgh This paper joins a more than a century long critical conversation concerning Tolstoj’s method of depicting the human body in War and Peace. Except for occasional annoyed remarks by some of the author’s contemporaries (most notably, Turgenev) on his habit of repeating a given bodily detail or gesture, it has been a matter of general to praise Tolstoj’s art of physical portrayal. He has been reputed for his “gift of insight into the body,” praised as the “seer of the flesh” (Merežkovskij), and even his critics have not failed to acclaim the “physiological truth” of his portraits (Leont′ev). Without disputing this customary homage, the present paper inquires once again into the “startling truth” of the Tolstojan body (Merežkovskij), seeking to reveal its sources. How do the fictional bodies in War and Peace (the most frequently referenced text whenever Tolstoj’s art of portrayal is discussed) elicit the effects of truth? So far, the answer to this question—and this is hardly an answer at all—has amounted to little more than a verbalized mimic of delight. Many students of Tolstoj have noted the capacity of a fortunately chosen and repeatedly emphasized physical detail to lay bare the character of the hero; the discussion of this device, however, has not become more hermeneutically focused for being unanimously laudatory. Behind the reluctance to analyze the representation of the body in War and Peace one finds a rather mechanistic view of how the novel links character and portrait. According to this view, the physical detail is “drawn” into the literary text from the domain of cultural semiotics, where it exists with its more or less stable semantics; within the text, then, this semantics is “coupled” with the author’s idea of a specific character, making any direct psychological characteristic obsolete, since it is now the physical detail that “speaks” about its possessor. Tolstoj’s then is the art of finding that physical detail that will best “reveal the moral essence of the hero” (Ardens) or “capture an essential attribute of the character” (Sankovič). The author’s artistic procedure is thus reduced to hardly more than a moment of choice. And after that, what is there left, but to sit and marvel at the aptitude of this choice? The present paper will argue that Tolstoj’s fictional portraits do not depend on some culturally immanent link between the physical and the ethical. It is from the literary text, not from the cultural context, that the physical detail in War and Peace derives its semantics. If the readers of the novel find that the short upper lip of Princess Bolkonskaja denotes her “charming beauty,” but also her “garrulity and sociability,” and, in addition, her “childlike happiness and frivolity” (Sankovič), it is certainly not because short upper lips have any necessary relation to these traits. It is simply that for the short span in which the Princess appears in the novel, her lip manages to “swallow” the whole of her character and thus become saturated with a rich array of semantic connotations. This semantic saturation, whose mechanism will be my purpose to uncover, is what accounts for the effect of veracity produced by the Tolstojan body.

Comic Effect as a Supportive Element of Tolstoj's View on History in War and Peace Elena Kirilyuk Wilcox, Brown University In accordance with Tolstoj’s vision of historical development, the role of the individual and “great man” in the historical process is meaningless. Napoleon, , Alexander’s generals, Speranskij and all others who consider themselves important figures in the making of events are portrayed by Tolstoj as nothing but puppets in the hands of history. The characterization of historic “great heroes” and fictional heroes differs in War and Peace. Fictional heroes in their search of true values spiritually grow and change; historic figures remain static. In my opinion, to show the insignificance of historical heroes in the process of creating history, Tolstoj reduces their image to the level of caricature. My paper is focused on the effect Tolstoj creates in depicting historical heroes. In my analysis of the historical as opposed to the fictional characters, I refer to Henry Bergson’s essay “Laughter” (1956). Bergson’s essay drew my attention to caricature and to the notion of rigidity and the mechanical as the sources of the comic. I suggest that Tolstoj’s technique of comic representation is very similar to the one outlined by Bergson. In particular, Tolstoj creates comic effect by using several strategies, such as: “the absence of feelings”; “rigidity of face, body, mind and character”; “the comic effect of the machine”; drawing attention to bodily defects; “concentrating our attention on gesture … in gesture, an isolated part of the person is expressed, unknown to, or at least apart from, the whole of the personality”; and so on. I conclude that Tolstoj created historical characters as incomplete individuals by drawing them as caricatures in order to display the reduced role of the individual in the historical process.

Musical Metapoesis and Metaphysics in War and Peace Gina Kovarsky, Virginia Commonwealth University This presentation examines musical performance in War and Peace as a metaphor for the art of living within the flux of time while attuning oneself to what remains untouched by flux. As represented by Tolstoj, music paradoxically opens up two paths—the performer and audience enter flux while at the same time uncovering stability within it. Like the novel as a whole, the passages depicting musical performance create a dialogue between these two modes of experiencing life in time. This dialogue becomes implicated in the larger tension Tolstoj establishes between a vision of human experience as confined and limited in material terms, and as reflective of an essence that is “eternal, free, independent of this life” (IV.1.16). Like dancers, singers, and musicians who use their bodies and instruments inside the present tense to incarnate ideas or feelings, Tolstoj’s characters must grapple with and somehow transfigure corporeality and temporality, overcoming the limits on knowledge and understanding that ensue from those fundamental constraints. Like the gypsy Steška in “ Two Hussars,” who “lived with her whole being entirely in the song she was singing” (PSS 3: 166), musical beings in War and Peace do not reflect upon their performances, but seem to inhabit the dance and music undivided from themselves and fully present in the moment. On the other hand, as when Nataša and the other Rostov children discuss eternity to the strains of Dimmler’s harp (II.4.10), Tolstoj hints at a link between music and the advent of philosophic distance from the here-and-now. In the latter case, the music helps to usher in the intuition of an unchanging reality. These two perspectives on musical experience correspond to coexisting “solutions” Tolstoj represents in this novel to the problem of duality. By means of analogies to the musical arts, he depicts a path of ecstasy and a path of philosophic intuition, then unites these paths for the reader through the metaphor of Petja’s concert. This paper will describe the process by means of which he invites the reader into an analysis of aesthetic experience. It will also discuss the motif of the music of the spheres as a structural principle in War and Peace. Panel: 28A-6: Technology and Language Instruction Chair: David J. Galloway, Hobart and William Smith Colleges Equipment: Overhead projector, Computer projector Slot: December 28, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m.

CALL and the One-Stem System for Russian Verbs Lauren Warner, Bryn Mawr College In this study, I intend to discuss data gathered from preliminary student use of an original CALL tutorial that assists with the acquisition of Russian verbs to second-year students and advanced first-year students of Russian. The pedagogical design of the tutorial falls under the category of explicit learning approaches. The tutorial brings together a focus on form and CALL. Research indicates that with careful consideration, a focus on form (attention to linguistic forms as they occur in context) can benefit learners in improving their recall of the accompanying function (Doughty and Williams, Focus on Form in Classroom and Second Language Acquisition). I have selected verbs as the topic of my tutorial since familiarity with the Russian verb system requires significant effort by non-native learners. “Major grammatical topics in the target language” have been recommended as a basis for CALL programs (Garrett, “A Psycholinguistic Perspective in Grammar and CALL”). CALL environments have been shown to increase learners’ motivation, raise their confidence level, and offer extra practice in the target language than they would not receive in the classroom (Ruehlmann, “Towards Replacement of the Teaching Process: The Emulation of the Teaching Process with CAL and Its Implications for the Design of a Multimedia CAL Tutorial”). Further, CALL provides researchers with an opportunity to collect data on learners for any number of projects. In this tutorial, learners can view an introduction either in English or in Russian, to the one-stem verb system and then utilize this information in the exercises that follow. Using the one-stem system as a means to learn conjugation of Russian verbs provides learners with specific guidelines. These guidelines present patterns inherent in the that assist learners in improving their language level (Channon, “The Single- Stem Verb System Revisited,” Garretson, “Proceeding: One Stem or Two?”). Offering this tool serves as a way to help prevent learners from becoming discouraged by the complexities of Russian (Townsend, Russian Word-Formation). Practice in the tutorial with the one-stem system occurs through sets of dialogues with cloze procedure. The sets represent selected verb groups and each dialogue features a particular verb. Learners submit their responses for feedback at the end of each dialogue, as opposed to after each response. Feedback is provided for both correct and incorrect responses. Feedback on correct responses either reaffirms learners’ knowledge or reinforces what may have simply been a lucky guess. Feedback on incorrect responses addresses each specific part that is inappropriate. For each question, learners are allowed three attempts. Each attempt is marked and recorded into the log. This procedure serves as a means of discouraging learners from simply pushing buttons to obtain the correct response. At the completion of each dialogue, the tutorial assesses the learners’ correct and incorrect responses and indicates the learners’ strengths and weaknesses through appropriate feedback. Learners are assisted in several ways in formulating their responses. All dialogues are preceded by a title, which serves as an advanced-organizer for learners. In order to aid vocabulary comprehension, glosses are periodically provided. Glosses appear either in Russian (synonyms or paraphrases) or in English (when appropriate). Further, learners have the option of accessing “clues” for each response. The clues consist of three types: hints on stress, mutation, and conjugation type. Finally, a “Help” option directs learners to areas in the Introduction related to the question(s) at hand. Although learners do not receive a penalty for utilizing any of the above features, a log records the type of features and number of times learners access them. Also listed in learners’ logs is the number of color-coded response attempts for each verb group. Learners may print their log at any time. This tutorial on the one-stem system will be available on the Internet for public use. Beyond the Word: Issues in Glossing Syntax and Discourse Features in L2 Reading Texts William J. Comer, University of Kansas The glossing of unfamiliar words, idioms or syntactic constructions in foreign language reading texts is virtually a standard feature of textbook reading passages across the whole spectrum of teaching methodologies. In the past 15 years, with the advent of computer technology that allows fast and efficient incorporation of multimedia elements and hypertext linking, glossing has become a firmly established feature of FL electronic reading texts as well. In CALL (computer assisted language learning) environments, the type of glosses that FL readers can access has broadened significantly: a single word or phrase in an on-line text can be linked to an L1 or L2 equivalent, an L1 or L2 definition/explanation, a static graphic, an audio cue, a video clip, an animation, or a linguistic or interpretative commentary. With CALL’s expansive capabilities to gloss texts, there has been a concomitant increase in research examining the efficiency of types of glosses on reading comprehension (Aust, Kelley and Roby, Chun and Plass, Stoehr), the role of glosses in the learning of incidental vocabulary (Hulstijn, Hollander and Greidanus), readers’ use of glosses (Galloway, Davis and Lyman-Hager). Some studies have shown that glossing of vocabulary alone (Comer and Keefe) or readers’ primary use of vocabulary glosses alone (Davis and Lyman-Hager) is not enough to ensure that intermediate level readers can successfully generate the text’s overall factual meaning (main points and significant details) from word-level vocabulary glosses. Clearly, readers’ awareness of and ability to associate meaning with certain syntactic constructions, cohesive devices, pronoun forms are also critical in comprehending a text, and these issues have recently started to attract greater interest among SLA researchers (e.g., Fraser). This paper will begin with a brief survey the current state of research on glossing of reading texts in a CALL environment. It will then address the means available in an HTML environment to gloss certain kinds of syntactic constructions, discourse level cohesive devices, pronominal reference in preparing FL reading texts for the web. Among the kinds of syntax and discourse- level issues that are frequently misread by intermediate students of Russian are word order inversions (Object-Verb-Subject type), linking pronoun forms to referents, processing extended participial constructions, separating subordinate clauses and parenthetical phrases from the main thought. Using certain features of HTML, such as cascading style sheets and user-defined markup tags, a teacher can highlight these difficult features of reading texts and draw readers’ attention to them by adjusting their typographical appearance in the document. For example, instead of resorting to an L1 hypertext note telling the reader the antecedent of a pronoun form, the user could click a specific link to see all the pronouns related to a specific antecedent appear in the same color together with the antecedent. In addition to the discussion of ways to gloss these features, this paper will propose a broad research plan that will examine the efficiency of these kinds of syntactic glossing and their relative benefit for intermediate level readers of Russian. Select Bibliography Aust, Ronald, Mary Jane Kelley, and Warren Roby. 1993. “The Use of Hyper Reference and Conventional Dictionaries.” Educational Technology, Research and Development 41: 63–73. Chun, D. M., and J. L. Plass.1996. “Effects of multimedia annotations on vocabulary acquisition.” Modern Language Journal 80: 183–197. Comer, William and Leann Keefe. forthcoming. “How do Dzhon and Dzhein Read Russian? On- Line Vocabulary and its Place in the Reading Process.” In: The Learning and Teaching of and Cultures: Towards the 21st Century. Davis, James N. and Mary Ann Lyman-Hager. 1997. “Computers and L2 Reading: Student Performance, Student Attitudes.” Foreign Language Annals 30.1: 58–72. Fraser, Catherine C. 2000. “Linking Form and Meaning in Reading: An Example of Action Research.” In: Form and Meaning: Multiple Perspectives, ed. James Lee and Albert Waldman. Boston: Heinle and Heinle. 283–303. Galloway, David J. 1999. “Restrictive Glosses and CALL Comprehension: An Exploratory Study.” Presentation at AATSEEL Conference. Hulstijn, Jan H., Merel Hollander and Tine Greidanus. 1996. “Individual Vocabulary Learning by Advanced Foreign Language Students: The Influence of Marginal Glosses, Dictionary Use and Reoccurrence of Unknown Words.” Modern Language Journal 80: 327–339. Stoehr, Louise. 1999. The Effects of Built-in Comprehension Aids in a CALL Program on Student Readers’ Understanding of a Foreign Language Literary Text. PhD. diss., U of Texas.

Using Multimedia Materials in the Language Classroom: Creating a Digitized Version of “The Gentle Creature” by Dostoevskij for the Advanced Russian Julia Titus, Yale University In my presentation at AATSEEL, I would like to talk about possible advantages of multimedia in language learning and give a demonstration of my work on creating a digitized package of “The Gentle Creature” with a support grant from Yale Center for Language Study. Understanding student’s growing interest in computer-assisted learning, and thinking of many benefits that this medium presents for language learners, I decided to convert one component of my fourth-year Russian course at Yale, Dostoevskij’s short story “The Gentle Creature,” into a HTML format. This replaces the existing printed material with a hyper-media package. The text itself (about thirty-five pages in length) is fully digitized and enhanced with sound and pictures. The package includes a full audio version of the text. To further facilitate the process of reading, extensive glosses are added throughout the text, and these glosses contain not only the English translation of each word and synonyms in Russian, but also correct pronunciation of the given word (both on its own and in a phrase) in audio clips. Grammar notes are provided where applicable, and cultural commentaries and pictures where necessary. All of these features are accessible through the buttons on the screen. I decided to pursue this project because I believe that introducing technology into the classroom is a very helpful tool and it has a tremendous potential. It has a lot to offer to the teachers and the students alike because now students rely on technology more and more, and while technology will not replace the teacher in the classroom, it gives students more freedom and flexibility while promoting active learning. It allows students to absorb materials at their own pace, to go back and review it and even do a self-test such as vocabulary quiz. It is also very helpful to the foreign language teachers because all four skills (reading, writing, speaking and listening) can be further developed by using hypermedia materials. The introduction of a multimedia presentation of this story allows a unique learning setting that can benefit the students in many ways. The use of multimedia creates an interactive learning environment, where students can select their own pace for their work with the material. The digitized format makes the process of reading the text in the original considerably easier since it allows students to look up the words on the screen immediately, and the students are able to work on more difficult linguistic problems, such as syntax and cultural significance of language. The sound component of the electronic glossary not only helps improve pronunciation, but also further increases listening comprehension. Finally, the electronic media allows the opportunity to introduce students to the culture of nineteenth-century Russia through a number of links— pictures of St. Petersburg at the time, a short biography of Dostoevskij, existing illustrations of the work and excerpts from the literary criticism. While “The Gentle Creature” provides the opportunity for a teacher to expand its general themes into a larger upper-level survey course (e.g., a course on nineteenth-century literature or culture), the text itself could be used as a free standing unit to language and culture. The visual component mentioned above not only provides many ways to connect the text to an already existing course, but also allows the students flexibility to add a variety of cultural, historical, and literary elements to their own reading. I envision many benefits from introducing electronic media into our language courses. On the one hand it would allow for a truly interactive learning, where students would take an active role in the process and select their own pace of getting through the material. On the other hand, it would free a significant amount of time in the classroom which is taken now by supplying routine vocabulary explanations, or cultural details, which in the digitized form would be easily accessible to students before class. As a result, they would be better prepared to participate in the discussion and to gain a much better understanding and appreciation of the text.

Panel: 28A-7: The Russian Lexicon Chair: Yelena Belyaeva-Standen, St. Louis University Slot: December 28, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m.

A Vocabulary List Worth Studying: Analyzing Neologisms in the Teaching of Russian Language and Culture Natalya Gronskaya, Nižnij Novgorod Linguistic University What can Russian and foreign-language students alike learn from classroom study and discussion of contemporary Russian neologisms? This paper will focus on some of the most striking developments in lexical change in contemporary Russian, and suggest ways in which an interpretation of these developments can provide some insights into post-Soviet Russian culture, and the role of Russia in international events covered by the media. If they were not aware of it before, certainly by the second year of foreign language study students begin to understand that not everything that can be said in one language can be said in another. The lexicons of different languages seem to suggest different conceptual universes. What can one find in the concpetual universe of modern Russian? It is well known that the evolution of language proceeds in a regular way during periods of social and political stability, with small parts of the language system changing gradually. However, during periods of instability and rapid social change, the evolution of language accelerates. The noticeable—even shocking—accumulation of new words and forms leads to an impression of chaos and disorder on the one hand; on the other hand, it is rich material for studying tendencies of linguistic and social development. In other words, studying lexical change is inherently an interdisciplinary exercise, which illuminates both the structure of language and the structure of contemporary society. What are some of the recent changes in Russian? How might one construct a “vocabulary list” of these changes for discussion in the language and culture classroom? First of all, there is a visible increase in colloquial, non-normalized language, including “jargon”: tusovka, bespredel, baksy, razdraj, dedovščina, der′mokraty, prixvatizacija. What is interesting about this list (a of a fuller list) is that all of the new lexical items are formed with the use of negative expressive markers; i.e., they use morphological resources carrying negative semantic connotations. A companion list consists of new words which have entered Russian lexicon by adding the Latin prefix “anti.” There are thirty-six words of this type according to the Russian Explanatory Dictionary of the End of the XX Century: Linguistic Changes (Petersburg: 1998): ‘antihuman,’ ‘antiterrorist,’ ‘antidemocratic,’ etc. A third type of neologism derives from words that used to be explicitly associated with social reality in capitalist countries; these words were on the periphery of Russian, a kind of foreign terminology with limited (and negative) connotations. These words have moved into the mainstream of contemporary usage, to describe the post-Soviet, Russian version of these “old” realities: infljacija, korrupcija, mafija, bezrabotica (‘unemployment’), etc. A brief analysis of modern vocabulary shows that the language is accumulating the negative appraisals and deflating style of political and public discourse as a whole. On the other hand, many of our linguists have overlooked an equally important trend: the tendency to use neutrally or even positively-marked neologisms (or, usually, new word combinations) to describe war, terror, and forced diaspora. In the official Russian media, Chechen refugees (bežency) are now regularly referred to as “temporarily migrated people.” The combination “alternative elections” (al′ternativnye vybory) has begun to crop up, to emphasize the voters’ possibility to choose, but elections have to be alternative! In this respect, Russian usage parallels similar tendencies in the American press, which described the war in Kosovo in terms of “humanitarian operation,” “humanitarian intervention,” etc. Looking a neologisms can be done in limited doses, to vary class material. Yet, the discussion opens up much that is important and relevant to the students’ understanding of contemporary Russian culture in a global context.

Creating a Russian-English Translator's/Interpreter's Dictionary of Lexical Items Missing from Russian-English Dictionaries Alexander L. Burak, Moscow State University A learner of Russian, journalist or translator/interpreter working into and out of Russian faces the double problem of either not finding a needed lexical item in a Russian-English dictionary (gruzit′ kogo-libo, prokručivat′ den′gi, etc.) or finding an entry for it which gives only a definition/description of the item in question, i.e., mainly its denotative meaning (e.g. prixvatizacija, bodun, etc.—see Shlyakhov and Adler; Marder). Knowing only the denotative meaning of a lexical item is not sufficient to achieve an effective translation. The aim of the dictionary that is being created is to supply some of the numerous lexical items that are widely used and yet are missing from Russian-English dictionaries and to suggest their variants of translation into American English that cover their connotative meaning as well as denotative meaning. The interconnected aspects of connotative meaning are emotive charge, evaluation, register/style and dialect (regional, social and temporal). Some additional variants of translation are also added to lexical items that are represented in Russian-English dictionaries inadequately. A group of three co-authors (two native Russians and one native American) selects prospective lexical items from the everyday flow of speech, checks them against twelve authoritative Russian-English dictionaries (see Bibliography), filters out the items that are adequately represented and makes a list of those that are missing or whose variants of translation can be added to. As of July 24, 2000 about eight hundred such items have been collected and included in the dictionary together with about two thousand English translation variants. The distinctive features of the proposed version of a translator’s/interpreter’s dictionary are: 1) a simplified system of lexicographical notation, 2) Russian entries with their definitions/descriptions/explanations in Russian positioned opposite their English translations with definitions/explanations in English, 3) a gradation of variants of translation consisting of a) “practical” equivalents, b) communicative analogues and c) definitions/descriptions positioned and typed in a special way, and 4) a page-referenced index of all the variants of English translations contained in the dictionary at the back of the dictionary. As a result, the dictionary is a “four-in-one” monolingual-cum-bilingual Russian-English/English-Russian dictionary expected to be of help to translators, interpreters, journalists and learners of Russian and English. The project outlined above belongs in the realm of lexicography, which has a long and distinguished history in Russian applied linguistics. The type of dictionary under discussion is expected to form a useful part of any intermediate- or upper-level Russian language or studies course for English speakers as well as provide an up-to-date addition to the existing Russian- English and English-Russian lexicographical sources. The dictionary can also be used as a methodological tool to illustrate ways of achieving different degrees of equivalence in translation/interpreting classes. Work on the first edition of the dictionary is expected to be completed by the end of 2000. 1. Russko-anglijskij slovar′. Pod obščim rukovodstvom A. I. Smirnickogo. Okolo 50,000 slov. Izdanie dvenadcatoe, stereotipnoe. M.:Russkij jazyk. 2. The New Oxford Russian Dictionary. Russian-English and English-Russian. Over 180,000 words and phrases. 290,000 translations. Oxford University Press, 1993. 3. A. M. Taube i dr. Russko-anglijskij slovar′. 100,000 slov i slovosočetanij. Pod redakciej R. S. Dagliša. Izdanie sed′moe. M.: Russkij jazyk, 1987. 4. Stefen Marder. Dopolnitel′nyj russko-anglijskij slovar′. Novaja leksika 90-x godov. Okolo 29,000 slov. M.: Veče, 1995. 5. Vladimir Shlyakhov and Eve Adler. Dictionary of Russian Slang and Colloquial Expressions (Russkij slang). Approximately 4,500 words and their popular meanings that you won’t find in standard Russian-English dictionaries. New York: Barron’s, 1995. 6. Novyj bol′šoj russko-anglijskij slovar′. V trex tomax. Bolee 300,000 slov. Pod obšč. ruk. P. N. Makurova, M. S. Mjullera, V. Ju. Petrova. M.: Lingvistika, 1997. 7. S. I. Lubenskaja. Russko-anglijskij frazeologičeskij slovar′. M: Jazyki russkoj kul′tury, 1997. 8. D. I. Kveselevič. Russko-anglijskij frazeologičeskij slovar′. Okolo 7,000 frazeologičeskix edinic. M: Russkij jazyk, 1998. 9. I. A. Uolš, V. P. Berkov. Russko-anglijskij slovar′ krylatyx slov. Ok. 1,900 edinic. 2-e izd., stereotip. M: Russkij jazyk, 1988. 10. V. V. Gurevič, Ž. A. Dozorec. Frazeologičeskij russko-anglijskij slovar′. Okolo 1,000 frazeologičix edinic. M: Vlados, 1995. 11. S. S. Kuz′min, N. L. Šadrin. Russko-anglijskij slovar′ poslovic i pogovorok. M: Russkij jazyk, 1989. 12. Kveselevič D. I., V. P. Sasina. Russko-anglijskij slovar′ meždometij i reljativov. M: Russkij jazyk, 1990.

Word Structure and Meaning in Teaching Russian at the Intermediate Level Alfia Rakova, Harvard University At the intermediate level students become more familiar with the Russian morphological system. Many are acquainted with Russian word-formation and start to accumulate different patterns of word types, roots, suffixes, prefixes, meanings, related words, etc. The whole process is very interesting if the students know why they are doing it, if their learning process is meaningful. “Learning should always be meaningful; that is, students should understand at all times what they are being asked to do” (Alice Omaggio Hadley, 1993, p.101). I propose a paper in which I would like to discuss one of the confusing issues in teaching Russian morphology, and how to make the whole process of developing students’ language and cultural competence more appealing. At the intermediate level it is very important to maintain our students’ interest in the Russian language itself, teaching them interesting processes that exist/existed in the language proper and how language reflects history and culture. Above all, this process involves teaching them the language, which is our most important task, and not merely about the language. When students are asked to find a word root when there is no longer an easily identifiable root in the word’s modern meaning, they cannot be expected to grasp an underlying relationship unless their instructor explains it to them. The instructor’s role is crucial in guiding students towards meaningful morphological analysis as well as building their grammar and lexical competence. And in doing that the instructor must pay great attention not only to structure, but to meaning as well. For example, take the verb proščat′-prostit′. After introducing the conjugation of these verbs and reinforcing them through short role-playing situations, I turn the students’ attention to the structure of the verb: the mutation st/šč, identifying the root, and illustrating related words. The students find the root prost- and immediately want to present more related (as it seems to them) words—prostoj, prostynja. The questions—Are they related? Are they semantically close?— naturally arise. If so, what does prostit′ have to do with prostoj? Basically what the students are trying to do is find a pair to this word. And their natural conclusion is that prostit′-prostoj- prostynja are not related now, but they probably were at some point in time when the meaning of prostoj was different. Word-formational analysis then is followed by etymological analysis: at some point in the past prostoj meant prjamoj, straight (which it still means in Polish). In the past, when people were guilty of some act, it was associated with the fact that they bowed down in asking for forgiveness; once they were forgiven, their body again assumed an upright position. Students then can easily understand that prostynja was derived from prostoj-prjamoj; it meant a straight piece of fabric. In modern Russian prostynja is an underived word. Students come to understand that words are derived from other words, that semantically and structurally words are connected with one another. On occasion, however, the connection no longer exists in modern Russian, or is not readily identifiable in the modern language. In these instances etymological analysis will broaden the students’ interest in both the Russian language and culture. References Cubberley, Paul. Handbook of Russian Affixes. Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1994. Townsend, C. E. Russian Word-Formation. Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1975. Hamilton, William.Introduction to and Word Structure. Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1980 Tixonov, A.I. Slovoobrazovatel′nyj slovar′ russkogo jazyka. Moskva, 1985. Est′ li takaja čast′ reči—vvodnoe slovo? Fedor Pankov, Moscow State University В последнее время пристальное внимание грамматистов все больше привлекают не столько самостоятельные слова, сколько так называемые “структурные,” “дискурсивные,” “модальные,” к числу которых относят и вводные слова типа к сожалению, правда, очевидно, кажется, короче говоря и т.п. Вводные слова в современных исследованиях и словарях рассматриваются либо как отдельный категориальный класс (часть речи), либо как грамматическая единица вне частей речи. Есть, однако, основания полагать, что это не совсем так, и подобная их трактовка кажется несколько однобокой и не имеющей объяснительной силы. Если части речи определяются на основании морфологических, синтаксических и лексических особенностей, то вводные слова не вышли из общей парадигмы тех категориальных классов слов, которыми мотивированы, хотя и имеют подчас довольно существенные семантические отличия. Ср.: (1а) Совершенно очевидно, что это задание невыполнимо. (1б) Это задание, очевидно, невыполнимо. (2а) Он, правда, занят? Но я его позову. (2б) Он правда занят. Я не вру. Для анализа категориальной принадлежности вводных слов недостаточно рассматривать их “с одного боку,” необходимо проанализировать их роль в формальной, семантической и коммуникативной структуре предложения. С формальной точки зрения вводные слова—это одна из синтаксических функций (позиций) слов наряду с позициями главных и второстепенных членов предложения. Вводность—это обусловленная позиция вне предикативной основы предложения, которую могут занимать слова разных частей речи. Например: очевидно, вероятно, безусловно, по-видимому—наречия; правда, к сожалению, по Достоевскому, без сомнения, словом—предложно-падежные формы существительного; кажется, полагаю, признаться, видите ли, говорят—глагольные синтаксемы; короче говоря—сочетание сравнительной степени наречия с деепричастием. С семантической точки зрения вводные слова—это участники второй пропозиции в предложении, которая может носить как диктумный характер, в том числе логико-теоретический (По Достоевскому, мир спасет красота) или авторизационный (Говорят, в Москве кур доят), так и модусный характер (Вы, безусловно, правы). С коммуникативной точки зрения вводные слова имеют тенденцию занимать коммуникативно наименее значимую позицию, часто между темой и ремой, т.е. обладают, как правило, парентетическим коммуникативным статусом. Парентеза, как известно, характеризуется принципиальной безударностью, ускоренным темпом произнесения, тяготением к срединной позиции в предложении: Отец, видимо, скоро вернется. Вводные слова, таким образом, не могут быть определены ни как особая часть речи, ни как слова вне частей речи. Этот вывод ни в коем случае не свидетельствует, однако, об их второстортности в грамматике. Наоборот, они требуют пристального внимания, т.к. богато представлены в нашей устной и письменной речи, о чем свидетельствуют, в частности, настоящие тезисы.

Panel: 28A-8: South Slavic and Balkan Syntax Chair: Catherine Rudin, Wayne State College Slot: December 28, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m.

*Došol sum and *sum dojden in Macedonian: Some Comments on the Syntax of Macedonian sum-Matrix Verb and sum-Auxiliary in Resultative Constructions Elisabeth Elliott, University of Toronto Based on data collected to determine the semantic meanings of the resultative functions of Macedonian active constructions of the type ‘be’ plus agreeing -n(-)/-t(-) participle, e.g., dojden sum ‘I am here (literally: arrived),’ and ‘be’ plus agreeing l-form, e.g., sum došol ‘I have arrived,’ I made the observation that Macedonian ‘be’ (henceforth sum) functions as an auxiliary or as a matrix (finite) verb. This distinction—sum-aux. and sum-matrix—is seen in different syntactic patterns and is dependent on the semantic function of sum. Korubin (1974, 1976, and 1990) was the first to propose this distinction. He shows that in the standard language in unmarked contexts sum-matrix does not occur sentence initially while sum-aux. does. In this work Korubin’s observation will be expanded upon, predominately for the literary language as it exists in , and it will be shown that distinctive syntactic clausal patterns are found for sum-aux. and sum-matrix. Some comparison will also be made to syntactic patterns in certain Macedonian dialects. In Macedonian sum-matrix is present in all persons and numbers and functions as the matrix verb in, for example, simplex clauses with nominal or adjectival predicates and in resultative constructions of the type jas sum jaden ‘I have eaten’. Sum-aux., however, is present only in 1st and 2nd persons singular and ; it functions as the auxiliary and only occurs in the unmarked past l-form, e.g., jas sum jadel ‘I have eaten’. I will argue that clause initially sum-aux. is proclitic and is distinguished from sum-matrix which is enclitic when it occurs with verbal adjectival, nominal, or adjectival predicates in neutral word order in declarative indicative non- negated non-elliptical clauses without nominal clitics. For example (NB.: all data are taken from native sources and/or tested on native speakers, and though all examples here are in 1st and 3rd persons singular the same patterns are observed for all other persons and numbers; these will be included in the paper): (1) a. Jas sum došol. I am-1sg.aux. arrived-masc.sg.l-form I arrived/have arrived. b. Toj došol. He arrived-masc.sg.l-form He arrived/has arrived. c. Sum došol. am-1sg.aux. arrived-masc.sg.l-form d. *Došol sum. arrived-masc.sg.l-form am-1sg.aux. e. Došol. arrived-masc.sg.l-form

(2) a. Jas sum dojden. I am-1sg.matrix arrived-masc.sg.part. I am here (literally: arrived). b. Toj e dojden. He is-3sg.matrix arrived-masc.sg.part. He is here (literally: arrived). c. Dojden sum. arrived-masc.sg.part. am-1sg.matrix d. Dojden e. arrived-masc.sg.part. is-3sg.matrix e. *Sum dojden. am-1sg.matrix arrived-masc.sg.part. f. *E dojden. is-3sg.matrix arrived-masc.sg.part.

(3) a. Jas sum makedonec. I am-1sg.matrix Macedonian I am a Macedonian. b. Toj e makedonec. He is-3sg.matrix Macedonian He is a Macedonian. c. Makedonec sum. Macedonian am-1sg.matrix d. Makedonec e. Macedonian is-3sg.matrix e. *Sum makedonec. am-1sg.matrix Macedonian f. *E makedonec. is-3sg.matrix Macedonian This restrictive syntactic environment, i.e., declarative indicative non-negated non-elliptical clauses without nominal clitics, is chosen as a starting point because under such conditions the distinction between sum-aux. and sum-matrix is clearest. In other syntactic environments both sum-aux. and sum-matrix exhibit proclitic patterns; this may explain why the distinction is often not realized (for example, cf. 1a and 2a). A brief discussion will also be included of Korubin’s and Tomic’s (1997) examples with sum-matrix in clause initial position. Time permitting, the syntactic patterns of sum-auxiliary and sum-matrix in certain other types of clauses will also be briefly examined. Recent work on the syntax of Macedonian clitics categorizes all instances of present tense sum as auxiliary (Tomic 1997) and does not account for the distinction between sum-auxiliary and sum- matrix copula in Macedonian observed by Korubin (1974, 1976, and 1990). Baerman and Billings, in response to Tomic, distinguish between auxiliary and matrix copula, but only in third persons, i.e., e ‘is3sg,’and se ‘are3pl,’ are matrix (finite) copulas while the remaining persons— sum ‘am1sg.’, si ‘are2sg.,’ sme ‘are1pl.,’ ste ‘are2pl.’—are auxiliaries (1998:24). My work expands upon Baerman and Billings by arguing that in all present tense instances of sum followed by an l-form sum functions as an auxiliary, and elsewhere sum functions as a matrix (finite) verb. Given the restrictive syntactic environment under consideration in this paper, Baerman’s and Billings’ (1998) arguments concerning the correlation of prosody and clitic placement will not be treated at this time, though their support of Korubin’s observation that sum-matrix need not be adjacent to verbal adjectives will be maintained. This paper concentrates on the different syntactic patterns of the Macedonian resultative constructions dojden sum and sum došol as evidence that in the dojden sum construction sum functions as a matrix (finite) verb while in the sum došol construction sum functions as an auxiliary. This observation, together with others such as position of temporal reference (R), illustrate that the dojden sum types of construction are (present) Resultatives, i.e., present states that exist as a result of past events (Bybee et al. 1994:54), and are not (present) perfects, i.e., past events whose results have present relevance. Additionally, the conclusions argued for here illustrate that re-analysis of the syntax of sum in Macedonian is necessary. References: Baerman, Matthew and Loren Billings. (1998) “Macedonian Clitics and the Trisyllabic Stress Window.” Mila Dimitrova-Vulchanova, Lars Hellan, Ivan Kasabov, and Ilyana Krapova (eds.). Papers from Second Conference on Formal Approaches to September 1997. University of Trondheim, Working Papers in Linguistics vol. 31. Norway. 13– 32. Bybee, Joan, Revere Perkins and William Pagliuca. (1994) The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Korubin, Blagoja. (1974) “Mesto glagola sum kak vspomogatel′nogo i kak svjazki v makedonskom literaturnom jazyke.” Grammatičeskoe opisanie slavjanskix jazykov: koncepcii i metody. Moskva: Nauka. 244–50. —. (1976) “Glagolot sum kako pomošen i kako vrska.” In Korubin, Blagoja. Jazikot naš denešen, kn. 2. Biblioteka Literaturen zbor, 4. Skopje: Biblioteka Literaturen zbor. 82–93. —. (1990) “Mestoto na glagolot sum kako pomošen i kako spona vo makedonskiot literaturen jazik.” In Korubin, Blagoja. Na makedonsko gramatički temi. Posebni izdanija, kniga 18. Skopje: Institut za makedonski jazik “Krste Misirkov.” 292–97. Tomic, Olga Misheska. (1997) “Non-First as a Default Clitic Position.” Journal of Slavic Linguistics 5(2):301–23.

An Interarboreal Analysis of Bulgarian DPs Steven Franks, Indiana University This paper addresses the long-standing problems for formal analysis posed by Bulgarian (and Macedonian) Determiner Phrases (DPs); cf., e.g., Scatton (1993), Caink (2000) or Franks and King (2000) for discussion. Specificity is indicated by means of a postpositive : (1) a. knigata ‘book-the’ b. xubavoto momiče ‘pretty-the girl’ c. pette interesni knigi ‘five-the interesting books’ I present evidence to show that the article must be a suffix on its host word, rather than a clitic, and consequently argue that all [+N] elements have forms inflected for specificity in their lexical entries. Whereas the examples in (1) suggest the article appears on the first word of the nominal phrase, I demonstrate that in fact it appears on the highest head. Thus, if an adjective has an intensifier (2a) or a complement (2b), these are ignored: (2) a. [dosta glupavata] zabeleeka ‘quite stupid-the remark’ b. [vernijat na demokratični idei] prezident ‘faithful-the to democratic ideas president’ I assume a standard X-bar structure in which lexical heads, such as N, are dominated by functional projections (FPs) specifying grammatical information. For Bg, and perhaps universally, the highest such head is a DP, which contains the feature [±specific], inter alia. I further assume, following Abney (1987), that modifiers are heads outside NP. In other words, phrases headed by adjectives and numerals count as FPs. Given a structure as in (3), where there can be any number of FPs, including zero, a [±spec] D then checks specificity feature values against the highest head.

(3) [DPD[±spec] [FP F[±spec] [FP F [NPN …] ]]] The fact that it is the highest head which must be inflected for specificity follows from the minimalist mechanism of Attract, which checks features by attracting the closest potential checker. This system allows us to treat specificity as inflectional and avoids the kind of lowering analysis proposed e.g. in Franks and King (2000). A further problem posed by Bg DPs concerns the distribution of the historically “dative” clitic: (4) a. knigata mi ‘book-the my’ b. xubavoto mu momiče ‘pretty-the his girl’ c. pette ti interesni knigi ‘five-the your interesting books’ d. [dosta glupavata im] zabeleeka ‘quite stupid-the their remark’ e. [vernijat ni na demokratični idei] prezident ‘faithful-the our to democratic ideas president’ Descriptively, the clitic attaches to whatever word is inflected for specificity. The problem is how to get the clitic to target this word, since, unlike the article, it is an independent syntactic entity. Following Rudin (1997) and Franks and King (2000), among others, I take clitics to be instantiations of agreement (Agr) features; consequently, the dative clitic can be analyzed as the head of some kind of “indirect object” AgrIOP within DP, presumably right under DP, as follows, for e.g. (4b):

D Agr (=mu) xubavoto momiče (5) [DP [+spec] [AgrIOP IO [+3sg.m] [AP [NP ]]]] It would thus appear that the clitic mu lowers to the next head down, which must be [+spec], as proposed argued in Franks and King (2000). To avoid this lowering analysis, however, I develop an “interarboreal” account in the spirit of Bobaljik and Brown (1997). The clitic mu merges directly with xubaboto, and its features are eventually checking against AgrIO by raising (of formal features) instead. The condition on merger of the clitic is therefore that it must merge with a [+spec] head, satisfying the above descriptive generalization. The result of this merger, {xubovo +mu}, then merges with the NP {momiče}, and the result merges first with AgrIO and finally with D. In this way, that fact that the inflectional article and the syntactic clitic both target the same head is accommodated without lowering, and in accordance with the minimalist requirement that each merger extends the tree. References Abney, S. (1987) The English Noun Phrase in its Sentential Aspect. Ph.D. Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. Bobaljik, J. and Brown, S. (1997) “Interarboreal Operations: Head Movement and the Extension Requirement.” Linguistic Inquiry 28, 345–56. Caink, A. (2000) “In Favour of a ‘Clitic Cluster’ in the Bulgarian and Macedonian DP.” In M. Dimitroiva-Vulchanova, I. Krapova and L. Hellan, eds. Papers from the Third Conference on Formal Approaches to South Slavic and Balkan Languages, University of Trondheim Working Papers in Linguistics 34. Franks, S. and King, T. H. (2000) A Handbook of Slavic Clitics. New York: Oxford University Press. Rudin, C. (1997) “AgrO and Bulgarian Pronominal Clitics.” In M. Lindseth and S. Franks, eds. Proceedings of FASL V: The Indiana Meeting, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Slavic Materials. Scatton, E. (1993) “Bulgarian.” In B. Comrie and G. Corbett, eds. The Slavonic Languages. London: Routledge.

Balkan Interference in the Area of Conjunctions in the Peripheral Macedonian Dialects Dejan Gegovski, Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts The Balkan Peninsula represents a territory of great linguistic diversity in which different languages have always been in contact. The need for mutual understanding of peoples from different linguistic communities led to a massive bilingualism, which is an indispensable condition for the development of a linguistic league. The Balkan Sprachbund is known as a classic example of a community of dialect complexes of different origins that for centuries have had a convergent development and have achieved significant structural parallelism. It is well known that Macedonian dialects are the most Balkan-like, all the relevant processes reach their culmination precisely in the Macedonian dialects. This feature of the Macedonian dialects makes them an attractive subject of analysis of interference between two systems. In other words, Macedonian dialect systems represent an unusually well-equipped laboratory for research on the spontaneous life of language as such. The object of interest in this paper are sentential compounds whose constitutive members are conjunctions, i.e. sentential compounds where the conjunction is an exponent of the relation holding between the events (situations, states, processes …). In the peripheral Macedonian dialects the interference in the area of conjunctions is significant. As a result of this, loan-words and calques appear as exponents of the relations between events: oti, ama, ala, ke, zer, dilmi, pred da, bez da, za da, ki da … . The object of interest is how borrowed words and meanings become suitable for use in new functional complexes. I shall also deal with the dialectal geography of these words and the relative chronology of their appearance in the Macedonian dialects. Bibliography Friedman, V. (1987) Tipologija na upotrebata na da vo balkanskite jazici. Prilozi na MANU, XII 1, Skopje. (1996)Gramatica limbii Române II. Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, Bucureşti. Papahagi, T. (1974) Dicţionarul Dialectului Aromân. Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, Bucureşti. Topolinjska, Z. (1997) Makedonskite dijalekti vo Egejska Makedonija, kniga vtora, Sintaksa II del. MANU, Skopje. Vidoeski, B. (1999) Dijalektite na makedonskiot jazik, T.1. MANU, Skopje. Ilievski, Xr. P. (1988) “Krste Misirkov.” In Balkanološki lingvistički studii Institut za makedonski jazik, Skopje.

Discussant: Wayles Browne, Cornell University Time: 28B Panel: 28B-1: Changing Genres and Contexts at the End of the “Long” Eighteenth Century Chair: Gitta Hammarberg, Macalester College Equipment: Overhead projector Slot: December 28, 2000, 10:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m. Masonic Allegory and Russian Pre-Romanticism: The Symbolism of Sofia and Adam Kadmon in the Poetry of Semen Bobrov Marina Aptekman, Brown University The ideas of mystical and moral Enlightenment disseminated by Russian Free-Masonry of the late eighteenth century, and especially by Russian Rosicrucians, had a powerful impact on the development of Russian pre-Romantic literature. The publishing work of Novikov and his fellow Masons, the founding of such magazines as Morning Light and The Evening Dawn and finally the creation of the literary salon of M. Xeraskov has influenced a whole generation of Russian pre-Romantic poets. Although Semen Bobrov is definitely one of the most significant figures of Russian pre-Romanticism, his poetry still belongs to the least studied works of Russian literature. Among the topics left out of the critic’s attention is the strong influence of Masonic philosophy on Bobrov’s works. Masonic symbolism plays a very important role in Bobrov’s poetry and seems to be essential for the full understanding of Bobrov’s imagery and language. In my paper I will try to shed light on such important Masonic images in Bobrov’s poetry as the allegory of Sofia and the symbolism of Adam Kadmon. I will then analyze the Cabalistic and the Gnostic origins of these images and will discuss their significance for the Masonic philosophy of the last quarter of the eighteenth century. I will then concentrate on the historical evidence and try to prove that Bobrov was indeed connected to Novikov’s circle of Russian Rosicrucians and that these connections had influenced strongly his poetic imagination. I believe that this topic which is very much at the border of literature and philosophy, is important for both the better understanding of the role that the Masonic Enlightenment has played in the history of Russian literature and for the broader perspective on the development of Russian religious and literary thought.

The Lipetsk Spa: Placing the “Caustic Šaxovskoj” in Context Julie A. Cassiday, Williams College Widely acknowledged as one of the early nineteenth century’s most productive and influential playwrights, Prince Aleksandr Aleksandrovič Šaxovskoj was also the most important impresario in the Russian theater of his day. He distinguished himself as Russia’s first professional director of note, a brilliant theatrical administrator, and a discerning talent scout, who discovered and fostered the greatest acting talents of the era. In addition, Šaxovskoj claims responsibility for introducing vaudeville to the Russian stage and writing plays that comprised the bulk of the Russian theatrical repertoire during the 1810s and 1820s. In spite of his prolonged, prolific, and prominent career, Šaxovskoj has been largely overlooked by the critical establishment. The few studies of his life and works struggle primarily to return him to the limelight and succeed only in scratching the surface of his oeuvre of more than one hundred plays and numerous poetic and polemical works. In my paper, I hope not only to rectify, but also to explain, this oversight by examining Šaxovskoj’s most significant play, Urok koketam, ili Lipetskie vody (The Lipetsk Spa, 1815) and the cultural context in which the play was written, staged, and received. Theater historians and literary scholars agree that The Lipetsk Spa hailed a new era in Russian drama and letters. The play’s innovative use of the genre of verse comedy, as well as its almost xenophobic denunciation of all things foreign, allowed Šaxovskoj to take part in the debate raging between Archaists and their opponents during the first decades of the nineteenth century. While creating a thoroughly innovative literary and theatrical language in The Lipetsk Spa, Šaxovskoj managed nonetheless to defend staunchly the cultural values of the Archaists. Much of the reluctance of theater historians and literary critics to examine Šaxovskoj’s work most probably arises from what Puškin described as the “noisy swarm” depicted in the comedies of “the caustic Šaxovskoj,” as illustrated by The Lipetsk Spa. (Evgenij Onegin, 1, XVIII) However, the playwright’s arch-conservative values apparently did not offend his spectators and critics during the early nineteenth century and, on the contrary, seem to have contributed to his play’s appeal. Placing The Lipetsk Spa in the context of its composition, staging, and reception during the early nineteenth century will begin the long overdue process of reconstructing the theatrical milieu created by Šaxovskoj, to which Puškin hearkened back with appreciation and affection.

“Frivolous” Friendly Epistles? Simulation, Satire and Friendly Discourse in 1790s Russian Poetry Romy Taylor, University of Southern California Friendly epistles are usually dismissed as one of the early nineteenth-century “fluff” genres that lost resonance for good reason. Contemporary critics agreed: Puškin’s former classmate Vil′gelm Kjuxel′bèker, in an influential 1824 article, dismissed friendly epistles as “light poetry,” frivolous and therefore unworthy of authors’ and readers’ attention. Yes, friendly epistles favored a light, bantering tone; their lines were liberally sprinkled with epithets declaring the addressee a “tender friend; nursling of Apollo” (“nežnyj drug, pitomec Apollona”). But, had friendly epistles’ subject matter been restricted to epithet-ridden declarations of friendship, the genre would probably never have been as popular as it was in the mid-1790s or in the 1810s. Friendly epistles could accommodate just about any theme, from invitations to dinner, to utopian republics, to homosexual relations. Likewise, the function of friendly epistles was rarely to simply assure the addressee of the author’s true friendship: friendly epistles served as a forum for discussion of serious issues, albeit in an informal context. And discussion of serious issues in an informal context was a very important function to fulfill. For example, when Karamzin was smitten with his friend’s wife, A. I. Pleščeeva, in the mid- 1790s, he found himself “wanting to express his love”—while at the same time needing to fulfill her wishes that he restrict himself to “friendship.” What genre could handle such diverse requirements? Madrigals served to convey more traditional compliments; love poems would only exacerbate the situation. But friendly epistles proved the solution: in his 1795 “Poslanie k ženščinam” (“Epistle to Women,” published in 1796), Karamzin muses at length on women’s virtues, and turns to Pleščeeva only at the end of the poem, assuring her that he has “said good- bye to love” and will now settle for “true friendship.” Though this is what Pleščeeva wanted to hear, the preceding 350+ lines of praise to women are, implicitly, both praising Pleščeeva and suggesting his continued stronger feelings. Discussion of serious issues in an informal context was even more urgent in the 1790s political arena, with Radiščev and Novikov arrested and the French revolution turning to terror. Catherine II, hoping for some support from poets’ ranks, sent word out through third parties that she would be amenable to receiving odes. How does one respectfully decline a sovereign? Friendly epistles again provided the forum. Karamzin and Deržavin both declined Catherine’s commission, using friendly epistles’ gentle and informal tone to soften the answer. Finally, though discussion of the French revolution was off limits, Karamzin was able to lament turns of events in France by expressing disappointment in Plato’s Republic, rather than referring to France directly, in his 1794 “Poslanie k Dmitrievu” (“Epistle to Dmitriev,” published the same year). Though friendly epistles were criticized as frivolous, it was their veneer of frivolity that allowed poets in the 1790’s to express themselves without offending some very picky potential readers. Perhaps, sometimes, “frivolous fluff” can smuggle in the most punch.

Panel: 28B-2: Literature in Exile Chair: Leonid Livak, Davidson College Equipment: Slide projector Slot: December 28, 2000, 10:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m. A Russian Aeneas: Exile and Citizenship in Vjačeslav Ivanov's Roman Sonnets Judith E. Kalb, University of South Carolina “Perhaps exile is the poet’s natural condition. I felt a certain privilege in the coincidence of my existential condition with my profession,” Iosif Brodskij remarked in a 1987 interview. Physical exile can echo the intermediate space between thought and action where the writer dwells, a space which originates the narrative act that bridges the two and in so doing constructs the writer’s own created and creative identity (Seidel 1986). Exile, then, can function as a realization of the writer’s metaphorical home, a familiar and fruitful region long inhabited and made one’s own. This paper seeks to explore issues of exile and citizenship in Vjačeslav Ivanov’s Roman Sonnets. Studies consulted include Klimoff 1986, Rudich 1988, West 1970, and Jackson 1986. Written from 1924–25, the sonnets reflect the poet’s longstanding interest, both historical and cultural, in the city of Rome. Ivanov had studied Roman history for five years under the famous German historian Theodor Mommsen, and he had written his dissertation in Latin on the history of Roman tax farming. While Ivanov’s intellectual interests had strayed in the direction of ancient Greek culture, and in particular the cult of Dionysus, Rome had continued to play an important role in Ivanov’s life, including on a personal level: in Rome in 1893 Ivanov had met his second wife Lidija Zinovieva-Annibal, who was to prove his greatest poetic inspiration. Long after her death in 1907, Ivanov returned to Rome in 1924 after gaining permission from the Soviet government to leave Russia with his two children. Once again, he found in Rome an inspiration to create. Ivanov describes himself in the first sonnet as a “faithful pilgrim,” thereby affirming his longtime commitment to Rome and at the same time asserting a distance between his own provenance and the “eternal city.” Pilgrims do not as a rule hail from or inhabit at length the objects of their pilgrimage. Indeed, Ivanov goes on to compare Russia to Troy, burning amidst world destruction. Ivanov, therefore, is a modern-day Aeneas, fleeing his native land to seek refuge in another. Ivanov will perpetuate the Trojan theme throughout the cycle, continuing implicitly to recall his origins in another realm. And yet paradoxically the exile who comes to Rome is in a sense coming home. Aeneas, while initially a stranger to Italy, went on to join with that land’s earlier inhabitants to found a new dynasty, one that would become the mighty Roman empire. The exile can become native, and powerfully so; in fact, Vergil tells us that King Latinus has heard Aeneas’ arrival predicted long before Aeneas actually appears. The stranger thus has a longstanding home in Rome, one to which he must lay claim. In his Roman Sonnets, Ivanov inserts himself into the Vergilian narrative to assert his status of simultaneous exile and citizen. He bases his declaration on his identity as a poet, one who through his descriptions of Rome will join in the creation of the city inaugurated by Aeneas’ dreams and perpetuated by the generations of artists and craftsmen who have described and helped to create the world (mir) that is Rome (Rim). Rome, then, becomes for Ivanov a symbol of the creation of culture, a realm that he, like all writers, has in fact long inhabited. Rome can be seen on the metaphorical plane as Ivanov’s eternal home, a creative world capital that exists outside of particular geographical boundaries and historical events. The city with its ancient aqueducts and fountains represents the durability and life of artistic creation. And Ivanov’s sonnets about Vergil’s city become part of the chain that has served to create this symbol of eternal culture; Ivanov the exile, therefore, becomes a citizen, once again and as ever, of Rome.

Along an Invisible Track: Cvetaeva's Poetics of Exile Alyssa W. Dinega, University of Notre Dame Several critics have remarked in passing on Cvetaeva’s mythologization of Russia in her poetry written during the years of her exile in Western Europe (1922–39). For instance, Olga Peters Hasty (Tsvetaeva’s Orphic Journeys in the Worlds of the Word) has suggested that the lost Russian homeland plays a role in Cvetaeva’s long poem Novogodnee akin to the role of Hades in the Orpheus myth, while Ieva Vitins (“Escape from Earth: A Study of Tsvetaeva’s Elsewheres”) claims that in Cvetaeva’s prose reminiscences, the remembered Russia of her youth becomes, by virtue of its inaccessibility, a “surrogate form of escape” from the burden of mundane reality. However, these comments come in the context of discussions on topics not directly related to Cvetaeva’s exile. No one yet to my knowledge has undertaken a study focused on the theme of Russia and the poet’s exile from her homeland in Cvetaeva’s émigré writings. In this paper, I will discuss several poems (the primary emphasis will be on “Rassvet na rel′sax” [1922] and “Rodina” [1932]) in which the theme of exile is paramount. This theme suits Cvetaeva’s definition of the poet as pariah and links her to a long and rich tradition of poetic exiles (Puškin, Ovid, etc.). At the same time, I will show that Cvetaeva’s poetic manipulation of the theme of exile is unique, for she casts her longing for Russia as one of a multitude of hopeless earthly infatuations. She therefore cultivates a consistent yet contradictory mythology of Russia in her poetry. On the one hand, Russia is beloved and sorely missed, whereas, on the other hand, the poet’s love for her homeland is spoken for the most part tacitly, even as her feelings of alienation in exile are triumphantly proclaimed. Indeed, the poet appears to choose exile freely, renouncing in the process her love for Russia, which, paradoxically, grows even stronger and more tormenting as a result. Cvetaeva’s unique brand of nostalgia for the homeland is a kind of orchestrated unrequited love. She needs her exile—even as she needs, elsewhere, her renunciation of uplifting, human love—as a stimulus for poetry. I will argue that Russia thus plays the same role in Cvetaeva’s poetics as do her unattainable human beloveds; this hypothesis is supported by the fact that in several key poems, Russia is aligned with—indeed, nearly indistinguishable from—the figures of Cvetaeva’s most important poetic paramours and substitute muses, Pasternak and Rilke. For Cvetaeva, therefore, the necessity of exile and the impossibility of Russia become synonymous with poetic inspiration.

Modern Exile and Spatial Form: Nabokov's Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle Anita Kondoyanidi, Indiana University of Pennsylvania In one of the interviews given in Switzerland, Vladimir Nabokov says: “I have always maintained, even as a schoolboy in Russia, that the nationality of a worthwhile writer is of secondary importance […]. The writer’s art is his real passport. His identity should be immediately recognized by a special pattern or unique coloration” (63). In other words, the style of a dislocated artist, which is shaped by the exile, is the only identification he has: an alienated artist, in Nabokov’s novels, seems to survive exile and reconcile his present with the past with the assistance of his art, for exile as a state “of not being home,” as a separation from childhood and one’s native tongue, appears to be a spur to Nabokov’s creativity. Just as Nabokov’s characters surmount exile by filling in gaps and imagining time as a complete entity, by putting all the patches of the past and present together, his readers construct the deduced meaning of the novel after several rereadings, connecting disparate parts and making sense of references and cross-references, essentially employing a spatial reading, an idea articulated by Joseph Frank in the forties. More than that, Nabokov himself insists in his Lectures on Literature that readers should employ their imagination in order to visualize images. Bobbie Ann Mason as well as the famous biographer of Nabokov, Brian Boyd, were the first who compared one of the well-known Nabokov novels, Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle with Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights. This comparison in itself assists readers to approach Ada spatially, to visualize this complex novel, to understand the intricate particulars of it, and ultimately to decipher a hidden message. In this paper, I argue that spatial form (as a way of reading and as a metaphorical device structuring the novel which prompts instantaneous visualization) appears to be a product of the creativity of an exile; for as Frank argues, spatial form becomes more prevalent and manifest in the literary works of modernists by virtue of a simple fact that modern time is marked by escalating alienation and exile. This spatial construction is very intricate, for understanding “art at its greatest,” according to Nabokov, is a complicated process—a certain mystery. This mystery, however, can be solved by performing a spatial reading, by using imagination. And imagination is paramount for good readers to possess in order to appreciate literary works, for art is enchanting and as Boyd underscores: “[w]hen Nabokov identified a great novel by its power to enchant, he meant by that its appeal to the alert imagination of the reader” (“American,” 540). Nabokov’s Ada is magical, bolstering readers’ play of visualization. As Nabokov paints with words, the audience can imagine his novel as a painting by placing all the details united by a singular motif—the forbidden but enchanting love of Ada and Van. Bosch’s triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights, which consists of three paintings: Paradise, Millennium, and Hell, reflects the structure as well as the theme of Ada. The left panel that shows the purity of the Garden of Eden is a mirror reflection of the first summer of Van and Ada, the second panel can be compared with Van’s and Ada’s “garden of sensual delights,” and the third quite eerie and terrifying portrayal of hell seems to suggest the repercussions this forbidden love had. By analyzing patterns of Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, and by comparing it with Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights, I will perform a spatial reading, a notion which appears to be a result of the creativity of an exile, for spatial form reflects the process of dealing with the dislocation—a process in which the combination of the play of imagination, constant accumulation of fragments, detection of patterns assists exiles in surmounting the pains of the displacement. Andrei Makine, Gérard de Nerval, and the Language of Exile Gabriella Safran, Stanford University Andrei Makine’s 1995 novel Le testament français was translated into English as Dreams of My Russian Summers. Unfortunately, the English title eliminates the references to the work’s two primary themes, writing and the . The novel’s hero, like its author, is a Russian who eventually emigrates to Paris and writes novels in French. The narrator learns French as a child from his French grandmother, Charlotte. Given the opportunity to juxtapose two languages, he understands the arbitrary quality of words and their meanings: his recognition as an adolescent of the disjuncture between the feminine “fleur” and the masculine “cvetok” ruptures his natural, childish relationship to language (271). Anticipating that break, he gropes toward a less natural but more powerful language, “so different from those words blunted by overuse” (174); the artificality of his own French gives it a sharper point (272). Makine gives that same artificiality credit for the power of his own art. In an interview in L’Express, the author insisted that he chose to write in French because of its foreignness: “French is a tool that is not mired in routine things … a literary language, relieved of the prosaic and the vulgar. This creates a kind of room for freedom between my text and me.” His answer echoes the Russian Formalists’ assertion that only by breaking old literary or linguistic habits can writers produce significant new art. Indeed, the hero of the novel sees that the language of every day may serve for telling anecdotes, but not for communicating an epiphany. Makine’s words, then, depict exile or estrangement as the inevitable stance of the writer, at home or abroad. The specific language of exile would seem to be arbitrarily chosen—what is important is that this language be in some way foreign, new, artificial. Against this background, I want to explore a contrary way to read Makine, as suggested by the famous poem of Gérard de Nerval, “Fantaisie”, that appears twice in the novel. Charlotte reads the first verse to her grandson at the end of one summer and the next three a year later (110, 192). This repetition structures the novel and reflects its themes of memory and its return (Nerval’s speaker describes how a certain song awakens in him the vision of a medieval castle). Nerval wrote “Fantaisie” in 1834, then inserted it in two of his later essays on French poetry and his own work. In “La Bohème galante”, he explains that he called the poem an “odelette” (a little ode) and modeled it after works by the sixteenth-century poet Ronsard. The essay describes the views of two critics: Schlegel, who counseled nineteenth-century French poets to look for inspiration to their native tradition (defined as pre-neoclassical French works), and the sixteenth- century Du Bellay, who urged the poets of his generation to abandon medieval French models for the Greek and Latin masters. Nerval sees Ronsard as somehow reconciling these two contrary suggestions in his odelettes, drawing at once on the classical ode and the French chansons of the twelfth century. His commentary suggests that his own “Fantaisie” be read as an imitation of this quality of Ronsard’s, that is, as an evocation of a beautiful, distant image produced by a careful negotiation between the urge to imitate foreign sources and the pull to a native tradition. Perhaps the erudite Makine (who holds doctorates in literature from both Moscow State University and the Sorbonne), recalling Nerval’s own commentary, placed “Fantaisie” in such a central place in his book in order to complicate his own explanation of his choice to write in French. Even while Makine, like Ronsard, makes much of his debt to foreign sources, his work gestures toward his native tradition as well. Russian words are crucial to the narrator’s new language of inspiration: “I sensed that the ‘Koukouška’ [a local name for a train near Charlotte’s town] would be from now on the first word of our new language. Of that language that will say the unsayable” (193). This image suggests a less reductionist vision of the émigré artist, as one who reconciles the universal and the local, the foreign and the familiar, in order to evoke the ineffable.

Panel: 28B-3: Arcybašev's Sanin: Hero of Our Time? Chair: David Macey, Slot: December 28, 2000, 10:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m.

“Pornography with Ideas”: Arcybašev's Sanin in English Translation Michael Katz, Middlebury College Mixail Arcybašev’s sensational second novel, Sanin, was written (1902–07) and published (1907) at a critical moment in Russian history; it provoked heated debates among the reading public. Its hero exhibited a set of new values to be contrasted with the morality of the older intelligentsia. Sanin was an attractive, clever, powerful, life-loving man who, at the same time, was an amoral and carnal animal, bored by politics and religion. During the novel he lusts after his own sister, yet defends her when she is betrayed by an arrogant officer; he deflowers an innocent, but willing virgin; and, after befriending a Jewish intellectual, encourages him to put an end to his self-doubts by committing suicide. Arcybašev drew upon both Russian and Western sources for his inspiration: his novel represents a crude vulgarization of Dostoevskij’s anti-hero in Notes from Underground, of Nietzsche’s “superman,” and of the work of Max Stirner, a little- known individualist anarchist philosopher. Literary reactions to Sanin were diverse and dramatic: Tolstoj ignored the book’s message, dismissing it as an expression of man’s “basest animal impulses.” Gor′’kij was offended by what he saw as a profanation of his own realist aesthetic. On the other hand, Blok defended Arcybašev’s “genuine Talent” pressed into service of his “large, dark, real work.” The wittiest pronouncement comes from the pen of the critic Kornej Čukovskij, who wrote: “Russian pornography is not plain pornography, such as the French and Germans produce; rather, it is pornography with ideas.” Arcybašev’s novel was translated into English by Percy Pinkerton and published by Viking Press under the title Sanin in 1914. In spite of the novel’s style, which is clumsy, repetitive, and melodramatic, it was enormously popular in its English rendition. It was reprinted at least twenty-one times before 1926, but has been out of print since 1932. That first translation (now over eighty-five years old) is not only unavailable, but also inaccurate, heavily censored, badly bowdlerized, extremely awkward, and virtually unreadable. I have recently completed a new translation of Arcybašev’s novel into contemporary American English. It will be published next year by Cornell University Press along with a comprehensive critical introduction written by the Dutch scholar Otto Boele, and a brief afterword by the English Slavist, Nicholas Luker. In my paper I will focus on the most notorious scene from this novel from the two English versions (Pinkerton’s and my own): namely, the scene in which the hero, after articulating his most cherished “ideas” about the nature of man, takes advantage of the heroine in a rowboat bobbing on a moonlit lake. A critic writing in 1909, referring to reforms to encourage private enterprise, called Arcybašev’s hero “the natural and necessary product of our epoch, which has placed its ‘wager on the strong,’ on ‘people with bold initiative.’” Advocates of market capitalism at that time believed that Russia needed the kind of people who had succeeded in building bourgeois society in the West— creative, energetic, and selfish. With the recent political changes in Russia and the resulting cultural upheaval, theories of individualism, the pursuit of personal pleasure, and the resurgence of eroticism have made Arcybašev’s “pornography with ideas” relevant to the contemporary scene in unexpected ways.

A Bible for an Entire Generation? Reconsidering Sanin's Status as a Cult Novel Otto Boele, University of Groningen From the moment of its publication in 1907, Mixail Arcybašev’s novel Sanin has been regarded as a classical roman à thèse in the tradition of Černyševskij’s best-seller What Is to Be Done? Even if its success was short-lived and its long-term influence limited, many critics seem to agree that at the time Sanin was widely read as a manual for living. Although few contemporary scholars would go as far as D. S. Mirskij, who called it the “Bible for an entire generation,” Sanin’s reputation as a moral “guidebook” has proven remarkably persistent. In her recently published study The Mythology of the Underground Man (1999), Marina Mogil′ner even asserts that the sanincy (Vladimir Sanin’s followers) constituted an entire social movement. One question that scholars have failed to ask, however, is why Sanin has elicited so few positive reactions, if it really was the catechism of the inter-revolutionary generation. Except for a few letters to Lev Tolstoj in which confused readers ask him about his opinion on Sanin, we hardly ever encounter a voice speaking out in favor of the novel’s purported message. Curiously enough, the sanincy themselves—if they ever existed—did not take part in the debate on Sanin. In this paper I will attempt to present a more balanced picture of Sanin’s immediate success by examining a variety of reactions, ranging from readers’ polls to letters to the editor published in provincial newspapers. I will argue that while the novel did enjoy an unprecedented succès de scandale, it is unlikely that it ever functioned as a manual for living. Occupying a central place in the debate on the Russian intelligentsia after the revolution of 1905, Arcybašev’s hero was always regarded as the champion of the political Other. Whether he really served as a role model and attracted any followers remains highly questionable.

Volodymyr Vynnyčenko's Myron Kupčenko in the Novel Čestnist′ z soboju (1911): A Civic- Minded Sanin? Andrew Kaspryk, Independent Scholar Several critics accused the Ukrainian writer Volodymyr Vynnyčenko of creating a Sanin-like hero in his first novel Chestnist′ z soboju. Vynnyčenko denied having created such a character. Though Vynnyčenko’s Myron does indeed have several similarities to Sanin, interestingly it is an earlier version of Vynnyčenko’s hero Myron, who first appeared in a play written in 1907 entitled Ščabli žytti (The Rungs of Life), who resembles Myron much more so than the later, more mature Myron in the novel of 1911. Critics did not point this out; instead they wrongly remarked that the Myron from the novel resembled Sanin. Though these heroes are similar in their advocacy of a new moral code of values associated with Nietzsche, in particular, sexual freedom and enjoyment of sex, at the same time there are significant differences between Myron and Sanin. Unlike Sanin, who has severed his political affiliations, Myron is a member of a revolutionary party, who is concerned about the welfare of workers. Also, Myron is shown as vulnerable, worried about the consequences of advocating sexual liberation, whereas Sanin is not. In this paper I argue that Vynnyčenko provoked the anger of critics because he transposed and emphasized what was regarded as the modernist, popular, and decadent theme of sexual liberation which Arcybašev’s Sanin represented to the revolutionary milieu. Associating Myron with Sanin served these critics as a means in trying to discredit Vynnyčenko’s attempt to include discussion of sexual issues on the revolutionary agenda. Vynnyčenko’s intention in his first novel was to expose the hypocrisy of the revolutionary intelligentsia, because they saw themselves as progressive, but in the sphere of sexuality Vynnyčenko portrayed them as conservative. I conclude my paper by considering the controversy of Vynnyčenko’s allegedly Sanin-like revolutionary Myron in his first novel provoked in terms of the larger, underlying issue of contention it reveals between Vynnyčenko, the Nietzschean Marxist and other revolutionary intelligentsia. Vynnyčenko believed that there was a need to undertake an inner revolution within the individual, a notion inspired in part by Nietzsche and modernists, as opposed to regarding such a personal, individual quest as unnecessary.

Panel: 28B-4: Literary Mystification and the Idea of the Author Chair: Catharine Nepomnyashchy, Barnard College Slot: December 28, 2000, 10:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m.

Personae and Personality in the Work of O. I. Senkovskij Melissa Frazier, Sarah Lawrence College As editor and leading contributor of The Library for Reading O. I. Senkovskij produced a distinctive brand of literary criticism, one marked by two features in particular: almost all of Senkovskij’s work is characterized by a strong sense of personality, so strong, in fact, as to seriously annoy many of his readers; at the same time, though, this personality is not quite Senkovskij’s, since it tends to be embodied in a series of personae, most famously Baron Brambeus, but also, for example, Tjutjundžju-Oglu-Mustafa-Aga, O. O....O!, the three landowners from Tver′ and Kritikzada. Senkovskij’s tendency to create personae has been linked to the work of the great English satirists and would-be reformers of morals of the eighteenth century, and in particular Addison and Steele; this paper will argue, however, that Senkovskij’s practice more exactly mirrors the work of English writers more closely his contemporaries, and because both arise from similar conditions. Great Britain in the early nineteenth century, like Russia, was in the midst of profound changes in concepts of both author- and readership. In a newly anonymous world of publishing authors like Sir Walter Scott and editors like John Lockhart, John Wilson and William Maginn used personae in a new way, to make the burden of personality heavier while simultaneously cutting the connection which would tether a fictional persona to a real person, and it is this paradoxical combination of both more and less which we find also in Senkovskij. A response to changing conditions of publishing and also the means of effecting these changes, this new sort of persona in Russia as in Great Britain served to slyly underscore the simultaneous abstractness and concreteness of the written word and also of the reader, that increasingly amorphous reading public on whom a new generation of writers depended in a very material sense.

Družinin's Feuilletons: A Place in the Sun for Dark Times Lawrence Mansour, United States Military Academy, West Point Aleksandr Družinin used various pseudonyms and belletristic personae over the thirteen most productive years of his career in Russian journalism (1850–1863). His “Ivan Chernoknižnikov” stories, first produced with Nekrasov and other Sovremennik writers, and later by Družinin alone, evolved as a literary cover in the years following the 1848 revolutions in Europe when censorship severely restricted the kind of implicit liberal social criticism native to his world- view. With this “mask” he also negotiated the generational change that separated the sensibilities of his contemporaries from those of the “baby-boom” generation who came of age in the twenty years following the Napoleonic Wars. Most importantly, the Ivan Chernoknižnikov stories allowed him to prosecute a campaign for full-blooded mimetic prose, while indulging his active dislike of rancor and confrontation. While Družinin revered poetry, Russian and foreign alike, and actively promoted its study, writing criticism which defended poetry in an era increasingly antagonistic to it, he directed his satirical writings at those features of poetic practice that he felt suppressed its ability to function as a multifaceted mirror of life. Prose writing came in for the same criticism in Chernoknižnikov’s parodies. This complex critique of poetics runs as a unifying theme in the Chernoknižnikov stories.

The Part to the Whole: Nikolaj Ostrovskij's (Non) Autobiographical Novel Lilya Kaganovsky, College of William and Mary The original publication from 1932 to 1934 of Nikolaj Ostrovskij’s How the Steel Was Tempered in the journal Molodaja gvardija received very little notice. Lost on its way to the publisher in 1928, the novel had to be re-written from memory (Ostrovskij had made only one copy of the manuscript), and was rejected three years later on the basis of the “unreality” of its characters. Only when it was re-submitted yet another time to a different editor, did the novel finally come to print, the publication of Part 1, in fragmented form, taking almost the whole of 1932. Still, this “model” socialist realist text remained in critical obscurity until 1934, when two things happened simultaneously: the concept of socialist realism was proclaimed as the dominant model for all artistic production; and one of the ’s most prominent journalists, Mixail Kol′cov, writing a biographical sketch about the author, discovered the “mummy” that was Nikolaj Ostrovskij. Quoting from the article, Lev Anninskij writes that Kol′cov’s “essay produced the impression of an explosion.” “Nikolaj Ostrovskij is lying prone, flat on his back, absolutely still,” wrote Kol’cov, “the blanket is wrapped around the long, thin, straight column of his body, like an eternal, non-removable case. A mummy. But inside this mummy something is alive. Yes. The thin hands—just the hands—move slightly. They are damp to the touch … . The face, too, is alive. Suffering has dried its contours, erased its colors, sharpened its edges … . The voice is calm, and even though it is quiet, it only sometimes shakes from exhaustion.” Curiously, this image of Ostrovskij, as a barely moving, barely living mummy, gave the author and his novel the fame that would remain unchallenged until the end of Soviet rule. Ostrovskij spent the last fourteen months of his life in a house built for him by the government on the Black Sea coast, where he lived “like a living legend on the street named after himself,” his house being a “site of countless pilgrimages and an object of the greatest interest for foreign journalists.” The novel’s great “fame,” therefore, was based first and foremost on the journalist Kol′cov finding its author, Nikolaj Ostrovskij “lying prone, flat on his back … like a mummy.” Ostrovskij’s paralyzed body—the destruction of which he described in his novel—made the story that he told in Steel “real”: that is to say, there seemed to be an actual physical body that had been sacrificed for the “greatest happiness of mankind”—the Soviet regime. What followed, however, was an intentional confusion on the part of everyone (including Ostrovskij’s wife) of Nikolaj Ostrovskij (the author, real, physical) and Pavka Korčagin (the fictional character and Ostrovskij’s invention), so that every incident of Korčagin’s life (Ostrovskij never claimed he was writing an autobiographical novel) was attributed back to the author. Thus, it was no longer possible to distinguish between the two, and some did not try: Ostrovskij’s wife, in her biography, instead of telling the story of her marriage with Nikolaj, quotes a passage directly from the novel instead—for her, the fictional narrative comes closer to representing the truth than her own words. It seems, then, that the case of Ostrovskij/Korčagin underscores the particular difficulties involved in socialist realist negotiations of fiction and reality. Most skeptical Russians, raised on Steel and trips to Ostrovskij’s house, believe that it was Maksim Gor′kij and not Nikolaj Ostrovskij who wrote How the Steel Was Tempered; that Ostrovskij was nothing more than a body (broken, paralyzed, displaying the signs of its commitment to the socialist realist dream) picked as a perfect representation of a “new Soviet author”—someone who looked like he had “actually lived” through the experiences he described. Thus the text (Steel) and the body (Ostrovskij), which seemed at first to be linked by synecdoche (one is the product, “the part to the whole” of the other), were instead linked only metonymically (by association, but not through any actual connection). The negotiation of author, persona, and character suggests a process of literary mystification that has repercussions for the notion of individual authorship and collective production; and raises questions about the place of the author (body in the world) in relation to the final product (both text and authorial image).

On Becoming Elena Insarova Carol Ueland, Drew University The leading Russian woman poet of the first wave emigration to the Far East was born Rimma Ivanovna Vinogradova (1903–1964) but published under various pseudonyms, most notably “Marjana Kolosova” and “Elena Insarova,” the latter adopted from Turgenev’s heroine in On the Eve. Like Marina Cvetaeva during her period of emigration in Western Europe, Vinogradova became celebrated as a bard of the White Army in the Asian Russian émigré community. She was exceptional among poets of the eastward emigration in finding a broader audience in Europe. Married to A. N. Pokrovskij, the co-founder of the Russian Fascist Party in China, she was a politically engaged poet both in life and art and in her writing often blurred the boundaries between the biographical and the imaginary. Her fierce patriotism almost led to a return to the Soviet Union after the Second World War, but ended in a further emigration to Chile. This presentation will explore the ways in which her pseudonyms relate to her thematic concerns in verse, and trace the development of the various personae in her corpus.

Panel: 28B-5: Learner Differences in Language Acquisition Chair: Thomas Garza, University of Texas, Austin Equipment: Overhead projector Slot: December 28, 2000, 10:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m.

Learning Context and Strategy Use Jennifer Bown, Ohio State University In the past three decades, researchers in the field of Second Language Acquisition have become increasingly interested in language learning strategies (LLS). Among the topics of investigation is the question of factors influencing learners’ choice of and use of strategies. Researchers have given attention to such factors as gender, age, learning style, as well as learning task. One area that has largely been ignored, however, is the role that the learning context (self-directed, classroom, study abroad, etc.) plays in the learners’ use of strategies. In an attempt to bridge this gap in the research, the proposed study will seek preliminary answers to the question: do students learning a language in a classroom environment employ different LLS than those in a less- structured, more self-directed environment? The study will involve approximately four hundred students studying Russian, French, German, Chinese, and Japanese at a large mid-western university. This population will include two sets of students: those studying in regular language classes and those enrolled in a self-directed language program. The researcher will administer the Strategies Inventory for Language Learning (Oxford, 1990) and compare the results of the two groups. The hypothesis is that the self-directed learners will report greater use of such strategies as planning, evaluation and monitoring (so-called metacognitive strategies) than classroom learners. The findings of this study will contribute to our understanding of the factors influencing use of language learning strategies.

Outcome-Oriented Outings: Immersion Programs for Adult FL Professionals Vera Gorokhov, Foreign Service Institute Lyubov Koyfman, Foreign Service Institute Among the desired outcomes for adult learners participating in total language immersions (increased fluency, improved listening comprehension, stamina building) one very important outcome is insight into the learner’s own strengths and weaknesses. The opportunity to reflect on one’s learning and assess one’s own language abilities is a critical feature of a well-designed immersion experience. Presenters describe such a week-long local language immersion for Foreign Service Officers learning Russian in preparation for their assignments to Russian-speaking posts around the world. This immersion is part of a proficiency-based, intensive language program. Presenters discuss the overall program structure, preparations, team building events, reflection and self- assessment strategies, and student-initiated scheduling of activities. The variety of activities that comprise this immersion are aimed at: 1. building students’ speaking and listening stamina in Russian; 2. developing fluency and confidence in speaking in unpredictable and informal situations; 3. expanding students’ repertoire of everyday, ordinary vocabulary; and 4. helping students to discover what they, as individuals, can already do in the language, and a sense of where they need to focus in their language learning. Through a combination of practice and reflection, participants become re-energized and re- refocused. They gain insights into their own strengths and weaknesses in speaking and understanding Russian, and become aware of areas they need to work on as they continue their language learning. Handouts demonstrate how such program may be put together with student participation and provide practical tips and lessons learned on immersion design.

Classrooms that Work: The Role of Personality in Classroom Rapport Betty Lou Leaver, Independent Scholar This paper looks at the source of rapport (or lack thereof) in foreign language classrooms. The source of rapport is theorized to be compatibility or conflict in personality type. Using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, based on Jungian theory of psychological type, as adapted by Keirsey to delineate four essential personality temperaments, the discussion centers on the areas of compatibility and conflict between teacher and student, as well as among students in small groups or a large class, for each of the possible combinations. This paper presents a brief overview of the theory behind personality typology, both that undertaken in the United States and that undertaken in Europe. The purpose of the overview is to provide a methodological background for the discussion and to present and define some terminology (terms provided in Russian and English) that may not be familiar to all listeners. The bulk of the paper focuses on pragmatic considerations. These include discussions of the source and nature of the various conflicts. They also include suggestions for ameliorating conflicts, whether those be between teacher and individual students or among students themselves. Suggestions for helping classrooms succeed as mathemagenic environments are provided not only as psychological recommendations but also as pedagogical recommendations, including ways to use various activities, techniques, and “texnologija obučenija” in ways that predispose students to enjoy their classes, as well as to learn from them. The recommendations are based on the work of linguists, as well as psychologists. They have been tested in practice in a number of classrooms in the United States and abroad. Examples of the recommendations in practice are provided as part of the discussion. Sources: Bulakov, A.V. and A. G. Bojko. (1992). Socionika. Kiev: Soborna Ukraina. Ehrman, Madeline. (1996). Understanding Second Language Learning Difficulties. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Ehrman, Madeline and Zoltan Dornyei. (1998). Interpersonal Dynamics in Second Language Education: The Visible and Invisible Classroom. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Jung, Carl. (1971). Psychological Types. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Keirsey, David. (1988) The Keirsey Temperament Sorter. Del Mar, CA: Prometheus Nemesis Books. Leaver, Betty Lou. (1998). Teaching the Whole Class. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt Publishing. Leaver, Betty Lou. (2000). Metodika individualizirovannogo obučenija inostrannomu jazyku s učetom vlijanija kognitivnyx stilej na process ego usvoenie. Doctoral dissertation. Moscow: Pushkin Institute. Leaver, Betty Lou, Inna Dubinsky, and Melina Champine. (1999). Passport to the World: Learning to Communicate in a Foreign Language. San Diego: LARC Press. Myers, Isabella and Katherine Briggs. (1976). The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press. Panel: 28B-6: Forum: Electronic Resources in Teaching Russian (I) Chair: John Langran, Ruslan Russian Language Services Equipment: VCR, Computer projector Slot: December 28, 2000, 10:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m.

Ruslan 1 and 2 (CDRoms) and the Ruslan Video Moskva dlja Vas! John Langran, Ruslan Russian Language Services

The Crime and Punishment Web Site Julie Christensen, George Mason University Panel: 28B-7: Conference Workshop: The ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview: The Guidelines, the Interview, and Curricular Implications Chair: Kira Gor, University of Maryland, College Park Slot: December 28, 2000, 10:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m. Participant: Kira Gor, University of Maryland, College Park Participant: Benjamin Rifkin, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Panel: 28B-8: Linguistics and Pedagogy Chair: Mary Elizabeth McLendon, Independent Scholar Slot: December 28, 2000, 10:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m.

Rečevye obrazy Rossii, ili čemu my učim Natalja Bogdanova, Clemson University Любой преподаветель русского языка как иностранного без труда ответит на вопрос, вынесенный в заглавие: конечно, мы учим иноязычных учащихся современному русскому литературному языку. Главным критерием отбора такого материала является кодификация, отличающая литературный язык от всех других его разновидностей. Объектом внимания в докладе является произносительная сторона русского языка, наиболее слабо кодифицированная и наименее стабильная с точки зрения нормы. Можно сказать, что единого речевого образа России вообще не существует: правильнее говорить о целом ряде таких образов, которые обнаруживаются при взгляде на язык с разных точек зрения. Так, можно говорить о своего рода географических речевых разновидностях литературного языка. В первую очередь это речь двух русских столиц—Москвы и Петербурга,—примерно в равной степени кодифицированная, но почти не представленная в учебных пособиях. Эти две орфоэпические нормы до сих пор сохраняют свои различия, о которых следовало бы говорить на занятиях (ср. моск. до[š:′], було[š]ная, ви[ž:′]ать и пет. до[št′], було[č]ная, ви[ž:]ать). Есть орфоэпическая специфика и в других зонах России. В докладе приводятся данные исследования речи 22 городов страны, которые убедительно доказывают существование региональных вариантов русского литературного (речь не идет о народных говорах) языка. Конечно, нет нужды учить иностранцев этим региональным особенностям, но учитывать их при постановке произношения, не тратить время на устранение “ошибок,” которые таковыми фактически не являются, все же целесообразно. Другого рода орфоэпическая вариантивность русской речи выявляется при взгляде на неё с точки зрения самой лексической системы. Экспериментальные данные показывают, что можно говорить о кодифицированной норме только применительно к основному лексическому массиву современного русского языка. Материал же лексики редкой, малоупотребительной, или, наоборот, сверхчастотной, объединяется в так называемую фонетическую периферию языка и требует особого орфоэпического внимания и специальной кодификации. Наконец, и в рамках основного лексического массива языка обнаруживается множество лексикализованных отклонений от общепринятых правил чтения произношения , которые также необходимо систематизировать и учитывать в ходе преподавания русского языка нерусским. Все эти материалы представлены в докладе и предлагаются к обсуждению.

The Speech Act of Requests: A Pedagogical Perspective Meghan K. Murphy-Lee, University of Kansas This paper explores requests as a speech act in Russian and English from a pedagogical standpoint. While mastering the pragmatics and social linguistics of requests is challenging due to the differences in this speech act across cultures, the request is nevertheless an important speech act for students to master when learning a foreign language. The student needs to be able to follow the social conventions of the target culture. There s/he will face many variants of this speech act and it is imperative that the student knows how to produce and respond to these. Also, in order for him/her to reach the intermediate ACTFL proficiency level (characterized by an ability to initiate and sustain communicative tasks as well as respond to them), s/he need to be able to respond to and create speech acts such as requests. Requests, classified by Searle as “directives” or “invitationals,” come in many forms. Examples include: “Can I borrow your book?” “Would you mind giving me a ride home?” “That trash has sure been sitting there for a while.” Mills’s (1991, 1992, 1993) work uses Speech Act Theory to examine the differences between English and Russian requests. She concludes that requests in Russian tend to be more direct because of their tendency to be placed in the imperative mood. English requests, she says, are usually found in the conditional. Since Mills’s work on Speech Act Theory focuses on requests, I will use her data as the point of departure for my analysis of the methods of presenting requests in four widely used elementary textbooks (Trojka, Načalo, Golosa and Russian Stage One). In my analysis, I will survey the types of requests that appear in the direct linguistic input in the textbooks, noting the relative stage when various kinds of requests appear. Since the explanation of the requests may not occur at the same time the speech act appears in the language input of the text, I will demonstrate where and how each textbook explains the requests. Owing to the differences between English and Russian requests noted by Mills, I will also report whether cultural information pertaining to requests is included. Finally, I will determine how the each of the textbooks depicts the cultural and structural differences between American English and Russian invitations. With proper input and exposure to speech acts such as requests, a beginning student of Russian can more easily advance his/her level of proficiency. References Davidson, Dan (1997). Russian Stage One: Live from Moscow. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt Publishers. Ervin, Gerard, Sophia Lubensky, and Donald K. Jarvis (1996). Načalo: When in Russia. New York: McGraw Hill. Mills, Margaret (1993). “On Russian and English Pragmalinguistic Strategies.” Journal of Slavic Linguistics 11,1: 92–115. —. (1992). “Conventionalized Politeness in Russian Requests: A Pragmatic View of Indirectness.” Russian Linguistics 16,1: 65–78. —. (1991). “The Performance Force of the Interrogative in Colloquial Russian: From Direct to Indirect Speech Acts.” Slavic and East European Journal 35,4: 553–569. Nummikoski, Marita (1995). Trojka: A Communicative Approach to Russian Language Life and Culture. New York: J. Wiley. Robin, Richard, Joanna Robin, and Kathryn Henry (1998). Golosa: A Basic Course in Russian. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Searle, John. (1979). “A Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts.” Keith Gunderson, ed. Studies in the Philosophy of Science 7: 344–367.

On Teaching Pronominal-Correlative Sentences in Russian Zheng-min Dong, Washington State University Russian is less commonly taught in the United States than other major foreign languages and is considered one of the most difficult foreign languages for Americans to learn. The complexity of Russian derives not only from its highly inflected systems of nominal and verb conjugations, but also from certain sentence structures that differ from those of English. Although Russian and English are grammatically completely different languages, as a means of communication they have something in common. In this paper I shall share my experience in teaching pronominal-correlative sentences based on a comparison of Russian and English sentence structures. The pronominal-correlative sentences (PCS), such as Otec pokupaet to, čto syn xočet are a special type of complex sentence in Russian. They are characterized by a relative pronoun (wh word) in the subordinate clause which always correlates to an obligatory demonstrative pronoun in the main clause. The case of both the relative and demonstrative pronouns depends on their function in the clauses, and the subordinate clause of the PCS may often be moved in front of the main clause, for example: Kto ne rabotaet, tot ne est. In Russian sentences of this type the demonstrative and relative pronouns are strictly correlated to one another and compose pairs, such as tot (te, vse, každyj, vsjakij)—kto; to (vsë)—čto; tam (tuda, ottuda)—gde (kuda, otkuda); tak—kak; takoj (takov)—kakoj (kakov); stol′ko—skol′ko, and nastol′ko—naskol′ko. The strict structure of the pronominal-correlative sentences is difficult for American students to learn. However, I have found that sentences of this type are similar to English definite free relative clauses, and it is possible to teach these sentences based on the students’ knowledge of their native language, English, thus helping them overcome the difficulty in their study. The pronominal-correlative sentences are a special type of complex sentence with structures peculiar to Russian. However, they are similar to English complex sentences with definite free relative clauses because: (a) Both the subordinate clause of the PCS and the definite free relative clause look exactly like an indirect question, although neither of them is an indirect question. (b) The subordinate clause of the PCS that is introduced by a certain type of relative pronoun plays the same syntactic role as the demonstrative pronoun does in the main clause. Similarly, the definite free relative clause that is introduced by a certain type of phrase can serve as a phrase of the same type in the main clause of which it is a part. (c) Both the subordinate clause of the PCS and the definite free relative clause may have residual ambiguities in structure and meaning. Nevertheless, we must remain aware of the differences between the PCS and the definite relative clause. Based on the students’ knowledge of English, this comparison facilitates their grasp of the special characteristics of the PCS and thus helps them improve their skills in reading and writing Russian. Time: 28C Panel: 28C-1: The Exotic in Russian Literature and Culture Chair: Nonna Danchenko, Victoria University of Wellington Equipment: Overhead projector Slot: December 28, 2000, 1:00–3:00 p.m.

The Orient on the European Stage: Sakuntala in Russian Theatre Susmita Sundaram, Ohio State University “We were captivated by the possibility of being the first to make contact with secrets and manners of Indian theatre.”—Alexander Tairov A critically acclaimed theater event in the beginning of the century in Russia was the opening of the Kamernyj theater in Moscow in 1914. While much has been written about the director of Kamerny, Alexander Tairov, few scholars have explored the motivation behind Tairov’s bold selection of Sakuntala, a play written by the Indian poet and playwright of the IV century, for his opening night. The first part of this paper traces the fate of Kalidasa’s play Sakuntala from its first translation into Russian by the “official historian of the eighteenth-century Russia,” Nikolaj Karamzin, to its appearance on the Kamerny as the opening play. It is significant to note that several leading Russian poets incorporated themes from Sakuntala into their work. The translation used by Tairov was done by the well-known Russian symbolist Konstantin Bal′mont. The second and concluding part of the paper deals with Tairov’s production of Sakuntala, its significance as a symbol of Tairov’s “synthetic theater” and the differences in the dramatic treatment and its reception in Russia and Western Europe. The comparison will briefly explore categories like character portrayal, interpretation, costumes and the nature of translation.

Rerix's India: Beyond “Orientalism” Trina R. Mamoon, University of Alaska, Fairbanks In this presentation I show the Russian painter Nikolaj Rerix (1874–1947) as unique among Western artists who have represented “the East.” It is a familiar motif in the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European painting: artists as well known as Ingres and Delacroix had presented “the Orient” to their Western public as early as the 1830s. As a painter on Indian themes and someone who wrote about Indian culture, Rerix’s interpretation is one of the few that reflects true respect and appreciation, a willingness to listen to and even learn from the East. My perspective on this intersection of cultures is also somewhat unique: among specialists in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian literature and culture, I am a native of the Indian subcontinent and bring that experience to bear on the question of Rerix’s authenticity and sensitivity to the original. I rely on Edward Said’s 1978 “Orientalism” as the seminal critique of the European perception of the Orient, showing the colonialist ideological subtext of European literary and artistic representations of the East (as irrational, erotic, carnal, and dark). Unlike the Orientalists (Gustave Moreau, Delacroix, and Leon Gerome among others) who emphasized in their paintings only this romanticized aspect of the East, its exotic and sensual qualities, Rerix’s interpretive conception of the “national soul” (or “spirit”) looks beyond the obvious and superficial, seeking the inner essence. It is a refreshing break from the traditional Western perspective: he saw India not through the eyes of a stranger charmed by its pagan lore and mystery, but as a visionary and kindred spirit who lived and died there. I will discuss Rerix’s writings on India as the “national soul,” and present his paintings Mountain Peaks and The Royal Monastery (1936) and The Himalayas (1939), comparing them to other well-known “Orientalist” art. Rerix introduces an unfamiliar India: valued for its repository of spirituality and mysticism, but not as an exotic sideshow for voyeurs, or a glittering prize for imperialists.

The Exotic Little Princesses: Constructions of Foreignness in Lidija Čarskaja and Frances Hodgson Burnett Shannon F. White, University of Michigan Lidija Čarskaja’s novels for young women enjoyed an immense popularity amongst readers in late Imperial Russia. Her most famous series of works, told in a series of interlinking novels and novellas that begin with Zapiski Institutki (1902), depicts the lives and adventures of a set of upper-class girls attending a St. Petersburg boarding school. Several of the young women that attend Čarskaja’s boarding school come from areas coded as outside of Russia proper (Georgia, , Germany, etc.). These young women, often royalty in their own lands, and often also possessing Russian roots, come to St. Petersburg as exotic others who, though first excluded from the social life of the other girls, ultimately gain acceptance and become normalized into the school and into the society of the Russian school—and the Russian capital. Writing in America during the same time period, the British-born Frances Hodgson Burnett presented her young readers with similarly plotted works, most notably her novel The Little Princess (full version 1905). Here also a young woman comes to an upper class school, this time one in London. The girl herself, though English, was raised in India and enters the school stamped with the mark of foreignness. If she cannot be a real princess like her counterparts in Čarskaja, she at least conducts herself as one, and soon her classmates all call her “Princess” both behind her back and to her face. She, too, is an exotic foreigner who undergoes a journey from otherness to assimilation. Both Čarskaja and Burnett were enormously popular authors, and had an influence over a vast readership during a turbulent time in the definition of national identity. It is, therefore, interesting to examine how their works present the nature of the other (foreign girls from outside the boundaries of Empire) versus the nature of the self. By what process are these girls assimilated, and how fully assimilated are they? How do these initially extrinsic girls act, look and feel once accepted into the society? In what manner are they privileged by their foreignness, and in what manner are they handicapped by it? Which aspects of their foreignness do they lose, and which do they retain? What effect, if any, does their age and gender have on their assimilation? This paper will answer these questions in a comparative framework, examining how the constructions of foreignness both differ and align in the Russian and British-American texts, and thereby also examining some of the overall messages about foreignness an entire generation of young readers were receiving from their popular literature. Four works—Zapiski institutki (1902), Kniažna Džavaka (1903), Ljuda Vlassovskaja (1904), and Sibiročka (1910), will provide the main textual basis for analysis of Lidija Čarskaja’s works, and The Little Princess (1905), supplemented by The Secret Garden (1910) and Fair Barbarian (1880), will provide the textual basis for analysis of Burnett’s. Panel: 28C-2: Film Theory and Praxis: Russia and Eastern Europe Chair: Timothy C. Harte, Harvard University Equipment: VCR Slot: December 28, 2000, 1:00–3:00 p.m.

From Objectification to Authentic Communication: Kieślowski's Poetics of Vision Elizabeth Lee Roby, Indiana University Polish film director Krzysztof Kieślowski (1941–1996) has enjoyed significant international recognition since the early nineties for his French films, The Double Life of Veronique and the Three Colors trilogy (Blue, White, and Red). Often overlooked, however, by both the general public and scholars alike is the fact that before going to France in the early nineties, the Polish film director enjoyed a prolific career in Poland beginning in 1969 with his first documentary and followed by a string of feature films and television dramas in the seventies and eighties. When the Polish films are discussed, there is a general tendency among Kieślowski scholars to stress the differences between the Polish and French period, rather than investigate the possibility of any unifying elements. A characteristic comment concerns Kieślowski’s shift from a discussion of socio-political problems in his Polish films to a consideration of more universal, humanistic issues of an existential nature in his French films. Without denying this basic fact, I would like to propose a reading of Kieślowski’s artistic development which suggests Kieślowski’s long-term commitment throughout his career to a posing of existential questions. What is needed for true communication to be established between people? What forces provide obstacles to achieving this necessary communication? To what degree are we free to overcome these obstacles? While the answers to such questions change throughout Kieślowski’s career, his obsession with questions concerning interpersonal relationships remains constant. Because existential investigations proceed from a discussion of the quality of the dialogic relationship between the individual and the surrounding world, I will focus on a consideration of the changing position of the protagonist in regard to the narrative world as created by Kieślowski throughout his career. In doing so, I will apply to Kieślowski’s art Mixail Baxtin’s conclusions concerning the role of interpersonal dialogue in the establishment of a functional self/other relationship, as discussed in his early article on aesthetics, “Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity.” However, while Baxtin discusses the dialogic relationship on the level of discourse, Kieślowski uses a visually-oriented poetics in drawing similar conclusions. For this reason, my discussion focuses on Kieślowski’s poetics of vision, which I define on three levels, both the literal and the metaphoric: how a given character is seen/shot; how a given character views others; and a state of spiritual sight marked by blindness or clairvoyance. My analysis of Kieślowski’s poetics of vision will reveal a progression in his existential world view throughout his career from an initial rejection of the possibility for authentic communication to an assertion of the possibility for communion with the other. Erotikon: The Haptic in the Film of the Czech Avant-Garde Malynne Sternstein, University of Chicago The somatic textuality of film—its extra-diegetic, even haptic or textural possibilities, its temporal and spatial nexes, its explosion of narrative linearity—made it a utopic medium for a Czech avant-garde obsessed with the plural dimensionality of art. From the movements of Devětsil and Poetism in the 1920s, through to Surrealism in the 30s, film was theorized by the likes of Karel Teige and Vítězslav Nezval as nothing short of salvational for art and life in modern crisis; Teige was wont to “translate” “picture poems” or collages into the “flashing image[s] of lyrical film” and he and Nezval collaborated with film-makers on several screenplays, dubbing the results “film-poems.” If for the Czech radical and artistic left, film could be conceived of as the totalizing medium, the resolution to the age-old controversy between the plastic and the so-called dynamic or verbal arts, then what did the Czech vanguard see as the medium’s special essence? I would suggest in this presentation that the Czech avant-garde saw film’s unique capabilities in its abilities to figure the body. This somatic opportunity helps to explain the erotic spell cast on early Czech art films and also allows for a corresponding reading of the Czech avant-garde’s interest in the body as a signifier. The body in filmic space and time (or what Walter Benjamin has called “scene”) could be understood as an experiment in the realization of actual or felt “joy.” The fact that one can be aroused and stimulated by the work of art in a most actual way—through the body and of the body—was of great import to the Czech avant-garde, which identified itself as the propagator of ecstasy for the people. The body, then, in filmic actualization, was an important site for radical Czech film-makers to make good on their populist political intent and to expand the realm of art into the realm of life. In order to query the theses proposed, the paper will test the success of the Czech avant-garde’s assumptions about film’s character and examine the potential of uncompromised embodiment in film through a close study of scenes in Gustav Machatý’s 1929 Erotikon (screenplay by Nezval) and his notorious Extase from four years later. Principal among the extracts to be shown and studied will be moments of erotic discourse, where, if my premises hold, the body is used as textual signifier and can be “read” or “parsed” as its own gestural dialogue. For example, Hedy Kiesler’s (later Lamarr) infamous bathing scene, accompanied as it is by a recursively complex voyeuristic element, can be read within the framework of conventional Freudian-Lacanian models but also through Walter Benjamin’s pioneering work on “body and image spaces,” theories he developed in his writings on Surrealism and correlated from his fragments on painting and film, to explain the body as signifier-in-itself. The paper will also touch on the complications to Czech avant-garde discourse on film’s capacity to embody; for instance, when the notion of film surface comes into question, certain disappointments, evident partially in Machatý’s later German studio films and in Exstase, accompany the depiction of the body. These disappointments, akin to the modern disappointment with language and its (in)capacity to embody, will also be explored to some extent in the analysis. Ultimately, it is hoped that a theory of film’s potential for somatic discourse will help to illuminate the use of the body in early Czech film.

“Cinemizing” Fiction: Lolita the Screenplay, Lolita the Movie Julia Trubikhina, New York University This paper will deal with Nabokov’s screenplay of Lolita as well as two cinematic texts— Kubrick’s and Lyne’s versions of Lolita—in the context of translation. Alfred Appel effectively demonstrated in Nabokov’s Dark Cinema that cinematographic allusions and references are omnipresent in Nabokov’s fiction. Lolita, however, is a special case due to Nabokov’s involvement in 1959–1960 in the “cinemazing”,to use his own term, of his famous novel. The result of his collaboration with Kubrick was the acclaimed motion picture Lolita. Nabokov was first to discuss this film adaptation in terms of translation: in the foreword to the script, Nabokov, grappling with the modifications and omissions of entire scenes in Kubrick’s film, speaks of the film in terms of translation’s fidelity and freedom in regard to the original and compares it to Robert Lowell’s “unfaithful” translations from Rimbaud and Pasternak. The paper will discuss what happens to the text of the novel as it undergoes a Heideggerian “Umschreibung” of sorts— the passage from the literal to the figurative—and the rhetorical implications that open up in the process. Incorporation of some of the previously unpublished materials in the possession of the Berg Collection, including three different versions of the script Nabokov wrote for Kubrick, enriched my attempt to unravel the “mechanics” of Nabokov’s transformational strategies. Finally, I would like to examine the “Umdeutung,” Kubrick’s and Lyne’s reinterpretations of Nabokov’s screenplay and novel. This form of translation, according to Heidegger, constitutes the transition to a different domain of experience; the difference in this case is not rhetorical but hermeneutic.

Panel: 28C-3: Acmeist Poetry and Criticism Chair: Stuart Goldberg, University of Wisconsin, Madison Slot: December 28, 2000, 1:00–3:00 p.m.

Art and the Creative Process in Gumilev's Koster Francoise Rosset, Wheaton College Gumilev’s Koster, one of his later collections, contains a number of meta-poems devoted to the principle and process of artistic creation. Many but not all of these focus on literary tradition and literary creation. My focus will narrow to three poems, each of which concerns a specific art form—writing, sculpture and painting,—and relate them more broadly to Gumilev’s work and to Acmeism at large. Conspicuously absent are sustained references to music—perhaps not surprising, as that particular art form was consistently associated with Symbolism. But in Koster, Gumilev often uses musical terms, in particular for several titles. They are, by and large, musical terms traditionally associated with poetry, e.g. the term canzone used to identify poems in Italian poetry, especially Dante and Petrarca. Thus music is appreciated probably not as a discrete art, but as a metaphor for poetry. The poem about writing is “Roza,” “The Rose.” While ostensibly a love poem, this is really rather a poem about the art of love poetry, specifically about Provençal Troubadour poetry; it is full of direct and indirect references to Jauffré Rudel. “Samofrakijskaja pobeda,” “The Victory of Samothrace,” is about sculpture and is built on a movement to reconstruct and perhaps even animate the statue. “Andrej Rublev,” as expected, is about icon-painting. The theme is all the more intriguing in light of the large-scale rediscovery of Russian icons at the beginning of the 1900’s, but the icon-painter himself represents a specific and specifically Acmeist view of the artist. These poems undoubtedly reflect Gumilev’s own tastes and experiences, but more importantly, they reflect trends and topics popular at the turn of the century , as well as the Acmeist perception of the creative process.

“Filled with Space and Time”: Time-Space (“Chronotope”) and the Thirst for Culture in the Poetry of Mandel′štam and Yeats Ian Probstein, New York In the poem “Insomnia. Homer. Tautly swelling sails...” (1) a chain of nominal sentences “performing (or acting out),” in the Mandel′štamian dictum, a stream of consciousness is at the same time a chain of metonymies of space, history, culture. “The catalogue of ships” which sailed to Troy is a link which connects epochs. Both Homer and the sea: all things are moved by love is the metamorphosis which links “disparate ideas” (Lomonosov). The sea is not only a metaphor of love (2), but first and foremost, of time and history. The last two verses of the poem: “And the dark sea thunders, eloquent, / And rumbling heavily it breaks beneath my bed,” are finally washing away the boundary between a sleepless night in Koktebel′ and the siege of Troy: this joint means a shift in time-space, it symbolizes the integrity of time and history: the closeness of historic epochs is vivid and palpable. In his famous poem of 1917 Mandel′štam wrote: “And leaving his ship, canvas worn-out on the seas,/ Odysseus came back filled with time and space.” (3) A thirst for history and high antiquity does not simply symbolize Mandel′štam’s “nostalgia for world culture”: it is rather his concern for the integrity of culture, history, and time-space. In my view, we encounter the same feelings, poetic motive, and the sense of history in the famous poem by Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium” (1927), in which the lyrical hero of the poem is leaving “now and here,” the country which is not “for the old men.” Having acquired the lesson of the “monuments of unageing intellect,” he is sailing to Byzantium: this journey is not only a transfer in time and space, but also in culture. Byzantium is a symbol of spirit and culture both for the poet and his lyrical hero. For Yeats as well as for Mandel′štam the past is a treasury, their nostalgia is not exactly for the past time, but for the cultural and spiritual values. For Mandel′štam the motive of overcoming separation in time and isolation of culture was inevitably connected with the theme of creativity, with the process of naming things, “that heals from amnesia” (“The Finder of a Horseshoe”). Having acquired a name, an object acquires being and is saved from oblivion. For Yeats, creativity, beauty are means of conquering human frailty “and all complexities of mire or blood.” However, for both poets “Sailing to Byzantium,” to Greece, to the Mediterranean shores in general, is a quest for “the world culture,” for the “monuments of unageing intellect.” Although V. N. Toporov wrote in his book Aeneus, the Man of Destiny about epic poetry, his definition “the locus of the definite intersection of the two themes mentioned above—Virgil and the Mediterranean—is space, time, and the sphere of spirit,” can, in our view, shed light on the problem of affinity of Mandel′štam’s and Yeats’ philosophical ideas and poetic motives: a desire to reunite time, culture, and spirit, or, perhaps, to find such a point of observation in the universe from which time, history, and culture would be seen in their integrity. Notes 1. Bernard Meares’s translation. Osip Mandelstam. 50 Poems. New York: Persea Books, 1977. 2. Cf. Nielson N. A. “Insomnia.” In: Mandelstam and Antiquity. Moscow, 1995, pp. 65–76. 3. Translation by James Green. Osip Mandelstam. London, 1980. “Šum stixotvorstva”: Mandel′štam's Mythology of the Creative Process Ona Renner-Fahey, Ohio State University It is well known that the subject of poetic creation has concerned virtually every poet throughout literary history. (Indeed, as a poetic theme it may well rival that of love.) Questions of inspiration and the Muse have haunted these poets who, in turn, have had to supply their own answers to the enigmatic phenomenon of artistic creation. In this paper I will be addressing how Osip Mandel′štam, in particular, grappled with these mysteries and will be proposing what I consider to be his personal mythology of the creative process. My method behind (re-)constructing this mythology has in part consisted of sifting through Mandel′štam’s entire oeuvre (poetic and prose) for any references to the themes of poetic creation. The work of scholars such as Kiril Taranovsky, Omry Ronen, Gregory Freidin, Jane Gary Harris, and Clare Cavanagh has profoundly informed my research as well. The classic Mande’štamian themes of sounds, silence, memory, and breath are all interconnected within this mythology. He, like many of his contemporaries, such as Anna Axmatova and Marina Cvetaeva, connected the genesis of his poems with something similar to what T. S. Eliot, another contemporary, termed the poet’s “auditory imagination.” Thus, Mandel′štam’s numerous remarks on sounds play a vital role in his mythology of the creative process. Also significant are the numerous poems that begin with images of sounds, such as, for example: “Kogda, pronzitel′nee svista” (1913), “V raznogolosice devičeskogo xora” (1916) and “Slyšu, slyšu rannii led” (1937). The prevalent theme of silence in Mandel′štam’s poetry can be viewed in a new way once its place in this mythology is clarified: this particular theme, often considered to be a positive one by Mandel′štam scholars, actually metamorphosizes into a negative one. While Mandel′štam’s ideas on his creative process mature, silence moves from being a Tjutčevian ideal to a hindrance that blocks out the noises of his poetic imagination. (The poems “Zvuk ostorožnyj i gluxoj” (1908) and “Silentium,” (1910) can be cited as examples of Mandel′štam’s early, idealized silence, whereas those later poems such as “Kogda na ploščadjax i v tišine kelejnoj” (1917) and “Kvartira tixa, kak bumaga” (1933) serve to illustrate silence as an antagonist.) Also met with frequently in Mandel′štam’s work is the theme of memory since for him poetic creation is akin to the process of recollection. A highly telling discussion of this can be found in the essay “Putešestvie v Armeniju” (1933). Breath is yet another predominant poetic theme of Mandel′štam’s that is integral to this mythology, the most well-known example of which can be found in the poem “Dano mne telo” (1909). This theme can in turn be tied to the poet’s documented fear of asphyxia, which also plays a central role in his mythology of poetic creation and which can be connected with several poems in which the lyrical persona greedily drinks in air, “V xrustal′nom omute” (1919) among them. My contention, then, to summarize very briefly, is that Mandel′štam perceived of his Muse not as an outsider so much as a part of himself, an “inner voice”, with whom he could, through a kind of dialogue, conjure up a memory. Mandel′štam likened the entire process to that of birth, where his poems were ultimately born through his throat and mouth. “Writer’s block” for Mandel′štam manifested itself as a form of asphyxia, for when the voice of his internal Muse/Mnemosyne ceased he was rendered speechless (i.e., poem-less). Consequently, he would attempt to induce inspiration “artificially”—through his breath.

Osip Mandel′štam's Criticism: Utopian and/or Viable Nikita Nankov, Indiana University In his critical writings (occluded by his poetry, biography, and fictional prose), Mandel′štam outlines a sophisticated literary and cultural theory which has not been analyzed in its integrity. This paper sketches the pivots of Mandel′štams criticism and its utopian and/or viable features for us today. 1) Holism. For Mandel′štam, literature and culture are holistic, i.e., they provide human community with cohesive forces which keep it together as a unity. The main cohesive forces in literature and culture are three: (a) social architecture and domesticity, (b) the word (“slovo”), and (c) dialogicity. I deal only with social architecture and domesticity, which best represent the holistic and utopian character of Mandel′štam’s thinking. Cohesion, which procures social and cultural holism, is both synchronic and diachronic. In the first case, culture and literature coexist in space. This coexistence is most often represented by the relationship between Russian and Western culture. However, such a coexistence is possible and necessary between all the nations and cultures in Europe. In the second, diachronic case, culture(s) and literature(s) coexist in time following the principle of continuity. 2) Synchrony and coexistence. A recurrent image and notion of the national, cultural, and literary unity in Mandel′štam’s criticism is the spatial metaphor of architecture which, in more concrete terms, is depicted as a Gothic temple. For Mandel′štam, architecture is the ultimate human activity which, by overcoming brute natural matter, orders the world in a human fashion and turns man from a slave of nature into its master who feels at home in it. Architecture is the necessary condition of freedom. The architectural image of the Gothic temple is the locus of Mandel′štam’s thought where the synchronic and the diachronic variants of his holism coincide. The topic of domesticity per se is entwined with the idea of architecture and Gothicism. Mandel′štam’s holism has as its final goal to turn the whole world into a comfortable home of man. To be a big cultural figure means to feel at home in the world by reorganizing it according to one’s own human nature. On the basis of domesticity Mandel′štam opposes Acmeism and Symbolism: the Acmeists are good architects, builders, and, implicitly, love domesticity; conversely, the Symbolists lack the happiness of feeling at home. 3) Diachrony and continuity. Continuity or holism in the diachronic dimension is achieved by means of a fusion of the Russian present with the three major epochs which, for Mandel′štam, symbolize the eras of holism: (a) Hellenism, (b) classicism (ancient Greece and Rome), and (c) the Middle Ages. To these three eras of holism, coexistence, and blissful human domesticity, Mandel′štam juxtaposes two others which stand for partiality, lack of cultural memory, and human homelessness and oppression: (a) the nineteenth century, which is the time of linear progress and evolution; it is rationalistic and monologically intolerant; (b) the extreme rationalism of the eighteenth century is criticized for its animosity to poetry which, for Mandel′štam, is human praxis as reshaping the world and feeling at home in it. 4) Critique of Mandel’štam’s holistic project. Today we can raise several major objections against Mandel′štam: a) Philosophically, Mandel′štam’s holistic project tends to thinks of the Other (the cultural past) as a Self (the cultural present appropriating completely the past). This projest is idealistic, it is possible solely in the pure thought of its author. It is a cultural analogue of Collingwood’s idea of the reality of the past perceived as the past’s “enactment” in the present, an idea in philosophy of history convincingly criticized by Paul Ricoeur. b) Read through our contemporary postmodern experience, the holism of Mandel′štam’s cultural project is not acceptable as any other totalizing project. However, today it is quite viable in its parts (the interpretive activity of the reader; polyphony and dialogicity, etc.). c) Today it is also possible—and necessary—to read this criticism as a sort of applied, unformalized phenomenology comparable with Baxtin’s reworking of German phenomenology for theoretical purposes in the field of literature and culture. This interpretation would augment the humanistic and antitotalitarian fervor of Mandel′štam’s thought by a new and deeper intellectual dimension of his tragic resistance against the Stalinist regime. Yet, on the other hand, doesn’t the extreme antagonism between Stalinist rationalism and Mandel′štam’s applied phenomenology prove that each of these polar positions, by itself, is not practically viable and that, perhaps, Sartre was right after all, when, in the 1960s, he pleaded for their synthesis by grafting existentialism onto Stalinist Marxism?

Panel: 28C-4: Russian Prose of the 1920s: Constructing Identities Chair: Maxim D. Shrayer, Boston College Equipment: Slide projector Slot: December 28, 2000, 1:00–3:00 p.m.

Babel′'s Quest for Spiritual Renewal in Red Cavalry Linda Tapp, Independent Scholar The goal of this paper is to present a syncretic view of the historical, religious, and philosophical subtexts in Isaak Babel′’s Red Cavalry, an exploration of which is almost totally lacking in Babel′ scholarship at the present time. By unlocking Babel′’s hieroglyphic of religious and historical symbols and examining them within a more universal religious context, I present a new interpretation of Red Cavalry. This is important because ultimately it demonstrates that Babel′, like other writers at the turn of the last century, attempted to devise a philosophical, in this case “spiritual,” context within which to frame the Revolution, that is, to accommodate violence and the destruction of an entire class of people in the early decades of the twentieth century. Careful identification of the religious and historical images in Red Cavalry reveals a subtext of repetitive motifs which serve as guideposts for interpreting the meaning of the text as a whole. In reality, Babel′ was engaged in Red Cavalry in an almost obsessive reevaluation of the roots of primitive Christianity similar, in some respects, to that of his spiritual mentor Lev Tolstoj, whose search for religious reconciliation based upon a reexamination of Christ’s teachings he embraced enthusiastically in his youth. In stories like “U svjatogo Valenta”, for example, Babel′ uses religious imagery to suggest the need for reinterpretation of the Scriptures. The name Valent (Valentus in Latin) actually refers to a well-known saint in Eastern Orthodox hagiography and not to “Saint Valentine,” as some scholars have mistakenly assumed. At the end of the third century he assisted Pamphilos the Presbyter in correcting scribal errors in the New Testament. Babel′ then evokes traditions, symbols, and ideas shared by and Christians alike in order to tell us what the correct reading should be. In “Pan Apolek,” for instance, the itinerant painter Apollinarius tells Ljutov, a Jew in Cossack’s clothing, “I to čto govorjat panu popy i evangelist Mark i evangelist Matfej,— to ne est′ pravda” (Sočinenija 2: 24). In reality this was the conclusion reached by Apollinarius’s namesake, the actual Bishop of Laodicea Apollinarius the Younger, founder of a fourth-century heresy which claimed that Christ was a natural man, whose mind had been replaced by the Logos (Magoulias, Byzantine Christianity, 24–27). By referring to Apolek as “Apollinarius” Babel′ actually reinterprets the biblical image of Jesus, bringing it in line with that of early Christians who still regarded themselves as Jews and Christ as an earthly redeemer. (Conzelmann, History of Primitive Christianity) When Ljutov later vows to follow this “gospel” saying, “… sud′ba brosila mne pod nogi ukrytoe ot mira Evangelie … ja dal togda obet sledovat′ primeru pana Apoleka” (Sočinenija 2: 18), Babel′’s purpose becomes clear: Ljutov’s quest for acceptance by his Cossack compatriots is actually an attempt at reconciliation between Jews and Christians in a modern-day setting. Thus the real key to Red Cavalry, and Babel′’s perplexing conclusion to Ljutov’s violent journey among the Cossacks, lies buried in its religious and historical subtexts.

The Goat in the Machine of Gladkov's Cement Christopher J. Syrnyk, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Although “highly ritualized” (as Katerina Clark has observed in The Soviet Novel), the Socialist Realist space of Gladkov’s Cement initially is permeated with imagery that performs an explicit allegorical function. Along with a host of more conventional associations (sexual suggestiveness and seduction, social deterioration, being also the animal of tragedy, and of ritual sacrifice for expiation of wrong-doing) here the image of the goat further symbolizes a society with unchecked (Gemeinschaft) tendencies that are in conflict with the proscribed, greater post-Civil War (Gesellschaft) expectations. What occurs, ostensibly on a subconscious level, is the society’s unperceived “ritual identification” with the goats—the goat being reduced to an emblem of the accursed and of reprobateness—for it is the goats, on one level, that the people will hold responsible for their problems, and not their lack of responsibility for themselves. This society, not out of nostalgia (as Clark correctly attests), actively and fundamentally cultivates a misconception of itself in relation to its “struggle with nature” (i.e., the goat) to aid its new worldview. This does not read as an “affinity for nature” nor does it appear to be a triumph of “man” over “beast,” for these people ultimately deceive themselves by misinterpreting “transference of evil” for “displacement of blame” in how they tend to this problem of the goats, and the goats’ subsequent forced departure (escape). The goat image, then, functions as a societal indicator reflecting the poor quality of the people, their relative inanity, and their secular trespasses and disobedience to the will of the party: obviously these people are in dire need of a productive redemption. Their lack of insight, perhaps even suppression of insight, with respect to the goats facilitates the self-deception necessary for their progress and success with respect to their factory’s, and society’s, renovation. Or, what becomes significant is the extent to which the misunderstanding of this symbol becomes essential to their social project concerning the factory’s rejuvenation. They must suppress their previous perceptions of themselves and misread their understanding of these animals as symbols, as they themselves have become identified with the goats, in order to succeed in this new society. As such, the image of the goat permeates the first quarter (throughout the first sixty-eight of 311 pages) of the novel, only later to be erased completely from the narrative and the consciousness of the characters when the image is no longer needed. We witness the beguiling influence of this image from the outset as in the following: “In the square, beyond the wall, a mob of dirty children were playing, and paunchy, snake-eyed goats roamed, nibbling at bushes or acacia roots” (Arthur and Ashleigh’s translation). The children are physically associating with the goats, and have literally, willingly, taken on some of their unfavorable characteristics. I am interested in whether it is Nature that has truly invaded this society, or rather, that the people have willingly accepted its presence and attendant persuasion. Gladkov, especially in these sixty-eight or so pages, seems to reinforce this notion, because several paragraphs later: “Like giddy maidens, the goats scream and laugh with the children. … What’s this? Goats, poultry, and pigs? This used to be strictly forbidden.” Clearly the goats and inhabitants are running amok, fouling up the would- be Communist purity, and the people are unable to separate their identity from the goats’. These people must choose to embrace and accept an either/or lack of social continence, or they must rid themselves of their goat-related image. The goat image, however, never quite attains leitmotif status in the novel, for Gladkov suddenly dispenses with the image at a critical point in the text, and the reader is then left to ponder the affects of its absence on this society. In this respect, the goat, like many secondary characters, becomes a “cancelled character”; its presence has been made necessary only to substantiate a narrative requirement. Thus, Gladkov demonstrates how the people, when they no longer associate with the goats, (when the goats and the people are no longer conflated by their actual association) now clearly benefit from the absence of the goats. The society has literally found it necessary to escape from the goats in order to avoid the “tragedy” (“goat-song”) of their pronounced presence, and its affects on the mentality of the burgeoning Soviet machine society. This paper, by explication, as well as by using Katerina Clark’s work on the Soviet novel, and Sir James George Frazer’s classic work on the scapegoat, will examine how this striking image contributes to the societal misreadings inherent in this classic production novel, tracing how its development and eventual erasure are necessary for the promotion of the appropriate Soviet worldview. The paper will consider the 1925 redaction of Gladkov’s novel, which arguably is the most popular version and accepted as the most literary, as it first appeared in Red Virgin Soil. I likewise consider the several redactions of the novel, Cement (1932), Sočinenija (5 vols.; 1950), Sobranie sočinenij (8 vols.; 1958), as well as S. N. Smirnova’s “Kak sozdavalsja Cement” in Tekstologija proizvedenij sovetskoj literatury, IV (M.: AN SSSR, 1967). For scholarship on various redactions I have likewise benefited from Robert L. Busch’s article on Cement SEEJ 22:3 (1978). I have likewise profited from a post-research finding of a related treatment of this topic by Samir Elbarbary concerning James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. By examining the history of this image in Cement, I will be able to consider its diachronic importance, and ultimately its relevance for Gladkov’s development of his narrative, and how the affects of its presence and absence demonstrate this aberration of social and cultural insight.

The ABC's of Communism: Rebirth and Language Acquisition in Fedor Gladkov's Cement and Evgenij Zamjatin's We Eric Laursen, University of Utah Eric Rabkin asserts that studying the fantastic can inform us of the “normative ideas” of literature, which can be discerned in the “structural reversals” of those norms in the fantastic (80). In this paper I will explore the reversal of the “norms” of proletarian literature in Zamjatin’s fantastic novel We (1921). Weber and Lewis have already documented Zamjatin’s parodic treatment of the proletarians’ style, tone, and recurring images; in my paper I will examine the novel’s challenge to the proletarians’ very image of self and society. I will compare the metamorphosis of society and self as depicted in We and in the best-known proletarian novel of the 1920s, Gladkov’s Cement. Both novels present a protagonist (Gleb Čumalov of Cement and D-503 of We) as reborn in revolution (both novels contain explicit references to birth) and guided into a new sense of self, which requires the acquisition of a new language. Tzvetan Todorov’s groundbreaking work on the fantastic stresses the importance of language to this genre; he divides the fantastic into two groups: “themes of self,” in which there is a monologic use of language (internal language shapes reality) and “themes of other,” in which there is a dialogic use of language (between the self and the other, which is the physical embodiment of subconscious and usually sexual desires) (139). Although Todorov claims that these two groups will cover all instances of the fantastic, he also asserts that the “true” fantastic has ceased to exist in the twentieth century (168-175). I propose that Todorov has neglected a third possible group, in which there is a true dialogue with an external other. In Zamjatin’s novel, this external other is the image of self presented by proletarian literature and theory. Todorov bases his two thematic groups on Freudian psychology; it will prove useful in the current discussion to turn to Jacques Lacan’s reworking of Freud, in which he focuses on the role of language in the composition of self. For Lacan, the entry into society is an entry into language. The child leaves the pre-linguistic “imaginary” (the realm of images) and moves into the “symbolic” (the realm of words). For Lacan, the self thereby acquired is a false one, because it is composed of words, the meaning of which are always changing and which cannot adequately express desire. In this paper I argue that the fantastic results when there is difficulty in making the transition from imaginary to symbolic. I will examine the many references to rebirth and language acquisition in Cement and in We. When Gleb Čumalov returns from war, he exists in the imaginary realm of the revolution and civil war. He must acquire the new language of this society, which is a language incapable of expressing individual desires: it is a language of “we” not “I.” Some—such as Gleb Čumalov— acquire this language and image of self; they can then successfully enter society (and serve as a model to readers as they attempt to transform themselves). Others—such as Polja Mexova—are incapable of successfully traversing this crisis and go insane. Zamjatin parodies Čumalov’s journey toward mental health by reversing it in We. D-503 already has accepted his role in the society of the OneState; rather than being reborn and maturing into the unity of the “we,” D-503 moves from the “we” to develop an “I.” Through his journal, he acquires a new language and image of self. Just as Polja is seen as insane for her inability to enter the symbolic, D-503 is deemed ill for leaving it (he has developed a “soul”). Through this reversal, Zamjatin illustrates what he claims to be the only law of the universe: change. Moreover, by presenting the possibility of a new symbolic realm, the novel points to the falseness of any claim to have found the final image of self. The only way the OneState can reattain a static image of self in We is through psycho-surgery (and even then, the pregnant O’s departure from the OneState signals the futility of this attempt). Works Cited Rabkin, Eric. The Fantastic in Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1976. Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: a Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Cornell: Cornell UP, 1970.

Who is “T”?: Toward a Composite Portrait of a Multiple Author Christopher J. Gilman, University of Southern California The theoretical issue of authorship in the context of early Soviet Russia is compounded by specific social aspects of identity: orphanhood, transience, a fractured economy, social instability, class stigma, and a fashion for pseudonyms. In this paper I will discuss the short novel M-B-10-22: Siluèty grjaduščego (Leningrad, 1924) by “Dmitrij T” against this socio- historical background. “Dmitrij T” is not an identified pseudonym, and M-B-10-22 is the only work published under that name. The novel itself represents an awkward but fascinating hodgepodge of utopian science fiction, industrial espionage thriller, and jazz-age melodrama. The prose is, characteristically of the time, fractured, elliptical and “telegraphic.” In the paper I will examine the novel’s preoccupation with lost identity in relation to the author’s own cloaked and perhaps divided biography. The main character does not know his original name, and as the narrative skips backward and forward through his life he accumulates a portfolio of names and identities: an unmentionable nickname as street-urchin, “Vanja” as stowaway, “Maj Lentr” (after an open calendar and portraits of Lenin and Trotskij) as successful student, the coordinates “M-B-10-22” as brilliant metal-pourer. This preoccupation resonates in one possible reading of “T’s” own biography. I will make the case that Dmitrij T was Timofej Dmitriev (1893–1953), a minor writer of the 1920s and member of the literary group Kuznica, and will further suggest that, under different names, he pursued separate careers as a graphic artist and poster designer, as well as a rural agit-playwright. I support my hypotheses with Russian/Soviet archival and reference material, contemporary reviews and newspaper accounts as well as a cross-reading of the various fictional works for typological consistencies and autobiographical allusions.

Panel: 28C-5: Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature and Society Chair: Lawrence Mansour, United States Military Academy, West Point Slot: December 28, 2000, 1:00–3:00 p.m.

Bulgarin as the Author of an Anonymous Anti-Puškin Pamphlet, O Borise Godunove (1831) Mikhail Gronas, University of Southern California An anonymous pamphlet O Borise Godunove. Razgovor pomeščika i učitelja rossijskoj slovesnosti (Moscow, 1831) was one of the first critical reactions to Puškin’s tragedy and contained the most severe criticism. The pamphlet even caused a certain critical appreciation of its own. There appeared a few reviews of Razgovor and several contemporary critics mentioned it in their reviews of Puškin’s work. Characteristically, Puškin’s supporters, Belinskij among them, ridiculed the pamphlet, whereas Puškin’s enemies praised the witticisms of the anonymous author. It is not known whether Puškin himself read the pamphlet. To Vjazemskij’s inquiry on the subject Puškin responded with a pun: “Razgovorov o Borise ne slyxal i ne vidal. Ja v chužie razgovory ne vmešivajus′”.(Puškin to Vjazemskij, July 3,1831). However, it is very likely that later Puškin familiarized himself with the pamphlet: Razgovor was actually the first critical work on Puškin which appeared in the form of a separate edition. The authorship of Razgovor has not been established and it has been republished in various critical collections as an anonymous piece of anti-Puškin criticism. I propose to attribute the pamphlet to Faddej Bulgarin. The attribution is based on a number of stylistic traits, turns of speech, rhetorical devices and ideas common to Razgovor and the body of texts signed by or previously attributed to Bulgarin. Often, Razgovor contains the same ideas and the same observations expressed in the same manner and using the same language and rhetorical strategies as in the known Bulgarin’s writings on Puškin in the late 20s–early 30s. Though the textological arguments seem sufficiently convincing, authentication of the attribution presents certain difficulties. Both the anonymity and the place of publication beg for an explanation, since Bulgarin usually signed his articles and published them in Petersburg. The tentative explanation I propose is based upon the following. In the Spring of 1831, due to his participation in writers’ quarrels, Bulgarin fell into the tsar’s bad graces and couldn’t risk an open offensive against Puškin; the Spring and Summer of 1831 was the very height of Polish uprising, which made Bulgarin maintain a low-profile and withdraw to his estate. The topic of Boris Godunov was especially sensitive for him because of the then surfacing accusation that he had plagiarized from Puškin’s tragedy. All of this would have prevented him from open attacks on Puškin. On the other hand, Puškin’s vitriolic anti-Bulgarin articles must have infuriated Bulgarin and called for revenge. In this situation Bulgarin might have resorted to anonymity, choosing Moscow as the place of publication and altering his usual style in order to cover up his traces.

Battling the Tyrant: Puškin in 1835 David Herman, University of Virginia Puškin’s frame of mind in the last year or two of his life has long been debated. Having four years earlier written that with Del′vig gone, he fears he will be the next Lycee graduate to die, Puškin in 1835 goes so far as to purchase land for his own gravesite. Meanwhile, various tensions have arisen between him and Car′ Nikolaj, and the poet’s fall from favor with the reading public has become painfully obvious. What is occurring in Puškin’s fiction, however, is this paper’s main focus: the culmination of a long-standing interest in a single stable plot kernel. Mirskij notes that many of the short poems of the later period are impersonal in their subject matter. Lotman meanwhile maintains that the poet left so many unfinished fragments because he simply had too many ideas for the available time. I would like to show that many of these fragments, both prose and fiction, are in fact deeply personal and obsessively return to a single imagined scenario which Puškin had considered before but which now fascinates him as an idée fixe: an almost powerless individual faces a great force (variously, a ruler of some sort, fate, or death) whose cruelty or merciless tyranny he or she must either bow down to or struggle somehow to overcome. As this unchanging dilemma is replayed, it changes shape. In its oldest versions, it substantially predates 1835 and is entirely metaphoric: Onegin and Tatiana serving by turns as the other’s hard-hearted “idol.” It returns in 1833 in literal form as the conflict between Eugene and Car′ Peter in The Bronze Horseman and again in “The Queen of Spades”, but with heroes who never meet face to face and who thus must duel obliquely. In The Captain’s Daughter (1833-36), the protagonist at last finds his fate in the hands of living rulers, first Pugačev and later Catherine. The question that arises is: does he owe his success, the first in the series, to anything more than luck? Having seemingly exhausted the tale’s possible permutations, Puškin in 1835 zeroes in on it with unprecedented fervor in a chain of works, most not completed, including “On Lucullus’ Recovery,” “The Feast of Peter the First”, “Oh Poverty, at Last I Have Learned … ,” “When the Assyrian Sovereign … ”, and “Scenes from Knightly Times” among others. What draws Puškin back to retell a plot he had told so often and so well? What had the earlier texts left unspoken? Puškin seems to be suggesting that in the human condition as he has come to see it, individuals’ fates no longer rest entirely in their own hands, but also that those with the poet’s power of invention may be best equipped to battle the tyranny of fate.

The Russian Amazon: Subversive Features of an Early Nineteenth-Century Sentimental Heroine Alessandra Tosi, Cambridge University This paper introduces and analyses a counter-example to the received notion of a uniformity in the portrayal of sentimental heroines in the early nineteenth century. With reference to the work of Vinogradov, Levin and Uspenskij on the phenomenon of feminization and of Kelly and Hammarberg on the formation of a “feminine canon,” I suggest that the literary image of the idealized woman is still very much in the making during the first decade of the nineteenth century. The anonymous novel The Russian Amazon, or of the Heroic Love of a Russian Woman (1809) provides an interesting example of an unconventional portrayal of a positive female character and effectively contradicts many of the staple features of the sentimental heroine. Ol′ga, the “Russian amazon” of the title, is a gentlewoman whose sentimental attachments and patriotic feelings lead her away from the idyllic setting of her father’s home. In order to follow her fiancé, Ol′ga cross-dresses as a man and joins the Russian army in the 1806–7 campaigns against Napoleon. The adventures of this unlikely sentimental heroine span from her heroic deeds in the battlefield and the hazardous liberation of her fiancé from the French, to the explicit description of a string of sexual attacks that Ol′ga endures. In the idyllic ending the “Russian amazon,” who has eventually abandoned her combative persona, returns to the paternal home and marries her fiancé, thus fully reconciling herself with the socially acceptable role of dutiful daughter and wife. The duality of this heroine—Sentimental and adventurous—is also reflected at a stylistic level where modes typical of “high” Sentimental prose coexist with patterns borrowed from popular eighteenth-century genres, including the picaresque narrative and the novel of adventure. As this paper demonstrates, by encompassing Ol′ga’s warfare and erotic adventures within the framework of the idyll-type story the author attempts to graft features of this transgressive heroine onto “the” early nineteenth-century model for cultivated prose fiction: Sentimentalism.

His to Stake, Hers to Lose: Women's Reactions to Male Gambling in Nineteenth-Century Russia Ian Helfant, Colgate University In the past decade, a number of scholars have examined the real and mythical underpinnings of masculine behaviors and strategies of identity in nineteenth-century Russian life and literature. Examples include studies of the Cossack myth (Kornblatt, 1992), dueling (Reyfman, 1999), and high-stakes gentry gambling (Helfant, forthcoming). At the same time, a constellation of texts focusing upon women’s lives and neglected women authors, as well as feminist rereadings of works by male authors, has spurred reevaluation of the issues of identity faced by women in nineteenth-century Russia and the representation of these issues in both dominant and repressed discourses (Heldt, 1987; Kelly, 1994; Clyman and Vowles, 1996; and others). This paper draws critically upon both of these current trends to investigate a very specific issue in cultural studies: the ways in which women reacted to and represented male actions which had dire consequences for them as dependents in a male-dominated world. More specifically, it explores women’s reactions to the high-stakes gambling, gambling losses, and frequent prodigality which were a central component of male gentry identity but which often impacted terribly upon the wives, daughters, and sisters of the male “protagonists” involved. Real-life examples range from Karolina Pavlova, who became a social outcast after she attempted to prevent her husband from squandering her fortune at cards, to Dostoevskij’s wife Anna, who found herself abandoned for weeks during her honeymoon while Dostoevskij played roulette, to the wife of Puškin’s card partner I. E. Velikopol′skij, whose despairing letters concerning her husband’s cardplay foreshadow the mental breakdown which she later suffered. Literary examples include Karamzin’s “Poor Liza,” who is forsaken by Èrast after he loses his fortune at cards, to the wife of a profligate provincial landowner in Begičev’s 1832 didactic novel The Xolmskij Family, to Tolstoj’s Dolli in Anna Karenina, who accedes to her husband’s incursions upon her inheritance even as she agonizes over the fate of her children. This paper investigates cases like these within the context of recent feminist theory to address the real-life and literary repercussions of gambling behaviors for women. It discusses, for example, the paradoxical fact that while nineteenth-century Russian legal codes afforded women a surprising degree of financial independence (as demonstrated by Wagner, 1994, and Wirtschafter, 1997) they often found themselves emotionally or socially unable to assert these legal rights in order to protect their own interests. Moreover, women’s reactions to gambling behaviors are rarely foregrounded in literary texts, which focus upon the more gripping narratives of the male protagonists. The paper demonstrates that some Russian women internalized and identified with, while others contested, prevailing male representations of desperate gambling and financial recklessness. Panel: 28C-6: Issues in the Acquisition of Russian Chair: Valerie A. Pellegrino, Ohio State University Slot: December 28, 2000, 1:00–3:00 p.m.

Cultural Competence Assessment Modules Zarema Kumakhova, Michigan State University David Prestel, Michigan State University Cultural competence, sometimes referred to as sociolinguistic competence (Canale and Swayne 1980), is an important element of language proficiency (one of the five C’s standards for foreign language learning outlined by ACTFL). However teaching culture still remains one of the under- emphasized areas in teaching foreign languages especially when compared to teaching other language skills. One of the economical, inclusive, and convenient ways to assess cultural competence is with the help of a computerized test. The present paper looks at problems, difficulties and methodology involved in devising software modules to assess cultural competence. The lack of a defined corpus of cultural competence relevant for the learners of Russian at each level, and the diversity with which it is treated and presented in current textbooks of Russian are some of the problems we encountered. On the basis of sociolinguistic and second language acquisition studies (van Ek 1979, Brown 1980, Seeley 1984, Galloway 1984), we identified convention clusters relevant for the English-speaking learners of Russian (formal/informal greetings, forms of addressing, request, hesitation, thanking, expressing preference, accepting/declining invitation, offer, etc.). We then comprised sixty situations based on Russian everyday life which would reflect these clusters. The paper analyzes textbooks of Russian in use with regard to how they treat cultural competence. A table showing the difference in current textbooks in teaching culture is provided. The format of the test is a multiple-choice exam (based on Haladyna 1994). The stem consists of the question, three distractors and one right answer. A photo illustrating the situation is provided. Multiple choice answers are read by a native speaker and students are asked to select the best possible response. A sample of the test will be presented at the conference. The paper presents the intermediate stage of the work in progress which is intended to identify the content of cultural competence relevant for learners of Russian and to devise a tool to measure it. It will be followed by piloting the test and analyzing the empirical data it generated. The project is sponsored by the Center for Language Education and Research (CLEAR) at Michigan State University.

On Language Gain and Metalinguistic Awareness Ewa Golonka, Bryn Mawr College Over the past two decades, considerable evidence has emerged connecting metalinguistic awareness with the development of language skills (e.g, Ehri, 1979; Gombert, 1992; Francis, 1999). The Metacognitive Model of Language Skills proposed by Bialystok and Ryan (1985) constitutes a theoretical framework for the proposed study emphasizing the importance of metalinguistic awareness in second language acquisition (SLA). Central to the model is the idea that language processing can be described in terms of two components: analyzed knowledge and cognitive control. While the former represents analysis of domain-specific knowledge, the latter denotes an executive function that is responsible for selecting, organizing, and coordinating information. The proposed study attempts to explore the relationship between language gain and one aspect of metalinguistics, specifically the ability to self-correct or repair oral speech. Twenty-two pre-immersion Intermediate High Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPI) were transcribed, coded, and analyzed by using the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES). Participants were grouped according to the level of measurable gain they achieved during a semester of study abroad and subsequently were labeled as nullgainers, gainers, and high gainers. Three types of self-initiated corrections (hypercorrections, native-like repairs, and non-native self-corrections) were investigated and compared among the three groups of participants. Results revealed that high gainers tended to use all three kinds of self-initiated speech repairs much more frequently than nullgainers and gainers. In addition, they used more native-like repairs, which require a higher degree of metalinguistic and metacognitive activity while completing the task. Implications for teaching and metacognitive skill training are discussed.

Pronunciation Errors in Non-Native Russian: A Hierarchy of Acceptibility Mary Elizabeth McLendon, Independent Scholar Results of previous research (presented at AATSEEL in 1998), which show that accuracy in pronunciation makes more of a difference than grammatical accuracy in how Russians evaluate American speakers of Russian, suggested that further research into pronunciation errors would be informative. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of such research: determining which specific types of errors in foreigners’ pronunciation Russians consider more and less acceptable, and applying the results to the teaching of Russian. Based on the discussion of Americans’ errors in speaking Russian in three previous works (Vovk, 1982; Holden and Hogan, 1993; Rifkin, 1995), five categories of pronunciation errors were chosen for examination in this study: 1) failure to palatalize consonants where they should be palatalized, 2) failure to reduce unstressed vowels, 3) failure to produce consonant changes which occur (this category includes voicing assimilation, word-final devoicing, and cluster simplification), 4) giving an incorrect or inappropriate intonational contour to a sentence, and 5) placing word stress on the wrong syllable. The central question of this study is which particular types of pronunciation errors made by American speakers of Russian are considered more or less serious. The methodology was straightforward: fifteen non-teacher native speakers of Russian listened to a recording of an American speaking Russian. The discourse was divided into six parts, one for each of the errors listed above and one control containing no errors. The subjects evaluated the speech in each part for comprehensibility and acceptability using a scale from 5 to 1 (cf. Chastain, 1980). Based on the mean score for each error category, a preliminary error hierarchy was found and then the results were analyzed for statistical significance. The respondents’ comments were also noted, since they can often be more telling than a numerical value. The results complement previous research in Russian, since this study looks at several pronunciation errors, rather than only one feature of pronunciation (cf. Holden and Hogan, 1993), and looks at these errors in relation to each other, rather than in relation to grammatical errors (cf. Rifkin, 1995). Research in second/foreign language learning shows that what is most important at the beginning is that students learn to express themselves in a comprehensible, acceptable, and socially appropriate way, whatever that may mean in a given target language. The results of this and my previous research show that pronunciation, while it is not the only component of comprehensibility, is the surest key to acceptance and positive evaluation by native speakers of Russian. This observation leaves the question of how to present pronunciation in the classroom, discussion of which will conclude the paper.

Discussant: Kira Gor, University of Maryland, College Park

Panel: 28C-7: Forum: Electronic Resources in Teaching Russian (II) Chair: David J. Galloway, Hobart and William Smith Colleges Equipment: Computer projector Slot: December 28, 2000, 1:00–3:00 p.m.

Izbuška: An Interactive Aid to Reading Afanas′ev's Narodnye russkie skazki David J. Galloway, Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Troika: Web-Based Materials Marita Nummikoski, University of Texas Russian for Russians: Print and Web-Based Instructional Package for Heritage Speakers Richard Robin, George Washington University Panel: 28C-8: Historical Linguistics: Lexis, Morphosyntax and Pragmatics Chair: Neil Bermel, University of Sheffield Equipment: Overhead projector Slot: December 28, 2000, 1:00–3:00 p.m.

Dual Forms in Old Russian Gospel Texts of the Muscovite Period Dongsoo Jeon, Ohio State University The category of number in Old Russian (OR) distinguished singular, dual, and plural, whereas in modern Russian it distinguishes only singular and plural. However, it has been noticed that the dual was unstable from the very beginning. Even in the extant manuscripts of earliest texts, it is not difficult to find examples of inconsistent use of the dual forms. The actual history of the obsolescence of the dual in OR has been studied by many scholars like Sobolevskij, Šaxmatov, Jakubinskij, Kuznetsov, Xaburgaev, and others. The main focus of the most historical grammar and reports written by them centers on the morphological change of the dual in different parts of speech and its eventual replacement by the plural. The most extensive research so far on the topic in question was done by Jordanskij, who wrote his renowned monograph Istorija dvojstvennogo čisla v russkom jazyke. In his account for the history of the dual, however, Jordanskij selected examples in a disturbingly unprincipled way from a wide range of diverse texts. Admittedly, the dual disappeared much earlier in the vernacular and literary texts close to it, such as legal and business documents, than in religious texts. Some scholars like Remneva recently identified the varying degree of deterioration of the dual in different genres. In fact, Remneva, in her books on the dual as one of the grammatical norms in OR, distinguished at least two different types of written texts, namely, those of business and everyday affairs (pamjatniki delovoj i bytovoj pis′mennosti), and those of literary-Slavonic literature (pamjatniki knižno-slavjanskoj pis′mennosti). With the question of exact classification of literary texts aside, it seems more likely that the account for the actual history of the dual should differ according to the nature of the texts. In this light, Remneva’s study renders more reasonable explanation on the topic under discussion. Nevertheless, even in the religious texts, the use of dual forms vary in different genres, such as, saints’ lives, prayers, Bible texts, etc. Here arises a question of the use of dual forms in more clearly-defined individual genres. In this paper, an attempt will be made to account in a more systematic way for the use of dual forms in the Bible, the Gospel texts in particular, from the forteenth to the seventeenth centuries. In doing so, many possible factors will be considered: not only morphological as in previous scholarship but also syntactic, semantic, lexical, and possibly even para-linguistic ones. With no dictionary and grammar books available (at least until Smotritskij wrote his Church Slavonic grammar in the first half of the seventeenth century), it is believed that the Bible played the role of the most reliable reference for scribes and editors of literary texts. Considering the fact that the category of the dual disappeared from the living language very early, and yet the dual forms existed in religious texts until very late (in fact, even the current Russian Church Slavonic Bible contains dual forms), the scribes, who had to deal with dual forms, must have turned to the Bible for guidance. Therefore, the use of dual forms in the Bible will be examined to establish the grammatical norm of the given period. For this purpose, only three Gospel texts will be used: the Čudovskij spisok Novogo Zaveta, the Gennadij Bible, and the first printed edition of the so-called Moscow Bible of 1663. Since these texts are major revision or new translation of the Bible texts rather than simple copies of earlier versions, it is believed that they contain consistent treatment of the dual within each text. Even though this study will be an attempt to describe synchronically the use of dual forms at different times, comparison of the same context from different time period will shed light on the inherent difficulty in dealing with dual forms in general. An Analysis of the Pannonian Slavic Lexicon Ron Richards, University of California, Los Angeles In previous papers I have discussed the problems involved in culling from all Slavic loanwords into Hungarian a corpus of lexemes which represent the Pannonian dialect of the Common Slavic protolanguage. The first part of this paper will concentrate on the analysis of this corpus, focusing on the morphological, phonological, and semantic aspects of these lexemes, giving examples of how these different linguistic characteristics were coordinated and weighted in reaching an evaluation of the lexemes indivudually and as a group. The second part of the paper will attempt to do the following: 1. provide a linguistic profile of Pannonian Slavic; 2. make clearer Pannonian Slavic’s position on the Common Slavic language continuum; 3. determine the extent to which Pannonian Slavic was (or was not) linguistically homogeneous; 4. determine the extent to which Pannonian Slavic can be associated with one or more of its contemporary Common Slavic dialects; 5. examine, in light of these results, claims by Xelimskij and others that Pannonian Slavic a) could have served as a koine/lingua franca for this region, and b) was itself a separate and independent dialect of Common Slavic, and therefore not the progenitor of any existing Slavic language. In addition, I will touch briefly upon the question of whether or not these results can be used to shed light on current debates concerning the role of the Carpathian Basin in the geolinguistic history of the , such as Trubačev’s theory that the Urheimat of the Slavs is to be found in Transdanubia, or Nichols’s idea that Pannonia was not the starting point of Slavs as an ethnicity, but rather a possible epicenter of Slavic language expansion.

A Diachronic Analysis of the Russian Verbal Adverb Brian Stimmler, Princeton University This paper will present a formal diachronic account of the development of the Russian verbal adverb (GP), also commonly referred to as “adverbial participle” or “gerund.” The GP developed from the Old Russian appositive participle (a term coined by Potebnja, Iz zapisok po russkoj grammatike, 1888) or vtorostepennoe skazuemoe, which was a short form active participle functioning as the of a modifying subordinate clause. I will argue that GPs are bare VPs in Modern Russian, but that in Old Russian their predecessors were full clauses with a dedicated subject. I will show that the central event of the GP’s development was not the loss of the short form active participle’s agreement, but its reanalysis from a CP to a bare VP. Rappaport (Grammatical Function and Syntactic Structure: The Adverbial Participle of Russian, 1984) proposes that “non-detached” (“neobosoblennye”) GPs are bare VPs adjoined to VP, and that “detached” (“obosoblennye”) GPs are full clauses with an obligatorily null subject, which are adjoined to the matrix S. Babby and Franks (The Syntax of Adverbial Participles in Russian Revisited, 1998), take a more conservative stance, stating that all GPs are bare VPs and the detached/non-detached distinction reduces simply to the position of adjunction with the matrix clause. Examples of detached and non-detached GPs are given in (1) and (2), with the GP highlighted. (1) Pridja domoj, ja vstretil ego. (2) On ušel prostivšis′. Because detached GPs, like non-detached GPs, cannot occur with a complementizer, conjunction, or overt subject, I adopt the approach of Babby and Franks, adding that the distinct syntactic relations and semantic functions of these two GPs follow from their level of adjunction to the matrix clause. Rappaport’s (1980, 1984) studies of the Modern Russian verbal adverb provide evidence for this hypothesis by outlining various criteria which distinguish detached GPs from non-detached GPs. He shows that detached GPs have fewer constraints on both their subject reference and their relative tense. Given that the non-detached GP did not appear until the seventeenth century, I suggest that Old Russian appositive participles were exclusively clausal modifiers adjoined at S. Thus, following from my hypothesis that syntactic and semantic distinctions are determined by the point of adjunction to the matrix clause, one may predict that Old Russian appositive participles were as free in subject and temporal reference as Modern Russian detached GPs. I will show in my paper that this is indeed the case. Furthermore, we will find that their semantic functions are identical. For example, here we see the Old Russian appositive participle functioning as manner (3), cause (4), and conditional (5) adverbials. (3) Se udalixsja begaa i v″dvorixsja v″ pustyni. (4) I bog prostit tja pokajanie tvoe videv. (5) Jako ne vosxoščet čelovek jasti, slyšavše eja glasy. Modern detached GPs, unlike non-detached GPs, have such semantic nuances. This grouping of the Old Russian appositive participle with the Modern Russian detached GP is to be expected if syntactic relations and semantic functions reduce to the modifier’s level of adjunction to the clause. Thus we can account for the detached/non-detached distinction without stipulating GPs with two separate structures, a clause and a bare VP. Although descriptive grammars simply state that the appositive participle “shares” the subject with the matrix predicate, I propose that it is a full clause, or CP, as examples (6–8) illustrate. (6) Pleskovici poixaša proč a miru ne dokončav″. (7) Volodimir″ že celovav″ brata svoego i poide Pereslavlju. (8) No vkupe vsi sobravšesja na zemlju egipetskuju vsi ustremišasja. The clausal status of the appositive participle is evident in (6) and (7), where a conjunction separates the participle from the matrix predicate. The subject in (7) is adjacent to the participle, and not the matrix predicate. My study of the appositive participle construction has shown that the overt subject is overwhelmingly found in the initial clause, regardless of whether it is the matrix or subordinate clause. This suggests not that they are “sharing” a subject, but that the second subject is a null pro. Nominative absolute constructions such as (8) provide examples of two overt subjects, one predicated of the matrix predicate and the other of the appositive participle, which supports my claim that this participle is functioning as a full clause.

The Pragmatics of Voice in a Late Seventeenth-Century Old Believer Text Christine Wilson, University of California, Los Angeles This paper examines the pragmatics of voice in a late seventeenth-century Russian Old Believer text: “Povest′ o Bojaryne Morozovoj: Prostrannaja redakcija,” or PBM. The goal of the paper is to demonstrate the role of voice in the creation of a complex narrative structure in a text of this period. The paper also provides evidence that, despite the rapidly changing and often confusing linguistic situation in the seventeenth century, systematic linguistic means of creating structural coherence in a narrative were available to be exploited in accordance with the communicative goals of the author. The present report is based on a study of 465 semantically transitive events in the PBM. Any verb that subcategorizes for a nominative subject and accusative object is included in the study. A database has been created, detailing for each verb clause in the data set: the identity of the participants; the NP type of the participants; the case of the participants; the type of voice construction; the status of the clause as episode internal, final or medial; the semantic content of the verb and the transitivity status of the clause (based on the scalar notion of Transitivity presented by Hopper and Thompson). The results of the data analysis indicate a highly systematic pragmatic usage of voice in the PBM especially in the structuring of the narrative. The report considers three related areas of voice and discourse: 1) The use of passive and null-subject third person plural constructions to create a participant hierarchy in the text. 2) The role of the passive in the secondary and peripheral narratives in the text. 3) The function of the peripheral narratives. The results of the study show a high correlation between the identity of the participants in the narrative and the type of voice construction with which they will be associated. The distribution of active, passive and null-subject third person plural constructions establishes a participant hierarchy in the PBM, in which certain participants or groups of participants are more likely to be associated with agentive qualities or to be promoted to subjecthood, while other participants are routinely demoted through passivization or impersonalization. In addition, voice has a related role in establishing the primary, secondary and peripheral narratives in the text. The use of the active voice and null-subject third person plural forms have a strong association with foregrounded discourse, while the passive is clearly a backgrounding device employed in both the secondary and peripheral narratives (though in different ways). (See Grimes 1975, Hopper 1977, Hopper and Thompson 1980, etc. on grounding). The paper concludes with a discussion of the function of the peripheral episodes in the PBM as “evaluation” (Labov, 1975) of the event in the primary narrative. Time: 28D Panel: 28D-1: Crime and Imprisonment Chair: Ronald LeBlanc, University of New Hampshire Slot: December 28, 2000, 3:15–5:15 p.m.

The Roots and Rhetoric of the Criminal Anti-Mind: Verxovenskij in Dostoevskij's Besy Shoshana Milgram Knapp, Virginia Polytechnic and State University Approximately midway through Dostoevskij’s Besy (Part 2, Chapter 8), the villainous Verxovenskij expounds and exposes his nihilistic agenda. His audience, Stavrogin, is shocked: “I’m listening to you for the first time, and listening in amazement.” Verxovenskij’s ostensible convictions conceal his actual intentions, and, in the hearing of the man whose charisma he intends to harness and exploit, he names his targets and his goals (among them, to “level the mountains,” “destroy desire,” “declare destruction,” and “stifle genius”). “I’m not contradicting myself,” he explains. “I’m only contradicting the philanthropists and Shigaliovism, not myself. I’m a crook, not a socialist.” In what sense is he accurate in describing himself as a crook? To define his nature and strategy, I propose to examine his rhetoric in the light of two literary texts Dostoevkij knew—and one modern, extra-literary text that identifies Verxovenskij’s implicit premises. Verxovenskij’s cynicism, his attack on honor and ability, his determination to seek out the worst in humanity at large, his enthusiasm for corruption—all are reminiscent of Spiegelberg in Schiller’s Die Rauber (1781), “Satan’s scout,” for whom goodness itself is the primary enemy. In his hostility to knowledge (“Enough of science!”), his thirst for destruction, he is a demonic parody of Enjolras in Hugo’s Les Miserables (1862). As an anti-Enjolras, he treats science, light, and truth as the fundamental enemies. And viewed from the standpoint of psychologist Stanton Samenow (author of Inside the Criminal Mind, 1984, and co-author of a three-volume work on The Criminal Personality, 1976), Verxovenskij fits the profile of the criminal. A criminal’s thought process (by contrast with the thinking of a responsible person) typically displays a number of significant qualities—in addition to the overarching belief that the criminal is entitled to possess whatever he or she wants and to break any and all laws. The criminal, in pursuit of goals, disdains systematic steps and consistent dedication, trying instead to gain a result without effort; the process of work is devoid of meaning, hence unacceptable. And the criminal, psychologically, is constantly in danger of experiencing a kind of “zero-state,” a feeling of worthlessness and impotence. Verxovenskij reveals his criminal thinking not only in his schemes, but in his anti-effort premise and in his desperate admission that, without Stavrogin, he is nothing, “a zero,” a lost soul who turns his own mind not only against his victims, society, and the law, but against life and the mind itself.

Redemption or Moral Reform? Dostoevskij's Notes from the House of the Dead and the Contemporary Discourse on Penology Anna Kaladiouk, University of California, Davis Many readings of Dostoevskij’s Notes from the House of the Dead which discuss the question of redemption, approach it as a moral and existentialist problem. Some critics consider the Christian theme of man’s restoration from the fallen state to be the central theme of the novel (Robert Louis Jackson) and suggest that redemption there takes the shape of an attained sense of unity with the Russian people (Gary Rosenshield). Other critics, in contrast, argue that the novel does not authorize redemptive readings. They believe that the frightening world of irrational and boundless destruction that Gorjančikov encounters in the House of the Dead releases him, at the end of the novel, just as crushed spiritually and emotionally as it receives him in the beginning. (Victor Šklovskij, Edward Wasiolek) My paper takes up a similar set of concerns from a historical perspective. It discusses Dostoevskij’s vision of redemption alongside the contemporary discourse on crime, prisons and moral rehabilitation of criminals. Reading the Notes as a more or less hidden polemic with the contemporary discourse on penology, much of which was influenced by Western ideas, I argue that the notion of redemption as it emerges from the novel differs in important ways from the idea of moral reform of criminals (i.e., secular version of redemption) as we see it in the contemporary discourse on crime and punishment. Far from being an effect of disciplinary regimes, redemption/reformation in Dostoevskij has nothing to do with discipline, with routinization of the body, or with the structuring of time and socialization. Instead, redemption figures in the novel as a function of individual conscience and result of one’s conscious moral effort. I will suggest that this contrast derives from the fundamentally different models of self as they appear in the discourse on penology and in the writings of Dostoevskij. While the promise of penitentiary science depended on an idea of a pliable self which was susceptible to reformative intervention, the paradigm of self that we find in Dostoevskij is characterized by the presence of a fixed and stable core which the “penitentiary” model denied. I will discuss Dostoevskij’s polemic with the contemporary discourse on penology on multiple levels, pointing both to the instances of overt critique and to the moments of more subtle resistance. As an example of Dostoevskij’s open criticism of current thinking about moral rehabilitation of criminals, I will consider the significance of his negative commentary on the reformative potential of the so-called Separate (or cellular) system of prison discipline. Other moments of resistance will be located on the level of narrative structure. I will suggest, for example, that insofar as the novel proceeds through a series of digressions, repetitions, and flashbacks, it disrupts linearity, progression, continuity and sequence, qualities that are not only typical of the realist novel, but also of penitentiary sentence.

Liberation or Entrapment? The Psychology of Ressentiment and Dostoevskij's Notes from the Underground Alina Wyman, University of Chicago Dostoevskij’s Underground Man is petty, malicious and utterly devoid of those noble virtues that are traditionally associated with an authorial mouthpiece, and yet he expresses some of Dostoevskij’s most cherished convictions. An ardent spokesman for the sovereignty of human will, he seizes every opportunity to dominate the wills of those vulnerable enough to succumb to his petty tyranny. An enemy of every kind of determinism, whose life is a relentless crusade against “the stone wall” of natural laws, he becomes hopelessly entrapped in the circular logic of underground revenge. The question of the Underground Man’s ambivalent position in Dostoevskij’s hierarchy of values as both the author’s mouthpiece and an anti-hero, a seeker of absolute freedom, and an actor in a predictable play of vanity will be central in my discussion of Dostoevskij’s novel in the light of Nietzsche’s concepts of “ressentiment” and “the revaluation of values.” I will respond to Bernstein’s, Weisberg’s, and Šestov’s treatment of the “ressentiment” theme in Dostoevskij, arguing for a less literal application of Nietzsche’s ideas to the work of the Russian thinker. Both Michael André Bernstein’s assessment of the Underground Man as one of Dostoevskij’s abject heroes in Bitter Carnival: Ressentiment and the Abject Hero and “The Poetics of Ressentiment” and Weisberg’s discussion of the character’s flawed concept of freedom in The Failure of the Word are based on the equation of underground ideology with the ressentiment worldview. On the contrary, in “Dostoevskij and Nietzsche: the Philosophy of Tragedy,” Lev Šestov implicitly suggests that the Underground Man’s rejection of the sham values of socialist humanitarianism is indicative of his liberation from the ressentiment delusion. While Bernstein’s and Weisberg’s questioning of the value of underground freedom raises an important philosophical issue, the complete identification between the underground psychology and ressentiment implied by the critics is problematic. On the other hand, although Šestov is correct in acknowledging a kind of “revaluation of values” that takes place in the novel, he fails to notice to what great extent the rejected values continue to dominate the Underground Man’s life. To elucidate the problem of free will in Notes from Underground, I propose to reexamine the relationship between underground psychology and ressentiment, supplementing Nietzsche’s concept with the theory of ressentiment developed by Max Scheler, whose endorsement of Christian love as a means of overcoming ressentiment suggests an affinity with Dostoevskij’s own deeply religious worldview.

Crime, Punishment, Resurrection: Tolstoj vs. Dostoevskij on the Criminal in Society J. Alexander Ogden, University of South Carolina In considering the criminal and his place in society, Tolstoj and Dostoevskij provide opposite answers to the question of who is to blame. Raskol′nikov’s crime in Crime and Punishment is largely the result of his willingness to set himself apart from the rest of humanity as a new Napoleon. In Resurrection, Nexljudov increasingly comes to the opinion that criminals do not choose to set themselves apart; they are forced into transgressions by an unjust social order perpetuated by corrupt and complacent officials (whose crimes are in fact much greater); it is those officials who set the criminals apart as “a different and wicked race” (Part II, chapter 19). Both characters place themselves in the midst of fierce contemporary debates about criminality. As Raskol′nikov’s article and his discussions with Razumixin and Porfirij Petrovič reveal, both he and his interlocutors are well-versed in theories of the criminal mind and French Utopian Socialist conceptions of the place of crime in society. Nexljudov, as a good Tolstojan protagonist, immerses himself in literature on his idee fixe: books in Russian, German, and English, the typologies of the Italian school of criminality, etc. But (like Levin, or like Tolstoj himself in What is Art?) Nexljudov is ultimately convinced by all his reading that the most important questions have been left unanswered. In contrasting ideas of criminality in Crime and Punishment and Resurrection, I will draw on Michel Foucault’s study of the evolving role of the criminal in the nineteenth century, as presented in Discipline and Punish. Porfirij’s fascination with and sympathy for Raskol′nikov is part of a new emphasis on the humanity and psychology of the criminal, the “‘man,’ discovered in the criminal, [who] would become the target of penal intervention, the object that it claimed to correct and transform, the domain of a whole series of ‘criminological’ sciences” (Foucault 74). Dostoevskij’s novel fits into “an enormous mass of ‘crime stories’ in which delinquency appears both as very close and quite alien, a perpetual threat to everyday life, but extremely distant in its origin and motives” (286); such stories tend to reinforce a view of criminals as a class apart. Tolstoj’s novel belongs to an opposite literary tendency, one that “assigned the origin of delinquency not to the individual criminal (he was merely the occasion or the first victim), but to society” (287). Foucault’s study of the justifications of the modern “practice of the power to punish” (23) ultimately problematizes those justifications in a way very similar to Tolstoj’s. This paper will also consider and draw upon previous studies of crime and legal issues as relevent to these two novels (Goldenveizer, Sapir, Offord).

Discussant: Susan McReynolds, Northwestern University

Panel: 28D-2: Literature and the Visual Arts: Interdisciplinary Approaches Chair: Nikita Nankov, Indiana University Equipment: Slide projector, Overhead projector Slot: December 28, 2000, 3:15–5:15 p.m.

Russian Landscape Painting and the Art of Memory in Čexov's Stories Daria A. Kirjanov, University of Pennsylvania The impact of the visual arts on Čexov’s literary art has been widely acknowledged, especially that of impressionism (Čiževskij, Senderovich). Little attention, however, has been given to the connection between Russian landscape painting and the literary techniques used in his representation of memory. This paper identifies a cycle of stories in which memory and remembering can be seen as the artistic media used to “paint” the composition and poetic content of the text. Čexov was well acquainted with the works of Russian landscape painters of the second half of the nineteenth century and, in particular, had a close personal friendship with Isaak Levitan, one of the best known of the “Itinerants” school. Though few of Čexov’s characters are artists by profession, a large number of them are endowed with highly artistic imaginations and the ability to structure their perceptions of the natural world into a form that resembles the composition of a landscape painting, especially as reflected in the aesthetics and philosophy of Levitan’s canvasses. The “memory-images” (Casey, Bachelard) that emerge on the mnemonic level of the text become the focal points in the landscape of the text. Similarly, the process of remembering itself parallels the process of composing a landscape painting, as exemplified in the works of Levitan, in which the expanse of land, sky, and the natural world engulf and dwarf the elements of man’s world. This paper will draw on Henri Bergson’s theories of memory, specifically on his concept of “duration,” as well as on Gaston Bachelard’s notion of “memory-images.” In theorizing the interface between memory, art and the creative process, the work in this area of the contemporary philosopher, Edward Casey, and art historian, Malcolm Quantrill, will be applied. The stories “House with a Mezzanine,” “Lights,” “Veročka,” and “A Lady with a Lapdog”—all based on remembered events that are transformed by the narrative into mnemonic landscapes— will be examined as illustrations of the connection between the techniques of painting a landscape and those of recollecting the past. In conclusion, this paper will attempt to articulate how the aesthetic content of these stories, with respect to memory and art, engages broader philosophical and moral dimensions in these works.

Parts of a Whole: Visuality and Language in Aleksej Remizov's “Peč′” Linda Shipley, University of Texas, Austin In Rossija v pis′menax Remizov presents his collection of antiquarian objects, sometimes allowing these objects to speak for themselves and at other times speaking for them as a means of exploring Russian culture and identity. This creative documentary is filled with interplay between visual image and written word. The enamel stove tiles with pictures and corresponding phrases and narrative in the section entitled “Peč′: izrazcovoe” provide an ideal opportunity for examining how Remizov uses visuality and language to depict Russian culture. Foucault’s discussion of the relationship between language and objects in The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences allows us to see how each individual tile represents the unity and conflicts between image and language. These elements also occur within the annotations, as Remizov makes use of scenes and phrases from the tiles to narrate the stove’s cultural context, namely the tiles’ role as an “azbuka ”and the “peč′”as a common place for different generations. In this paper, I will draw on Foucault’s ideas regarding language and objects in order to explore the cultural and literary implications of juxtaposing the written word and visual image in the “Peč′: izrazcovoe” segment.

The Palette of Dostoevskij's Works and Zamjatin's We Vera Aginsky, Iowa State University In this paper I am going to compare the use of colors and their meanings in some works of Dostoevskij and in We by Zamjatin. Some critics (N. Čirkov, L. Grossman) consider that the palette of Dostoevskij is not rich, that he uses mostly gray, dark gray, brown and black colors. The analysis of Dostoevskij’s works shows that his palette is not as dark and monotonous as it is perceived by some of the critics. Colors in Russian as well as in world culture are assigned certain functions and meanings. Dostoevskij as a masterful artist goes far beyond them, thus contributing greatly to the characteristics of his characters and the circumstances. Zamjatin makes a very expressive use of colors in his novel We, which was given tribute to by many critics of Zamjatin’s works (A. Shane, C. Collins, S. Hoisington and others). As well as Dostoevskij’s, his colors never have absolute meanings, thus making the descriptions of the situations and characters more colorful and meaningful. In the paper I’ll follow the use of the pink (rozovyj), light blue (goluboj) and yellow colors mainly in Dostoevskij’s Notes from the Underground and Brothers Karamazov and Zamjatin’s We and compare their meanings in the works of these two writers. Several references of the novel We to the works of Dostoevskij were remarked by the critics (Collins, Gregg). The comparison of their use of colors done in this paper will make another parallel between the creative work of Dostoevskij and Zamjatin, who had similar approaches to the coloring effects being subject to the same psycho-aesthetic forces. Visualization of Social History and Individual Fate: Andrej Voznesenskij's Experimentation with Words and Images Tatiana Nazarenko, University of Manitoba Andrej Voznesenskij has been acknowledged as one of the most technically accomplished Russian poets. He is fascinated by formal experimentation using both linguistic and visual dimensions of discourse. The present paper explores the peculiarities of two fused modes of representation (visual and conventional) characteristic of Voznesenskij’s visual poetry. The study investigates the evolution of the poet’s approach to text visualization starting from his early experiments, “poems for eyes exclusively,” in the late 1960s up to his latest and most impressive experiments with the visual imagery of the text in the 1990s. Special attention is given to Voznesenskij’s visual rethinking of Pavel Florenskij’s concept of implicit correspondence between the and the fate of its bearer. Therefore, the poet attempts to analyze and visualize the creative and psychological profiles of well-known representatives of Russian culture (Esenin, Majakovskij, Severjanin, Gumilev, etc.) as codified in their names. Such aspects of textual visuality as layout, spatial arrangement, typography, color application, fluctuating point of ingress and other graphic manipulations are given a detailed treatment as significant agents of the semantic of each individual work. Numerous linguistic puns and witty word-play, onomatopoeic and sound effects, as well as other phonetic, morphological, and syntactic displacements epitomized by Voznesenskij’s experimental poetry are analyzed in the broader sociolinguistic context. The textual and visual semantics of the works are discussed from the semiotic perspective. The problems of interpretation of Voznesenskij’s experimental works characterized by juxtaposition of linguistic and visual elements are explored in the light of the theory of aesthetic reception. The presentation is accompanied by the display of overhead transparencies. Panel: 28D-3: Soviet and Russian Rock Music Chair: Cynthia A. Ruder, University of Kentucky Equipment: VCR, Tape player, CD player Slot: December 28, 2000, 3:15–5:15 p.m.

Modern Russian Urban Pseudo-Folk Pavel Lion, Moscow State University Cultural background of Modern Russian Urban Pseudo-Folk (MRUPF) is the situation “after postmodernism,” characterized by two contradictory intellectual moods. On the one hand, the fruits of postmodern criticism are still felt and any attempt to “think metaphysics” has been compromised. On the other hand, the common fatigue of postmodern uncertainty and the longing for some firm and definite discourse is an unquestionable intellectual reality. In MRUPF postmodern strategies and techniques (double coding, style games, intertextuality, parody, breaking taboos) render non-postmodern contents, such as the author’s search for cultural, political, national, gender and other aspects of identity. Kiril Rešetnikov, a.k.a. Šiš Brjanskij, is a scholar, poet and musician from Moscow. Being still far from what Pierre Bourdieu calls “consecration phase,” he has been mentioned though in Russian literary criticism as a typical marginal figure balancing between rock poetry, “avtorskaja pesnja,” “chanson,” and folklore. In this perspective, Danila Davydov (“Rock and/or Chanson: Marginal Phenomena”) compares him with Alexej Xvostenko, Mixail Ščerbakov and Natal′ja Medvedeva. My paper is the first attempt to comment on his poetic world in terms of canon theory, intertextual criticism and poetic of expressiveness. Šiš Brjanskij’s project resembles folklore both in terms of its musical and textual features and in terms of its cultural frames and contexts. He succeeds street performers of Early Modern Europe, or skomoroxi in Russia. Three essential non-folklore “subtexts” of Šiš Brjanskij’s poetic world, are (1) texts of Russian Modernity, (2) Russian “avtorskaja pesnja” and (3) Russian rock poetry, especially the so-called Siberian punk. Analyzing gradually Rešetnikov’s tendencies, preferences and novelties in each of these trends, I demonstrate contingency of traditional genre and style borders (rock, avtorskaja pesnja, “high” poetry, etc.). Another goal is to reconstruct the Russian version of the conflict between postmodern-oriented senior intellectual elite and anti-postmodern junior new avant-guard, and to draw attention to the figures capable to mediate this conflict.

Viva the VIAs!: In Defense of Soviet Popsa Richard Robin, George Washington University Long before the end of communist rule, the pop music of “official” vokal′no insrumental′nye ansambli (VIAs) such as Pojuščie gitary, Pesnjary, and Samocvety was the object of derision among Russian rock cognoscenti. But do these groups, whose oldies CDs are now bestsellers, deserve the scorn from critics and rock historians like Artem Troitskij and Aleksandr Žitlinskij? In this presentation, I will demonstrate that against the backdrop of both communist rule and Russia’s long established pattern of genre “seepage” from the West, many (but not all) of the VIAs played a positive role in the development of what became Russian rock. In fact, a big- picture view of Russian pop/rock leads to the conclusion that the distinction that the Russian critics insist exists between estrada (read: popsa) and “real” rock is largely an artificial one.

Russian Nationalist Rock or Back Into the Underground Mark Yoffe, George Washington University Ever since the collapse of Soviet Union Russian youth counterculture has (as its counterparts all over the Eastern Europe) found itself in a very difficult situation. The particular complexity of this situation stemmed from variety of reasons, but one of the most important was of course: loss of its countercultural identity. Former leaders of cultural opposition, the creative and youthful “conscience” of the country has found itself with its revolutionary status shaken. The counterculture has found itself facing the creation of that very free society for which it was feerlessly struggling through years of oppression. Trained in subterranean existence, having mastered the technics of cultural and political resistance, members of counterculture needed now to re-assess their place and role in the new society. The question many members of the counterculture were facing now was: what defines counterculture in free (or freer) society, is there a place for the counterculture in it? If there was a place for counterculture under democracy than where was it and with whom? Who are counterculture’s new friends and adversaries? I will examine these questions particularly using example of today’s Russian rock’n’roll community. I will particularly closely look at the fact that rock’n’rollers developed a strong antagonism to present form of capitalism in Russia and a strong anti-Western and pro-nationalist sentiment. It was Russian punk-rock community that gave nationalist Vladimir Žirinovskij its strong support and endorsement. I will touch upon aesthetics of Russian nationalist rock and also upon national peculiarities of Russian rock as such. In my paper I will attempt to cast some light on these developments and to answer the questions I have asked in the beginning of this proposal.

Panel: 28D-4: North American Puškin Society Chair: David B. Polet, University of Wisconsin, Madison Slot: December 28, 2000, 3:15–5:15 p.m.

The Biographical Subtext of Puškin's Exile from Petersburg—Or Not Igor Nemirovsky, Institut russkoj literatury (Puškinskij Dom), Russian Academy of Sciences In his popular biography of Puškin, Lotman put forward the notion of Puškin’s “changing masks,” the idea that the poet was free to apply to himself different “artistic masks”, no matter what his actual circumstances were. Lotman’s approach to the correlation between Puškin’s biography and his creative works, however, lacks a clear methodological foundation (understandable in a book addressed primarily to teachers and average readers). However, Lotman’s idea, developed in the early 1980s, and popularized in various Puškin studies (S. Kibal′nik, L.Volpert, V. Baevskij), may obscure some important historical factors in the poet’s biography. Surely, the question to what degree Puškin purposefully shaped the perception of his creative works in relation to his biography is one of the most essential for understanding his career. This paper is a part of a larger research project devoted to the problem of the biographical subtext (“biographism”) of Puškin’s lyric poetry of the 1820s, and tries to supply some of the historical context that the theory of “changing masks” ignores. The aim of this paper is to show the diversity of historical circumstances that determined the public perception of Puškin’s exile from St. Petersburg in the Spring of 1825. The further goal of this paper is to demonstrate how this perception became an integral part of the poet’s creative biography. Puškin depicted his departure from St. Petersburg in Spring 1820 in several letters and poems. In these writings one cannot find any reference to exile. Puškin called himself a “self-willed exile,” meaning it was his own decision to leave St. Petersburg. But from the very beginning of the “southern trip” the majority of Puškin’s contemporaries interpreted the poet’s departure as an exile. This incongruity between Puškin’s poetic declarations and his contemporaries’ interpretation is going to be the main focus of my analysis. In the course of this analysis we address several important problems in the poet’s biography. Why wasn’t Puškin returned to St. Petersburg in the Spring of 1825, despite the assurances made by Alexander I, Karamzin and many others? How intimate was Puškin’s acquaintance with Byron’s works during the Summer of 1820–Spring of 1821, and to what degree did Byron’s models shape Puškin’s behavior and creative works?

The Problem of Rhythm: Baxtin and Evgenij Onegin Annette Pein, Harvard University Both the Formalists and Baxtin viewed rhythm as an essential element of verse. Of the Formalists, Tynjanov was the most systematic in elaborating his view of rhythm as the constructive or dominant factor in verse. Baxtin’s views on rhythm in literary creation have been examined less. For the most part, his view of rhythm as a factor strengthening the hermetic quality of the poetic language appears to stand out in the critical literature, thereby reinforcing the sense of Baxtin’s negative views on verse in the 1930s. In his writings from the 1920s, however, Baxtin discussed rhythm rather differently as an aspect of both architectonic and compositional form. In that respect, rhythm was not limited to verse as it later was. In fact, Baxtin’s earlier view of rhythm appears to be rather compatible with Romantic views on verse and literary creation in general. For the early Baxtin, rhythm encompassed both, architectonic and compositional form. Architectonic form is emotionally directed, representing the author’s process of creation, whereas compositional form stands for the ordering of material, thereby becoming part of the final aesthetic product. Among Romantic theorists of literature, Coleridge was most explicit in viewing a literary work as both a process and a product of the poet’s mind. Apparently, Baxtin’s misunderstanding of Romantic thought led to his eventual preference for the novel at the expense of verse, especially when he viewed verse through the prism of Romanticism. Thus, he rather simplistically interpreted the so-called “lyrical” digressions in Evgenij Onegin as “novelistic images of lyrics.” Given the centrality of the digressions for Puškin’s novel in verse, a more insightful understanding of their role may result from a return to Baxtin’s earlier concept of rhythm. Accordingly, the digressions could be conceptualized better as an expression of both the processual nature of the creation of Puškin’s novel in verse as well as the product of his creative imagination. Ultimately, this approach may explain how the digressions became an organizing principle for Evgenij Onegin and why they have been characterized as both lyrical digressions and prosaic chatter.

Evgenij Onegin in the Age of Realism Boris Gasparov, Columbia University The paper explores how situations and characters of Puškin’s Evgenij Onegin written in the 1820s in a context of gentry culture and pre-realist literature, best represented by such authors as Jane Austen and Benjamin Constant, change their meaning when they reemerge in the 1870s in Čajkovskij’s opera. While overtly the opera followed Puškin’s plot, it was written by a composer and addressed to an audience brought up on realist novels by Tolstoj and Turgenev, in a Russia after the reforms of the 1860s. Viewed by the eyes of the post-reform audience, the characters’ behavior and motivations underwent a significant shift. What has emerged as a result was an understanding of Puškin’s novel in a realist key that largely superseded its original meaning.

Discussant: Olga Peters Hasty, Princeton University Panel: 28D-5: Roundtable: The Position and Future of Adjunct Faculty in the Field Chair: Jonathan Ludwig, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Slot: December 28, 2000, 3:15–5:15 p.m. Participant: Serafima Gettys, Stanford University Participant: Yelena Belyaeva-Standen, St. Louis University

Panel: 28D-6: Forum: The Russian Context Chair: Eloise M. Boyle, University of Washington Equipment: Computer projector Slot: December 28, 2000, 3:15–5:15 p.m. Participant: Eloise M. Boyle, University of Washington Participant: Valentina Zaitseva, New York University Participant: Alexander Prokhorov, University of Pittsburgh Participant: James West, University of Washington Participant: Lawrence Mansour, United States Military Academy, West Point

Panel: 28D-7: Discourse and Pragmatics Chair: Alina Israeli, American University Slot: December 28, 2000, 3:15–5:15 p.m.

Intimacy and Interlocutor Distance in Russian and Polish Advertising Discourse Annelie Chapman, University of California, Los Angeles What is the appropriate interlocutor distance in an advertisement? This study presents examples of pre- and post-Soviet Russian and Polish advertisements that reflect fundamental cultural differences in the degree of intimacy considered appropriate to this genre of commercial public discourse. The expression of short versus long interlocutor distance has been proposed by Yokoyama to be systematically encoded in Russian as a pragma-linguistic reflection of the “svoj—čužoj” opposition, which has been traced to the origins of Slavic culture (Ivanov and Toporov). Drawing from ground-breaking studies of colloquial Russian by Zemskaja and her colleagues, Yokoyama has shown that “svoj” is the quintessential feature of private interpersonal communication, in contrast with public discourse, including that of the mass media, which has traditionally maintained greater interlocutor distance and assumes the addressee to be “čužoj.” This presentation will discuss the unique status of advertising as a public discourse genre which nonetheless allows for variation in the expression of short versus long interlocutor distance. The analysis will correlate the choice of second-person reference in recent Russian and Polish ads with the expression of short or long interlocutor distance. Patterns of usage reflect what appears to be a fundamental difference in the degree of intimacy permitted in Russian and Polish advertising, while similarities of usage suggest that interlocutor distance also encodes information about the age or status of the target consumer. Russian advertising tends to follow the tradition of public discourse in a “čužoj” mode, with the unmarked case expressing long interlocutor distance by means of the second-person plural vy. In Polish, the tendency is for advertising discourse to be more “svoj,” with the unmarked case expressing short interlocutor distance by means of the second-person singular ty, and the marked case appropriating long interlocutor distance (by means of Państwo) to encode respect for the target addressee. A diachronic analysis reveals that interlocutor distance in Russian ads is being shortened. This may reflect a more gradual adoption by the Russians of a Western model based on ultra-intimate discourse. In addition, the range of variation in the interlocutor distance among Russian ads seems to be widening. This may be connected with a cross-cultural tendency to tailor the expression of interlocutor distance to the individual needs of the ad as a means of encoding pre-linguistic knowledge of the age or status of the target addressee, rather than conforming to genre-based constraints on the level of allowable intimacy to be expressed. In both Russia and Poland, the adoption of shorter interlocutor distance in the public discourse of advertising may influence cultural perceptions of what constitutes appropriate interlocutor distance in other spheres of public life, leading to changes in language use as a reflection of those perceptions.

The Hermeneutical and Phenomenological Aspects of the “Other Speech and Thought” in Scientific Text Svetlana Malykhina, Xarkiv National University The thesis, from which this report derives, is devoted to examining the means of reproduction of “Other Speech and Thought.” This term is understood in a broad sense, meaning other people’s ideas, thoughts,opinions. In our approach to discourse analysis, dialogue is one of the fundamental structuring principles of whole discourse (according to M. Baxtin, V. Vološiniv and Y. Kristeva). The analysis is based on examining of the phenomenon in scientific discourse. Scientific discourse is different in its kinds: scientific in proper sense (“schema preserving”) and polemical scientific discourse (“schema refreshing”). In the monographs, reviews, articles the canon tends to be defined not for specific readers, but for—and by—a dominant social group. It possible to compare “schema preserving” with “schema refreshing” discourse. The “schema refreshing” discourse disrupt the schemata through conventional text and language structures, metalanguage. Among other instances, the scientific- journalistic prose disrupt rigid and strongly-held schemata. It is pertinent to draw on discourse analysis. This approach is motivated by three-functional interpratation of discourse as interpersonal: 1) how text becomes discourse in the mind of the receiver; 2) what the sender intends to do with his or her words; 3) how text schemata and language reflect world schemata. The discourse interpretation is constituted of introspection concerning author’s interpreting schemata and rhetorical representations. Thus we take into consideration the situation of utterance, the authorial intention and insist on necessity of including a description of the individual reader. The ways of introduction of “Other Speech and Thought” are determined by corresponding factors of scientific discourse and the polemical one within the framework of the discourse approach. My attention is focused on top levels—on meaning and function, on genre and social effect. Knowledge of the larger social structures created through discourse is necessary for conventional and conformist language behavior. Current discourse analysis, while stressing the need for knowledge in discourse interpretation, is based on pragmatics. We are able to reveal the implications, allegories and allusions within the intertextual dialogue. This approach is based on the detailed analysis of 30 texts, all of which are representative and have attracted considerable scholarly analysis in linguistics (A. Žolkovskij, M. Èpštejn, B. Paramonov, N. Arutunova). Key words: Other Speech and Thought, scientific and polemical discourse, scientific-journalistic prose, metalanguage, schema preserving, schema refreshing.

Positive Negativity: Discourse and Pragmatic Subtleties of Ukrainian Alla Nedashkivska, University of Alberta The concern of the present study is to underline the importance of pragmatic theory in the process of developing communicative rather than formal-linguistic competence of learners of Ukrainian as a foreign language. The premise is that a learner of a given language, in order to function successfully in that language, must attain more than mere linguistic competence (vocabulary and grammar), but necessarily pragmatic rules of a target language. For non-native speakers, it is often the pragmatic subtleties that prove to be more difficult than the use of complicated vocabulary and grammatical constructions. In Ukrainian, one area of the language structure in which grammatical patterns are dedicated to specific pragmatic purposes is a set of negative constructions that do not bear the semantics of negativity. Compare (i) and (ii), identical in their English translation, however, in Ukrainian, differing in syntax and in the pragmatic force that they carry (the connotation of (i) is that “you need the money” and the connotation of (ii) is “I need the money”): (i) U tebe hroši je?(positive coding) you money have Do you have any money? (ii) U tebe hrošej nemaje? (negative coding) you money don’t have Do you have any money?/*You don’t have any money? Constructions similar to (i) and (ii) will form the core of the present analysis and will be referred to as “positives” and “unnegatives” respectively. It will be shown that the unnegatives are neither derivative from the sentence level description nor can be analyzed as a compositional product of its constituent parts (due to their failure to connote the negative meaning). Rather they represent an instance of complex structures with their own status as separately functioning grammatical constructions governed by pragmatic rules. Thus, the concern here will be to extend our understanding of negation beyond the articulation of major sentential constituents. The present analysis will study these constructions in terms of their structure, usage, meaning, circumstances of use and their dependency on the set of pragmatic rules used by the speaker and the hearer during the linguistic interchange. In particular, I argue that the choice of either positive or negative coding depends on the speaker’s conceptualization of discourse, referential set of Deixis and the subjectivity focus. The framework utilized is based on Yokoyama’s Transactional Discourse Model (1986), Zaitseva’s study on speaker perspective in the grammar and lexicon (1995) and the Theory of Utterance (1994) elaborated further. In addition, questions into how these constructions are presented to learners of a target language, as well as how their presentation could be enhanced in order to expand the repertoire of pragmatic skills and to assist in acquiring communicative competence by non-native speakers will be addressed. Selected References Yokoyama, Olga T. (1986) Discourse and Word Order. (Pragmatics and Beyond Companion series 6). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Zaitseva, V. (1994) “The Metaphoric Nature of Coding: Toward a Theory of Utterance.” Journal of Pragmatics (22): 103–126. —. (1995) The Speaker’s Perspective in Grammar and Lexicon: The Case of Russian. New York: P. Lang.

The Prerequisites for the Use of Proper Names for First-Mention Reference Ekaterina Schnittke, University of California, Los Angeles Speakers have a variety of referring devices for introducing new characters into the universe of discourse, such as proper names, definite and indefinite descriptions, etc. In this paper I shall discuss the prerequisites for the speakers’ preference of bare proper names over proper names accompanied by some sort of categorizer, extension, or a modifier, as in the following examples: Ja včera vstretil Serežu vs. Ja včera vstretil vašego Serežu vs. Ja včera vstretil vašego prijatelja Serežu. It is generally believed that among the conditions for the use of bare proper names are the interlocutors’ familiarity with the referent, the ability of both interlocutors to identify the referent with a proper name, and the referential knowledge being retrievable by the addressee. While all of these conditions are necessary for the use of bare proper names and, in fact, some of them are stronger than others, neither of them constitutes a necessary and sufficient condition. It is impossible to explain the difference between the examples above by means of these conditions. Rather, I would like to argue that it is the interaction of the strongest condition (that of retrievability) with other pragmatic factors, such as the type of knowledge and the type of relationships between the interlocutors and the referent that make the choice of a bare proper name likely and/or desirable. The purpose of this paper is to formulate (soft) rules for the likelihood of the use of a bare proper name and to define discourse situations where more than a bare proper name is needed or where a proper name is inappropriate to refer to a person, despite the fact that both interlocutors know the referent and his/her name. This is obtained by a calculus of discourse situations that takes into account all the relevant factors. The procedure would be, then, to scan discourse situations which differ only in one factor, while keeping all the others equal. The three types of knowledge/familiarity postulated as relevant for the choice of a referring device are empirical knowledge, encyclopedic knowledge, and knowledge by hearsay. The social and personal status of the interlocutors is defined in relative terms as being “socially higher/lower,” “socially equal and close,” “socially equal and remote,” etc. The degree of familiarity of the interlocutors with the referent is also defined in relative terms. Two basic situations are relevant: (a) both interlocutors are equally familiar with the referent; (b) one of the interlocutors is more familiar with the referent than the other. The results of the experiment are viewed within the theoretical framework of the Transactional Discourse Model (Yokoyama) and evaluated against the background of the “classical” and “causal” theories of reference (Russel/Carnap/Searle and Kripke/Donnellan, respectively). Time: 28E Panel: 28E-1: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Cinema Chair: J. Alexander Ogden, University of South Carolina Equipment: VCR, Slide projector Slot: December 28, 2000, 7:00–9:00 p.m.

The Malevič Misprint: An Artist's Approach to Film Timothy C. Harte, Harvard University In the fall of 1929 the Soviet film journal Kino i kul′tura published the article “Živopisnye zakony v problemax kino,” crediting the piece to V. Malevič. The initial “V.” was a curious misprint. Although the artist Kazimir Malevič never gained renown as a film scholar or theoretician, he did produce four articles on cinema between 1925 and 1929. Malevič’s articles, written at a time when Soviet film was evolving at breakneck speed, represented an artist eager to have a voice in the medium’s development. This 1929 article, despite the errant initial, encapsulated Kazimir Malevič’s vehement views on art and film, namely his desire to see cinema adopt non-objective painterly means to depict the medium’s inherent kinesthetic dynamism. It is this article, never republished in English and ignored for many years due to the misprint, that I want to explore here, both in terms of its critical stance on the work of the Soviet filmmakers Sergej Ejzenštejn and Dziga Vertov, as well as its analysis of cinema’s ability to depict speed, a common concern among avant-garde artists. Discussing Soviet cinema’s conspicuous desire to distinguish itself from easel work, Malevič saw film as having far more in common with the medium of painting than many wanted to admit. He did, however, emphasize that Ejzenštejn and Vertov were working within different painterly traditions. While Ejzenštejn adhered to the more conservative model of the nineteenth-century Russian “itinerants,” Vertov followed in the path of the Italian futurists. Vertov, Malevič argued, was one of the few Soviet filmmakers to explore new “kino-problems” associated with the painterly image, aesthetic issues comparable to the ones painters had faced in the first two decades of the century. Malevič claimed that in order to understand Vertov’s films Odinnadcatyj (1928) and Čelovek s kinoapparatom (1929), one “unconditionally” had to know the “futurism of Boccioni, Balla” as well as the “entire system of pictorial futurism.” Not surprisingly, Ejzenštejn later argued that Malevič’s likening of cinema to painting was faulty and based upon misconceptions of the medium. The issue, however, certainly merits critical attention today, and by juxtaposing sequences from several of Ejzenštejn and Vertov’s films, I intend to explore how Soviet cinema attempted to convey the kinesthetic flow of images that Malevič saw as integral to the emerging art form.

Positioning Peasant Women as Pre-Cinematic Spectators Michele L. Lowery, University of Southern California In his book Early Cinema in Russia and its Cultural Reception, Yuri Tsivian addresses how various spaces, machines, and techniques influenced and created a semiotics of film viewing in Russia. Tsivian traces the associations made at the time between film viewing and theater as a way to understand how viewers perceived the images on the screen. My paper will explore what I believe to be a precursor to film viewing and consumption in pre-Revolutionary Russia, namely, advertising. The evolution of the print-ad informed future filmgoers of the art of looking, reading the image and consuming the product. More specifically I will look at how turn-of-the-century women, who were primarily non- educated and lived in urban settings, were taught the art of looking through the evolution of advertising. Because of the influx of women from the countryside into the cities at the turn century looking for work, the urban setting becomes an important cite for women’s cultural education. Another reason for looking specifically at urban settings lies in the fact that print ads would have been more abundant there, not to mention the fact that the majority of film viewership took place in the city. The paper will explore the precursors to the print ad in Russia—primarily, the shop sign and the Russian art form lubki (wood cuts). Tracing the lineage of advertising will illustrate that the existence of visual culture in Russia was not determined by the privilege of literacy. The paper will address various questions in an effort to discern a connection between advertising and female spectatorship in the cinema at the turn of the century in Russia. When did advertisements in Russia start addressing women? Were the ads designed for women in general or women of a particular class (was reading a requirement)? How were the ads structured? How did the ads create a system of looking? Can this system of looking be applied to film? Ultimately, I would like to show, much like Vanessa Schwartz illustrated in France, that in Russia a visual culture existed which prepared viewers for looking and understanding cinema.

Carnival à la Russe: A Baxtinian Look at Jurij Mamin's Okno v Pariž Lisa Di Bartolomeo, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Based on Robert Stamm’s extrapolation of Baxtin’s principle of carnival as applied to cinema (Stamm Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), I propose a carnivalesque interpretation of Jurij Mamin’s film, Okno v Pariž. In the film, the communal apartment in St. Petersburg holds the trans-dimensional “window,” enabling the varied inhabitants of the flat to breach not only the borders of time and space, but also the Iron Curtain. The antics these transplanted Russians engage in while “on holiday” in Paris point up stereotypes of Soviets and French with comic precision. In fact, the comedy attains several levels of the Menippea, through “the constant presence of the comic element,” “an extraordinary freedom of plot” (witness the physics-defying window on the West), “a three-planed structure involving heaven, earth, and hell” (respectively Paris, the St. Petersburg apartment, and the St. Petersburg streets), “a fondness for scandal and violations of decorum” (nearly anything the Soviets do while in Paris), “a love of sharp contrasts and oxymoronic combinations” (the French woman in a Soviet jail wearing only a silk robe), “a polystylistic language and approach” (French versus Russian), as well as “overt and hidden polemics with various philosophical, religious and ideological schools (West versus East, etc.)” (Stamm 97–98) This paper will map out the various ways in which Baxtin’s carnival principles may be applied to Okno v Pariž, fostering a better understanding of the film’s comic and philosophical appeal, as well as a modern interpretation of Baxtinian critique.

Panel: 28E-2: Music and Context Chair: Karen Evans-Romaine, Ohio University Equipment: piano, Tape player, CD player Slot: December 28, 2000, 7:00–9:00 p.m.

Nationality and Glinka's Opera A Life for the Car′ Jeffrey S. Eagen, Ohio State University The nineteenth century was a critical period in the development of Russian culture: art, literature and music. Realism also came to the fore in all aspects of art in Russia and was an important element of the ideology of that time period. This is especially true when discussing the development of music in the nineteenth century. Glinka’s opera A Life for the Car′, or Ivan Susanin, was proclaimed to be the beginning of Russian National Music when it was first performed in 1836. Much has been argued about why this particular piece is considered the beginning of Russian national music by musicologists; examining Glinka’s use of Russian folk melodies and how he incorporated them into the music of his opera. It is my contention, however, that there are other important considerations outside the world of music that were important in proclaiming Glinka’s work as the beginning of Russian national music. Glinka’s opera was not the first opera written in Russian by a Russian. The claims as to how he incorporated folk melodies into his opera are not sufficient, although his style was innovative and unique for his time, to mark his opera as significantly more Russian, than say Verstovskij’s Askol′d’s Tomb, which premiered just one year prior to Glinka’s Susanin. In this paper I intend to show that the political climate and the concept of nationality under Nicholas I, and especially after the writings of Count S. Uvarov (head of the ministry of education from 1833–1846 and credited as being the founder of the idea of “Official Nationality”) was a major factor in determining what was considered “national”. Uvarov’s proclamation of nationality, autocracy and orthodoxy as the most important part of Russian culture were well known to everyone at the time Glinka started working on Susanin and when it was eventually performed. Since Glinka’s opera contained these three important concepts, it set the stage for Glinka’s work above all others to be considered the foundation for Russian “national” music. Thus the development of Russian national music was not solely about the use of Russian folk music or folk themes as well as it was also about the politics and polemics of the time period in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Janáček's Immortal Beloved and Her Literary and Musical Intertexts Geoffrey Chew, University of London The great creative upsurge during the last decade of the life of Leoš Janáček (1918–28) is often attributed predominantly to his emotional involvement during those years with Kamila Stösslová: the picture is a fundamentally simple one, of an elderly composer trapped in an unhappy marriage, with his creativity at last released through his defying conventional bourgeois morality and falling in adulterous love. Readings of his work as intertwined with the events of his biography admittedly enjoy copious support from the composer’s own statements, and have been gaining currency since the publication in English translation of his letters to Stösslová (1994). He writes not only that the inspiration for almost all his mature work is found in her, but that she is present in their narratives: he sees her in the heroines of Kát’a Kabanová, Liška Bystrouška and Věc Makropulos, and constructs leading parts for her in both String Quartets and even in the Glagolitic Mass. And the extraordinary extent to which he apparently saw his art as indivisible from his life is strikingly illustrated in his Album for Kamila Stösslová of 1927–28, which consists of intimate recollections in prose of their moments together, interspersed with tiny piano pieces and fragments of song, and including his will—which itself concludes with a piano piece. This picture of art embedded in life may not, however, be quite reliable. The late-Romantic composer Zdeněk Fibich had published sets of piano pieces entitled Nálady, dojmy a úpominky (‘Moods, Impressions and Reminiscences’’) in the 1890s, with a parallel (secret) narrative in an amorous diary addressed to his own innamorata, Anežka Schulzová. The secret became public when the diary was published by Zdeněk Nejedlý in 1925, with an essay on the importance of Woman to the artist’s mentality, which insists that Fibich’s involvement with Schulzová and his contravention of bourgeois morality was in no way reprehensible. Janáček acquired a copy and discussed it with Stösslová, a fact that suggests at least an unusual degree of self-awareness. Moreover, there are prior examples in fin-de-siècle Czech literature of the topos of the fictional authentication of the male artist through a grande passion, often adulterous, and one of the most prominent of these, Julius Zeyer’s Jan Maria Plojhar, is semi-autobiographical and so also apparently confuses fiction with life. On the basis of a discussion of Nejedlý’s essay, together with relevant passages from Janáček’s letters and the Album, and from Czech fin-de-siècle fiction and drama, the paper will suggest that Janáček’s constructions of himself were more various and sophisticated, and more embedded in fin-de-siècle aesthetics, than is usually thought. Hence it will suggest that interpretations of Janáček’s mature work will be inadequate if this is not taken into account.

Estrada! Towards a Philosophy of Happiness in Soviet Light Entertainment David MacFadyen, Dalhousie University After cinema, the most popular form of entertainment in the Soviet Union was song, both purchased (on vinyl, tape or paper) and performed (at home or on stage). Those erstwhile denizens of the Soviet industry who are still operating today have, in some cases, sold almost a quarter of a billion records each, an astounding figure which still makes no allowance for the abstruse vagaries of the pirate industry. In other words, nothing mattered (and matters) more to more Russians than singing, yet in the West have paid scant or scathing attention to the combined notions of twentieth-century song and its popularity. Let us forget for a second about the urban, localized phenomena of bardic performance, about the hirsute horrors of Slavic rock and even about politics. What did Russians actually like to sing and why did they like it? The unsightly, binary workings of Cold War rhetoric still shape Slavic studies today and foster a structuralist heritage, which presents Soviet popular entertainment in simple degrees of compliance or deviance. Yet the type of sung poetry which sold in the amounts mentioned above moved in and out of ideology with gay and glib abandon. Sometimes it was civic in intent, sometimes not. The workings of a socially sensible aesthetic as proffered by the dearest songs were often sentimental. They promoted an emotional connection and did so between stage and hall, across the footlights. This dialog of sentiment, of a big heart, forged in the early days of those such as Aleksandr Vertinskij or Leonid Utesov, became considerably more powerful in its affection of performer for audience (and vice versa) than any connection between state and song. The received (or officially proffered) notion of a civic person, personality or “ličnost′” was gradually displaced by the happier, heartfelt connection of a star or famous personality (once again “ličnost′”) with his/her audience. This paper attempts to argue for an extreme reconsideration of Soviet sung entertainment as an activity of rare politics—in both senses. The resolute happiness of truly popular song saw “Sovietness” in terms that are both laudably more complex and forgiving than anything political rhetoric could offer. That same happiness resorted itself to fustian only sporadically. The multigeneric nature and philosophy of light entertainment (“estrada”) in Russia began before the Revolution—and is still going strong after 1991. Cordial, sundry activities of change, becoming and desire have outlasted anything loud or august. Estrada changed because it always has and always will. Its sentimental, inconstant modus operandi invites parallels with today’s post-Marxist theory of, say, Deleuze and Guattari in a way that allows us to drop that prefix “post,” so to speak, and show a complexity within Soviet culture that was always there but is almost never discerned. This paper is offered as introduction to a history of sung estrada in three volumes, the final book of which will be finished by the autumn of 2000.

Panel: 28E-3: Russian Poetry Reading Chair: Dmitry Bobyshev, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Slot: December 28, 2000, 7:00–9:00 p.m. Poet: Andrej Gritsman, New Jersey Poet: Radislav Lapushin, Chicago Poet: Irina Mashinsky, New York Poet: Rosina Neginsky, University of Illinois Poet: Ian Probstein, New York Poet: Maxim D. Shrayer, Boston College Poet: David Shrayer-Petrov, Providence, RI Poet: Yevgeny A. Slivkin, Grand Valley State University Poet: Vera Zubarev, University of Pennsylvania

Panel: 28E-4: Roundtable: Summer Institute for Teachers of Slavic Languages: Techniques and Technologies Chair: Daniela Hristova, University of Chicago Equipment: Computer projector Slot: December 28, 2000, 7:00–9:00 p.m. Participant: Steven Franks, Indiana University Participant: Daria A. Kirjanov, University of Pennsylvania Participant: Julia Titus, Yale University

Panel: 28E-5: Historical Linguistics and Slavistics Chair: Grant Lundberg, Brigham Young University Slot: December 28, 2000, 7:00–9:00 p.m.

Stalo se to včera: Trávníček's Dobrovský Revisited Charles Mills, Knox College A number of recent scholarly works investigate the distribution of clitics in Czech (Franks and King 2000; Toman 1993/1996, 1999; Fried 1994, 1999). The subject turns out to be an old one: In 1819, Josef Dobrovský devoted four pages of his seminal Lehrgebäude der Böhmischen Sprache to clitic placement. Formulations of Czech clitic distribution thus go back no less than 181 years. However, in a subsequent influential survey of the scholarly literature up to his day, František Trávníček (1926) concluded that Dobrovský “failed to arrive at a generally valid and correct rule for the placement of enclitics in the clause” (p. 305). This paper reexamines and challenges that conclusion, demonstrating Trávníček to have been mistaken. Trávníček’s paper repeatedly misrepresents Dobrovský’s position, leading one to conclude that Trávníček must have somehow missed the critical passage in which Dobrovský virtually spells out a view of clitics in 2P, illustrated by Dobrovský with the sentences in (i) and (ii) (#98, 1819:322). (i) a. Stalo se to včera.

HappenedPast.Part REFL that yesterday.) That happened yesterday. b. To se stalo včera. c. To se včera stalo. d. Včera se to stalo. (ii) *Se to stalo včera. This new study is important for two reasons. First, it sets the record straight as to Dobrovský’s actual historical position as we approach the 250 anniversary of his birth: According to Dobrovský, clitic distribution is syntactically driven, mediated by phonology—not unlike the positions of Toman (1993/1996) or Fried (1994) today. Theoretically, the paper challenges Trávníček’s central thesis—that Wackernagel’s Law (1892) represents the best account of clitic distribution in Czech. Evidence from adverbials, parentheticals and pauses, and clitics in situ is adduced against Trávníček’s phonology-based analysis. Included is important new data from spoken Czech (Müllerová 1992). Selected References Dobrovský, Josef. (1819) Lehrgebäude der Böhmischen Sprache. Prague: Ben Gottlieb Haase. Müllerová, Olga et al. (1992) Mluvená čeština v autentických textech. Prague: H & H. Trávníček, František. (1926) “K postavení příklonek ve větě.” In MNHMA: Sborník vydaný na pamět′ čtyřicítiletého učitelského působeni Prof. Josefa Zubatého, pp. 302–316.

Ecclesiastes in Croat Glagolitic Breviaries Lyubov Osinkina, Oxford University The first translations of biblical texts among the medieval Slavs stand at the beginning of Slavic literary culture. The studies of these texts can shed light not only on the reconstruction of the early translations, but also on the original Greek texts. Slavonic versions of the Scriptures are therefore significant to biblical studies in general. According to written sources, there was an translation of the whole Bible in the ninth century. However, no direct evidence or manuscripts dating from this period have survived to the present day. Apparently up to the end of the fifteenth century, when Archbishop Gennadius of Novgorod initiated a full Bible translation, the complete biblical corpus did not exist in Slavonic. The Church Slavonic translation of Ecclesiastes survives in three distinct traditions: 1) A Cyrillic version of the text. This goes back to the Septuagint, but its manuscript tradition starts from the fifteenth century onwards; 2) A Cyrillic version of the text with a catena (commentary) so far untraced in Greek. It goes back to the thirteenth century. The translation of this catena poses a problem: what was the origin of the Greek text behind it and when and where was it translated? 3) A Croatian Church Slavonic version in Glagolitic breviaries of the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries. The present paper which is a part of a project on the textual history of the Slavonic Ecclesiastes investigates the text in Croat Glagolitic breviaries published by J. Vajs in 1905. Modern scholarship has suggested that several of the biblical books, Ecclesiastes included, in Croat Glagolitic breviaries were initially translated from Greek but a later date were emended under the influence of the Vulgate. However, Vajs believed that the Croatian text of Ecclesiastes was translated from the Vulgate directly. One of the tasks is therefore to elucidate whether it was based ultimately on Greek, or translated simply from Latin. A number of mistakes (sixteen in total) shows that the source of the translation was Latin. For example, 2:19 et est quicquam tam vanum ‘and is there anything so vain?’ is rendered as i est′ vsacskim takoe razlicno [varium?]. The translator misread vanum ‘vain’ for varium ‘different’ and translated it as razlicno. Difference in wording and grammar between the texts in the Croatian Glagolitic breviaries and in the Ostrog Bible goes back to their respective originals, as in 1:8 Gl. vyprostreti slovom, Vulg. explicare sermone, Ostr. glagolati, LXX tou lalein. Loan-words are also borrowed directly from Latin. For example, 2:8 et urceos in ministerio ad vina fundenda ‘and vessels to serve to pour out vine’ is rendered as i vrce na sluzenie k nalevaniju vina The word vrc is a loan-word from Latin, it is still used in modern Serbo-Croat. Word order and syntax in Croatian breviaries show that the text follows Latin original. I was unable to discover any traces of the underlying Greek text. The evidence presented in the paper suggests that the text was translated from Latin. European Renaissance Conceptions about the Language of the Eastern Slavs Julia Verkholantsev, University of California, Los Angeles Although linguistic historiography does not ordinarily provide data about the history of languages, its value for modern scholarship lies in that it reveals the views of contemporaries on the linguistic situation of an epoch that is several centuries removed from the present (even though these views may seem unscientific, such as, for instance, the treatment of Baltic languages as Slavic, or the relating of the myth about St. Jerome inventing Glagolitic script). The proposed paper is an attempt to reconstruct the linguistic assumptions of Renaissance men of letters (philologists, historians and geographers) concerning the language of the Eastern Slavs and its place among the other languages of the region that they inhabited. It is noteworthy that in sixteenth-century linguistic thought Slavic was already perceived as one family consisting of distinct languages. However, the focus of the paper will be primarily on the description of the language of the Eastern Slavs who at that time inhabited Muscovy, part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and Poland. Muscovy, in particular, was regarded as the edge of Europe and thus less visited, and generally there was much less known about these lands in Western Europe than about the countries of the Western Slavs. This makes the few available accounts particularly interesting and deserving of detailed examination. My analysis will be twofold. I will first discuss the sources of information about East Slavic lands that circulated in Europe in the sixteenth century. Among the most popular and influential accounts of Muscovy and Lithuania in Western Europe were De Europa (1458) by Aenea Silvius Piccolomini, Tractatus de duabus Sarmatiis (1517) by Matthias à Michou (Maciej z Miechowa) and Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii (1549) by Baron Sigismund von Herberstein. Other historical treatises written at that time include the works of Paulus Jovius (De legatione Moscovitarum, 1525), Michalo Lituanus (De moribus Tartarorum, Litvanorum et Moschorum, written in 1550, published in 1615), Marcin Cromer (De origine, & rebus gestis Polonorum, 1555) and of Jan Krasiński (Polonia, 1574). I will then examine the manner in which information about East Slavic peoples and languages was presented in linguistic works of the Philoglots. The activity of the Philoglots nourished by the Protestant culture of plurilingualism in the German-speaking countries produced a number of encyclopedic dictionaries and treatises describing and comparing various languages. Foremost attention was paid to as yet undescribed “Barbarian” languages. Among the linguistic treatises that will be examined are Theodor Bibliander’s De ratione commune omnium linguarum commentarius (1548), Konrad Gessner’s Mithridates (1555), and Angelo Rocca’s Appendix de dialectis (1591). The studies of these scholars are generally regarded as the first step in the advancement of comparative linguistics. I will conclude my analysis with observations on how the above mentioned sources contribute to our better understanding of the linguistic situation within the East Slavic territory in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Time: 29A Panel: 29A-1: Poetry and Poetics I Chair: Alyssa W. Dinega, University of Notre Dame Slot: December 29, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m.

Blok vs. Symbolism: Toward a Topography of Citation (1907–1909) Stuart Goldberg, University of Wisconsin, Madison A great deal has been written on the topic of Aleksandr Blok and twentieth-century Russian poetry. While this scholarship is certainly not limited to the examination of intertextual ties with Blok’s poetry, intertext has been a primary tool of exploration, particularly over the past twenty years. In my own work, while not abandoning intertext as a modus operandi, I strive to broaden the grounds upon which we may look at how later poets and contemporaries “communicate” with Blok and his legacy (as, for instance, M. L. Gasparov has done more broadly with his study of meter). One particularly problematic and fruitful area in which I attempt to accomplish this is on the level of the complex interaction of topoi and narrative structures which characterize Blok’s poetry. Given the travel of symbols and topoi within Russian Symbolism and the abundance of available models in European Symbolism and world literature generally, we cannot be too careful or reticent in our attributions. This said, Blok’s poetry, like that of any truly major poet, clearly represented a vivid and recognizable entity for his contemporaries, an entity which extended and extends beyond the precise boundaries of “what Blok wrote.” This recognizability is particularly well attested by parodies directed at Blok. As I examine the boundaries of “Blok” within the greater movement, I broach such questions as: Within Symbolism, and especially “mythopoetic” Symbolism (keeping in mind the concept of a potentially common “goal,” a common realiora), what did it mean to share images/topoi/narrative structures? On what scale? What are the bounds of taste and acceptability? How does this change when we apply such concepts as tribute or parody? Importantly, I derive what answers I can to these questions from Symbolist praxis rather than theory, primarily examining three texts which highlight important aspects of the problem, Sergej Gorodeckij’s “Nevesta,” Petr Potemkin’s “Parikmaxerskaja kukla” and Valerij Brjusov’s cycle, “Obrečennyj”.

Female Impersonations: Valerij Brjusov's Nellie Olga Peters Hasty, Princeton University In 1913 the Moscow publishing house Skorpion brought out a collection of poems entitledStixi Nelli. Although—because of the coincidence of the dative and genitive cases of the name—this title can be understood as either ‘Poems for Nellie’ or ‘Poems of Nellie,’ critical responses indicate that it was the latter meaning that prevailed. The slender volume of verse appeared to be the debut of a woman poet who, shying away from the public eye, chose to veil her poetic identity with a pen name. In accordance with established practice, “Nellie’s” ritual of debut occurred under the auspices of an established poet. As announced already on its cover, her collection opens with a verse dedication by Valerij Brjusov, the don of Russian poetry who, in Antokol′skij’s felicitous comparison, loved to “discover” young poets just as sailors loved to discover new islands orchemists new elements. The identity of this mysterious new woman poet aroused interest, and it soon came to light that Brjusov had himself authored the purportedly “feminine” poems of the collection. The critical attention Stixi Nelli received both before and after the disclosure of this “mistifikacija” naturally centered on questions of feminine psychology and creativity, and the stylistics that might be seen as markedly feminine. Brjusov’s own heightened interest in these issues had already manifested itself in a group of stories written earlier and gathered in the collection Noči i dni, which also came out in 1913. With Stixi Nelli, Brjusov went a step further to make his debut as a woman writer. My paper explores particulars of how the female poetic persona is shaped in the poems written by Brjusov on “Nellie’s” behalf and in critical responses to these purportedly feminine poems. Here we can observe at first hand how expectations and demands placed on women poets of the time were realized poetically by an arbiter of poetic style who was instrumental in shaping constructs of gender of his times even as he mentored aspiring women writers.

Joseph Brodsky Reads Iosif Brodskij: “A Part of Speech” and the Poetics of Translation Michael Wachtel, Princeton University Iosif Brodskij was interested in translation from an early point in his career, but when he emigrated to the West, it became a crucial issue for reasons both intellectual and professional. Brodskij not only “authorized” English renditions of his works, he essentially created a monopoly on them. Anyone wishing to cite his Russian poetry in English is legally required to quote these versions. In terms of the Russian poetic tradition, which has been so enriched by multiple translations of the same poem, such severe restrictions are surprising. In Brodskij’s case, they are perhaps even more surprising since, in an essay on Cavafy (Less Than One, 55), he explicitly recognizes the advantages of multiple translations. However, the point of my paper is less to question Brodskij’s decision than to explore its consequences. I have chosen for analysis the cycle of poems “Čast′ reči” (“A Part of Speech”) for several reasons. First, Brodskij himself obviously viewed it as one of his major achievements (and most readers seem to agree). Second, since it was written soon after his emigration, it marks his transition from Russian to European/American poet. Finally, it was translated into English by the author alone, not (as so often) co-translated, which would raise a host of additional problems. Since no poetic translation can hope to mirror all of the qualities of the original, translators necessarily make decisions about what features must be retained at all costs, what can be sacrificed, and what can be added (without losing the “spirit” of the original). The English “A Part of Speech” tells us quite a bit about Brodskij’s approach to verse. The sacrifices are at times astonishing: five of the twenty poems are omitted from the English cycle; the order of the remaining poems is changed in unexpected ways; ambiguities (both grammatical and semantic) are often made clear. Through it all, the rhyme schemes (not the meters) emerge as the inviolate element. Brodskij retains them regardless of the semantic changes they entail. The paper will concentrate on a few specific examples and conclude not with a judgment of the English “A Part of Speech” (though this is to some extent unavoidable) but with a consideration of the ways that it serves as an aide to understanding both “Čast′ reči” and, more broadly, Brodskij’s poetics.

Mourning Before and After: Iskrenko, Švarc Stephanie Sandler, Amherst College Approaches to contemporary Russian (and not just Russian) poetry have typically separated avant-garde and form-breaking poets from those with more traditional themes and poetic forms. Nina Iskrenko well fits the mold of avant-garde poet, whereas Elena Švarc, while she cultivated an image as the bad girl of the Leningrad undergound, has mostly worked with the norms of post-Silver-Age Russian poetry. As a result, Švarc and Iskrenko would seem to have little in common beyond gender, a certain audacity in handling sexual themes, and an ability to command respect in the underground culture of their respective cities (Petersburg and Moscow). This paper will juxtapose their work concerning death. Iskrenko died at the young age of forty- three in 1995; her posthumously published collection O glavnom … (1999) records in mock- diary form her experiences in and out of the hospital. In 1998, Švarc lost her mother, also to cancer, and her 1998 collection Solo na raskalennoj trube is wholly devoted to absorbing and living with this loss. These volumes of poetry offer new insights into both poets’ work and into a more general poetics of mourning and self-creation. For Iskrenko, whose poetics of the body had long been bold and prosaic, an unsentimental account of her hospital stays and her long process of depriving herself of food project a fearless self-image. But the grim comedy and stubborn repetitions of the volume, its nervous shifts from prose to poetry and back again, bespeak the overwhelming difficulty of Iskrenko’s experience; as a poet who had found ways to bring just about anything into verse, she was facing a challenge for which one has little preparation. Švarc, who had used theatrical metaphors and rhetorical impersonations since her earliest work, faces the terror of losing her mother in a relentless series of short poems where the metaphors keep changing but few masks appear for consolation. Both poets write, essentially, of self-loss (Iskrenko literally, of course, but also in necessarily indirect terms), which has long been seen as inherent to poems of mourning and valediction (for example, in Peter Sacks’s The English Elegy or Lawrence Lipking’s The Life of the Poet). But both poets make less of the mental event of loss than do traditional poets, and compensate by making more of the psychological and emotional experience. Švarc’s earlier poems had rarely used the image of a child, but now the young child, infant, and even fetus apppear, creating narratives of rebirth. The solo played in this latest volume of poems sounds new but difficult to sustain notes in a poetic career that is far from over. Iskrenko, alas, died soon after finishing O glavnom, but the book is filled with the dynamic energies of one who has come to see herself almost entirely anew. Because much of her work remained unpublished at her death, readers have the illusion that she lives on, for much more of her work is yet to come. Essays by Darra Goldstein, Vitaly Chernetsky, and others have begun to bring attention to the work of Švarc and Iskrenko, and reviewers and poets in the former Soviet Union have been writing about them both throughout the 1990s. The paper is not meant to break new conceptual ground in approaching their work, but rather to break an impasse that has separated the forms of avant-garde expression in contemporary culture, and to continue a process of thinking about the fate of Russian poetry in an age when poetry itself has seemed lost. Neither Švarc nor Iskrenko would urge us to mourn poetry, for even in these dark tomes they celebrate the possibilities of creativity.

Panel: 29A-2: Russian Postmodernism Chair: Tatiana Spektor, Iowa State University Slot: December 29, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m.

Dialogue With a Classic: P′etsux's Cycle Čexov Is With Us Lyudmila Parts, Columbia University Contemporary Russian literature has been characterized as everything form “other prose” to “postmodernist.” Among its distinctive features are a sense of disillusionment in the historical metanarratives of Progress and Reason, and the dismantling of such distinctively Russian myths as the myth of the Great Russian Literature. And yet, its main structural device is intertextuality. Critics have noticed the recurrence of quotations, allusions and other forms of reference in the contemporary writers’ works to the giants of Russian classical literature: Puškin, Gogol′, Dostoevskij, and Čexov. It seems that our present-day literature is made mostly of our classical literature. The question remains why these particular authors persist in the foreground of cultural memory? How does the classical intertext function in contemporary works dedicated to challenging its mythological status? The cycle of short stories by Vjačeslav P′etsux, Čexov is with us (Čexov s nami), one of the most explicit, but far from the only instance of the determined dialogue with the classics in contemporary prose, provides a number of starting points for my inquiry. P′etsux brings the archetypal Čexovian characters and plots into the reality of the last decades of the twentieth century, and addresses the problems of continuity and change, central to the contemporary literary and political discussions. His stories emphasize the complexity of Čexov’s cultural myth and, at the same time, underscore the ambiguity of the postmodernist practice of deconstructing literary myths while making “new” forms of culture form the same ingredients.

Viktor Pelevin and the Evolution of Anti-Utopian Literature in the Post-Soviet Era Lisa Ryoko Wakamiya, University of California, Los Angeles Viktor Pelevin’s Omon Ra has been described as both a satire on the Soviet space program and a novel concerned primarily with metaphysical and eternal concepts. These interpretations suggest that Omon Ra intends either to assert a corrective view of Soviet history and propaganda, or eschew all didactic modes in favor of “pure art.” Like most meta-utopian works, Pelevin’s novel is taxonomically ambiguous; it is designed (to use Gary Saul Morson’s terms) to “resonate between opposing genres and interpretations” and yield different meanings according to the interpretive conventions applied by the reader. In my presentation I will demonstrate that Omon Ra features several of the narrative structures traditionally associated with anti-utopian novels, but rewrites the conventions that typically determine their context and function to generate a metatextual commentary on the evolution of didactic prose in the post-Soviet era. Though there is little consensus among scholars as to what constitutes an anti-utopian novel, studies of exemplary texts (Zamjatin’s We, Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Brave New World, among others) have revealed a number of shared narrative structures. Pelevin’s novel follows these shared patterns, in part to motivate readings based on conventional anti-utopian attitudes. However, the protagonist’s apathy and a general lack of the utopian imperative for social change do not allow the novel to be read as an exposure of the empty myths of Soviet technological achievement. The narrative not only refrains from moral judgment, but leaves the social contradictions raised by its conventional anti-utopian structures unsolved and ambivalent. The notion of the “simulacrum” that informs contemporary Russian conceptualism and has been explicated by Mikhail Epstein in his discussion of the origins of Russian postmodernism will provide the basis for my reading of Pelevin’s deviations from traditional anti-utopian models. In the “society of deficit” of contemporary Russian society that Epstein describes, “names and labels demonstrate their own emptiness and lack of meaning” so that “in comparison with a name that ‘ideally’ signifies a certain quality of an object, the object itself turns out to be on the decline.” The semantic interplay with differences between idea and reality that distinguishes conceptual art becomes the basis for Pelevin’s portrayal of a protagonist and space program that are identified primarily by their methods for resolving the discrepancies between their goals and achievements. By stimulating the reader to actively seek resolution in the growth of the protagonist and the development of his solipsistic world view, Pelevin metatextually redefines the relationship of the reader to the anti-utopian text. That a similar strategy is employed in the metaparabolic Žizn′ nasekomyx suggests that Pelevin’s novels represent a new direction in the development of the tradition of didactic literature, one as provisional and doubtful of moral absolutes as the era in which their author lives and writes.

Intertext as Invitation to the Game (Valerij Zalotuxa, The Great Campaign for the Liberation of India) Marina Kanevskaya, University of Montana In my paper I analyze the intertextuality of a postmodern novel The Great Campaign for the Liberation of India by Valerij Zalotuxa (first published in Znamja, 1995). In this novel the intertextuality, that is, allusions in the broad sense to other texts exceed the function of a mere artistic device. In The Great Campaign … intertextuality operates as an expression of the postmodern philosophy of history where a historical fact is perceived exclusively as textual. Linda Hutcheon wrote: “The provisional, indeterminent nature of historical knowledge is certainly not a discovery of postmodernism. Nor is the questioning of the ontological and epistemological status of historical ‘fact’ or the distrust of seeing naturality and objectivity of recounting. But the concentration of these problematizations in postmodern art is not something we can ignore” (A Poetic of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Function [New York and London, 1988] 88). Thus, reference to the text(s), whether fictional or documentary, becomes the only mode of the postmodern engagement with history. Furthermore, the decision of a postmodern author to treat fictional and documentary materials in the same way does not so much upgrade fiction to the level of “objective truth” as it effectively undermine documentaries by revealing their human construction. In this respect, the intertextuality of such recent Russian novels as Viktor Pelevin’s Čapaev and Pustota (1996), Vladimir Šarov’s Before and During (1993), and others acquires the dimensions of a total metatextual expression of the contemporary view of the past. “What the postmodern writing of both history and literature has taught us is that both history and fiction are discourses, that both constitute systems of significations by which we make sense of the past” (Hutcheon, 88–9). I argue that the intertext probes “the ontological and epistemological status of historical fact” in a postmodern Russian novel. As Mark Lipovetsky observed, “[In the novels of this kind] the history is relative and pathological, it springs out of the cultural myths and the popular travesties of these myths … [In these novels], the historical world is already ‘ready to use’—a fictional character enters this world to take part in a game of history which consists in generating of the new historical and cultural mythologies” (Russkii postmodernizm [Ekaterinburg, 1997] 252). In The Great Campaign …, intertextuality constitutes the entire artistic world of the novel. The intertext exceeds the boundaries of the text and establishes what Mixail Baxtin called “the zone of excessive information,” that is, the information unavailable to the character and to the narrator but a sphere of knowledge that, however, binds the author and the reader. A postmodern author creates his idiosyncratic version of contemporary epistemology, or as Jurij Lotman called it, semiosphere, using the available texts that are familiar to him and to his readers. As was mentioned earlier, fictional and documentary texts, as well as verbal and visual ones, are treated equally with respect to “objective truth.” In this orchestrated debate the criteria of truth shift from traditional verisimilitude to qualitatively different oppositions such as popular vs. hermetic; intriguing vs. boring; or even talented vs. insipid. Besides the criteria of the objective vs. interpretive, the texts clash or complement each other on such levels as genre, authority, and cultural status. For example, in the novel, Mixail Šolokhov’s tragic and at the same time compromised Quiet Flows the Don interacts with the adventure movie The White Sun of the Desert, the highly esteemed Isaak Babel′’s Red Cavalry seamlessly merges with the slapstick The Maiden Prisoner of Caucasus, and well known portraits of Lenin are juxtaposed with photographs taken at the end of his life that were published only recently, and so on. In The Great Campaign …, the heterogeneous intertextuality constantly threatens to destroy the novel as an artistic unity. However, there is one total intertextual discourse with the Indian epic of Mahabharata that not only holds the novel together but also elevates it to a higher philosophical level. Epic as an intertext is not an accidental choice for a postmodern author of a historical novel. Epic constitutes a grandnarrative based on canonical models and popular patterns. These models and patterns have a fixed axiological value—they are “good” and, as Baxtin said, only they are good. In a postmodern novel, epic is placed on the same discursive level as trivial jokes, slapstick comedy, or texts with “bad reputation.” Such blatant and demonstrative insensitivity to ethical and aesthetic values of the texts serves as an invitation to the game of a remythologizing of history. The author leads the way in this game, orchestrating his novel as a carnival of heterogeneous texts.

The “Soviet Unconscious”: A Case Study in Russian Postmodernist Writing Gerald McCausland, University of Pittsburgh Boris Groys and Aleksandr Genis are the two best known among the many writers who have used the notion of the unconscious to describe and account for aspects of contemporary Russian culture. Whether discussion revolves around a certain “post-Soviet unconscious” (Genis) or addresses Russia itself as the “unconscious of the West” (Groys), the notion presents itself as an irresistible tool with which to explain those processes most often subsumed under the rubric of Russian postmodernist culture. It is a particularly tempting tool with which to analyze sots-art. While it is a commonplace to describe the ways in which sots-art reprocesses Soviet culture, it is much more difficult to describe how sots-art acts upon the contemporary reader or viewer. Models of a “Soviet,” or “post-Soviet” unconscious provide the scholars with an apparatus to help explain how sots-art or postmodernism in general “deconstruct” Soviet culture and prepare the way for an as yet undefined new Russian culture. The notion of a cultural unconscious is rhetorically powerful and elastic enough to be applied to almost any cultural phenomenon. However, it presents the rigorous scholar with a serious methodological problem. It is not enough to observe that Freud himself analyzed literature to justify the use of a psychological concept in the analysis of texts. The literary scholar must demonstrate that the tools developed by psychoanalysis are appropriate to the task of literary analysis. This paper will attempt just such a demonstration by discussing the presence and the function of a “Soviet unconscious” in representative texts of Vladimir Sorokin and Viktor Pelevin, two of the most widely discussed contemporary writers in today’s Russia. I will show that it is possible to engage the discourses of these two authors on their own terms while also posing the same questions to each of them. To whom are these texts addressed? With whose language do they speak? Can we account for the function of desire in the texts? While much of Lacanian theory is arcane and inaccessible, I will show that a Lacanian analysis of these literary discourses opens them up and allows them to speak in unexpected ways. The results of this analysis will allow me to assert that, contrary to general opinion, it is not the young Pelevin but rather the older Sorokin who most effectively confronts and overcomes the trauma of Soviet culture. Panel: 29A-3: Place and Space in Russian/Soviet Literature Chair: Angela Brintlinger, Ohio State University Slot: December 29, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m.

Remapping Arcadia: “Pastoral Space” in Nineteenth-Century Russian Prose Rachel S. Platonov, Harvard University The pastoral has proven to be an enormously popular genre, both with authors and with critics. Many aspects of pastoral—including character, setting, temporal constraints, and the dynamics of the city/country opposition—have been studied, with interesting and illuminating results. One aspect of the genre that seems to have been largely ignored, though, is the nature and function of space in the pastoral. It is all but taken for granted that space in an Arcadian Eden is, as W. H. Auden wrote in 1948, “both safe and free.” Frequent use of descriptors such as “mir, tišina,” and “spokojstvie” has led scholars of Russian variants of the genre to similar conclusions. This paper takes issue with such descriptions of space in the pastoral, contending that space in the pastoral is not only not “safe and free,” but that the existence of pastoral worlds in fact depends upon an observance of various kinds of boundaries. The term “pastoral space” is proposed to describe the phenomenon under analysis. Pastoral space, as it is defined in this paper, is a concept of mythological origin that provides the cosmography for a range of microcosmic settings. Pastoral space is distinguished from pastoral setting, in that characteristics of pastoral space can be transposed from one physical locale to another, and in that different characters can experience the same physical setting in very different spatial terms. The idea of pastoral space relies on an archaic world model, described by Mircea Eliade in The Sacred and the Profane, in which space is not “homogeneous and neutral”; as Eliade comments, in an archaic world model, space can be “broken” or “interrupted,” and parts of that space can be qualitatively differentiated from others. Because space is subject to such differentiation, boundaries—physical or otherwise—are of enormous significance; the most important boundaries in such a world picture are those that separate the cosmos (“our world”) from chaos (“the other world”). This model of pastoral space is applied to several works of nineteenth-century Russian prose that have been associated with the tradition of pastoral, including Turgenev’s Zapiski oxotnika and Gončarov’s Oblomov. Boundaries are shown to play a major role in these works, defining pastoral space, separating and distinguishing it from the world beyond, and ultimately preserving its integrity; consequentially, it is demonstrated, transgression of boundaries in each of these works is extremely problematic, resulting in various levels of dislocation and disruption, including, in the extreme, death and the destruction of the pastoral world.

The Ocean, Sky, and Private Gusev: The Philosophy of Space in Čexov Radislav Lapushin, Chicago In his article devoted to the twenty-fifth anniversary of Čexov’s death, Vladislav Xodasevič speaks of “more significant and tragic perspectives” that will be discovered by future generations of readers in Čexov’s characters. I understand Xodasevič to be talking about what today we might call existentialist philosophical positions and life struggles. Taking as an example the short story “Gusev”—the first written by Čexov after his journey to Saxalin—I intend to demonstrate that such perspectives are encoded also in the structure of space in Čexov’s fiction. In “Gusev”, space is organized by the opposing elements of sky and ocean. The latter is associated with “darkness and disorder”; all of the waves in it are equally hideous, cruel, and faceless. On the contrary, each cloud and ray of the sun has its own shape or distinctive color, and the totality of clouds and sunbeams form an integral and harmonious whole: “the magnificent, enchanted sky.” But unlike the ocean, which is the dominant environmental motif throughout the story, the sky really displays itself only at the very end of “Gusev.” This “divine end” (Bunin) has received many different and contradictory interpretations (e.g. Bjalyj, Ehre, Kataev, Suxix, and others). The critics have asked what happens in the finale. Why does the ocean, previously described as having “no sense, no pity” and being the sky’s “antagonist,” become an embodiment of harmony and beauty—in the story’s semantics, virtually a second sky—in the last paragraph? It is my contention that before the ocean is calmed down under the influence of the sky, it is “conquered” by private Gusev in the scene on the deck. The sky, ocean, and this man do not exist independently of each other. The lines of force of both sky and ocean pass through, as it were, this character posed at the center of narration. Gusev unwittingly participates in their opposition, and he influences the opposition’s resolution. It is significant also that a protagonist’s inner structure includes his own “sky” and “ocean,” so to speak, such that a man’s world and that of nature appear to be congruous. The character and the space mutually create, shape, and condition each other. I intend to proceed to demonstrate that such congruence and intercommunication are general features of Čexov’s artistic world. I take the sky and the ocean as appropriate metaphors for the defining features of the metaphysical space in Čexov’s poetic world generally speaking. In my paper, I will provide very brief discussions of how this metaphoric opposition operates in other works: “Murder,” “At Home” [“V rodnom uglu”], “In the Ravine.” It is through the imagery associated with the sky and the ocean that the quests of Čexov’s characters acquire a metaphysical dimension. Resolving the questions of their own lives, they find themselves engaged in existential questioning about sense and pity, truth and beauty, life, death, and immortality.

Uncharted Waters: The Cultural Geography of the Belomor Canal Cynthia A. Ruder, University of Kentucky Recent scholarship in cultural geography rests on a basic assumption that appears to be rather commonplace: Just as a designed landscape reflects those who produced it, so, too, do these “producers” (be they cultural, political, economic, ideological or other agents) imprint themselves on that landscape. While this dynamic initially seems straightforward, in fact, the deciphering of the landscape both as reflector and reflection is more problematic. Inherent in this paradigm is the knotty problem of interpreting whether the landscape accurately portrays the avowed intention of the producer or whether the landscape reveals a raft of information that the agent neither intended nor chose to disclose. As some cultural geographers argue, it is inevitable that the agent unconsciously or unintentionally inscribes onto the landscape elements of its ideology or culture that produce a contradiction between the intended and actual landscapes. Such an approach suggests a fruitful line of investigation as regards the construction of the Belomor Canal and the collectively authored volume, The History of the Construction of the Stalin White Sea-Baltic Canal. If we believe that landscape can be “read” as a text in order to tease out the meaning imprinted on it, then might it be possible to compare a real text with the landscape it sought to depict? This paper will examine just this interplay between landscape and text and landscape as text. My investigation will attempt to reveal whether the authors of The History of Construction were able to capture the actual or presumed physical manifestion of the ideology and programs that underpinned the Belomor construction project. Moreover, my paper will probe the additional issue of how the Belomor Canal itself, as well as its History, conveyed much more about the culture that produced them than the canal builders or The History’s authors could have ever deemed possible. This paper will apply an interdisciplinary interpretive model to the literary and historical manifestations of Belomor in an effort to develop an even richer analysis of the interplay among event, text, and landscape.

Building a New World: Architectural Metaphors in Andrej Platonov Mary Nicholas, Lehigh University Numerous cultural histories of the Soviet Union argue for a binary model of Russian culture in the 1920s and 1930s. The dichotomy pits a dynamic, utopian, horizontally oriented society of the 1920s against a largely static, conservative, closed hierarchical system of the 1930s. This opposition can be found in discussions of literature, the pictorial arts, and, most notably, architecture of the 1920s and 1930s. The conceptual neatness of the binary model, which contrasts categories of open space vs. enclosed space, dynamism vs. stability, the horizontal vs. the vertical, and so on has made it attractive to a variety of commentators. These polarities provide an easily recognizable context and can be reversed at a moment’s notice, depending on the orientation of the critic. Yet the reality that the binary model intends to describe was considerably more complex than its dialectic would suggest. This becomes clear when we look at the use a marginalized writer such as Andrej Platonov makes of such polar oppositions in his work. Various critics have seen his novella Kotlovan (1929–30), for example, as an anti-utopian blueprint, an expression of his disappointment with one side of the binary model and his rejection of the other. The building site that provides the title for the work fails, after all, to support any structure at all. As the “foundation pit” is reconfigured to serve as a burial plot by the end of the novel, we may be tempted to argue that Platonov’s architectural metaphors lead to a “negation of architecture” itself, as one side of the binary model is replaced by its opposite. Yet it would be wrong to conclude, as some readers do, that Platonov’s work is either uniformly hostile to the architectural impulse or sympathetic to the dichotomy itself. His work is filled with architectural metaphors that lie on the border of two states, rejecting the binary model altogether. Windows, fences, borders, canals, even the boundaries of the human body come under scrutiny, and these architectural metaphors play a central role in Platonov’s work. Platonov engaged the architectural dichotomies of the period, but he used them to build a more complex, less programmatic approach to the concerns he and other Russian writers shared. By reconsidering the importance of the architectural metaphor in his work, we can demonstrate that, for Platonov, architecture is not only the tragic by-product of collective hubris but also the elusive goal that makes us human. His architectural metaphors can be read not in the context of a binary model, but rather as part and parcel of a multivalent societal response to questions about the importance of asymmetry in an otherwise symmetrical state.

Panel: 29A-4: International Vladimir Nabokov Society Chair: D. Barton Johnson, University of California, Santa Barbara Slot: December 29, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m.

Nabokov's Scientists in The Gift Stephen Blackwell, University of Tennessee Long famous as a literary scientist and scientific artist, Nabokov draws admiration from both communities. Nevertheless, the scientific aspects of his art have evoked relatively little study (although there have been notable exceptions and hints of some beginnings on the NABOKV-L discussion list). This situation is beginning to change, with the recent publication of Nabokov’s Blues and Nabokov’s Butterflies, two books devoted to cataloguing and exploring the details of the writer’s lepidopterological forays in the wild and on the page. In particular, the newly published text “Father’s Butterflies,” rejected by the author from inclusion in The Gift (first as part of the text, later as an “addition”), brings into greater focus than almost any other work Nabokov’s effort to devise a new manner of conceiving art, natural science, and the link between them. The present paper seeks to elucidate the pattern of science and scientists in The Gift and its newly uncovered offshoot. Concealed and explicit references to several prominent discoverers intertwine with the novel’s unusual narrative of self-creation and with the story of Konstantin Kirillovič’s explorations; these combined themes and structures propose radical new modes of perception and existence through the merging of science and art. Not merely an affront to Darwinism, The Gift may be viewed as Nabokov’s first comprehensive attempt to devise an entirely new way of approaching reality, a way beyond both science and art as traditionally conceived. In creating and describing the leading entomological explorer of the age, Nabokov sought to produce a vehicle for his own discoveries about the scientific artistry of the natural world, among the most enduring and thought-provoking aspects of his intellectual legacy.

Vladimir Nabokov's Apprenticeship in André Gide's “Science of Illumination”: From The Counterfeiters to The Gift Leonid Livak, Davidson College Until today, little effort has been made to confront Vladimir Nabokov and André Gide in a comparative study, despite the fact that, in Russian émigré circles, Gide was the most discussed French writer after Proust. Such a study seems pertinent in view of the striking similarities shared by The Gift (1937), Nabokov’s opus magnum and last Russian novel, and The Counterfeiters (1925), an equally pivotal landmark in Gide’s artistic career. Searching for references to Gide in Nabokov’s oeuvre, one usually recalls only the most evident case—Lolita’s French professor Gaston Godin, whose studio is decorated with Gide’s portrait and who affects the ways of Gide’s homosexual protagonists from The Immoralist and The Counterfeiters. It is hardly accidental that this clear allusion to Gide appeared in Nabokov’s writings only after he had ceased to be a Russian writer. Nabokov’s denials of foreign influence during his Russian years disproved those who charged his works with “un-Russianness and served to distance the writer from his Paris-based émigré peers, turning the problem of literary influence into a point of aesthetic contention.” In this paper I will argue that affinities between Nabokov’s and Gide’s novels range from their general conception and composition to narrative devices, imagery, and thematics. I content that Nabokov used the compositional and narrative techniques of The Counterfeiters, which Gide called his “science of illumination,” as a springboard in refining his own aesthetics of the novel. Like Gaito Gazdanov, Jurij Fel′zen, Vasilij Janovskij, and Boris Poplavskij, Nabokov creatively reworked his French literary source, but unlike his Parisian peers, he did not use it as a conspicuous textual marker. As it often happens in Nabokov’s works, those explanatory keys that are most readily available to the reader are also the most misleading. Thus, he dissimulated his indebtedness to Gide by providing a false key that points the reader in another direction. The Gift abounds in references to Proust, while, in fact, it follows Gide’s lead in breaking Proustian circularity and in fighting many aesthetic notions commonly ascribed to Proust by his French and émigré interpreters. The purpose of this comparative analysis is to show that Gide in the 1920s and Nabokov in the 1930s found themselves in similar positions in their respective literary milieux. Discarding the dominant trends in contemporary literary aesthetics, they composed meta-novels, which preserved previous novelistic experience from the attacks of the post-war literary generation and provided a matrix for “modern” texts in contrast to the nineteenth-century novel espoused by literary conservatives. Their “texts about texts” differ from prior metalinguistic narratives, and first of all from that of Proust, by inciting the reader to create his own text according to the set of artistic rules articulated in the novels. If The Counterfeiters responds to the crisis of the novel in French literature, The Gift is inspired by the émigré mission of continuity, addressing the fate of Russian literature in general. Nabokov's Otherworldly Mermaid: “Spring in Fialta” Elena Rakhimova Sommers, University of Rochester Nabokov’s 1936 story “Spring in Fialta” is an excursion, even an initiation, into the dreamlike realm of Nabokov’s otherworld embodied in the atmosphere of Fialta, a sleepy European sea- resort enveloped in the warm mist of its seemingly never-ending drizzle. As if born out of Fialta’s dreamlike mist, the personification of impermanence and seduction, the figure of the story’s heroine, Nina, is so ephemeral, it seems to be a product of the narrator’s imagination. Available and unattainable, slipping away and still catchable, Nina, whose love is compared to “springwater which at the least notice she gave anyone to drink,” is the perfect image of the “rusalka” (water sprite), the most elusive and truly otherworldly female mythological creature of all time. Although the subject of numerous critical works, “Spring in Fialta” has never been looked at through the “rusalka prism,” until this study, which will trace a mermaid pattern in the watery kingdom of the story. After establishing the presence of the “rusalka”-mermaid watermark in Nabokov’s work and briefly reviewing the anthropological research on the Russian “rusalka” belief, the study will provide a close comparative analysis of the Russian and “Englished” variants of the story. Offering a glimpse at the working of the author’s mind, Nabokov’s divergences from the original will reveal the most “sensitive,” stylistically intricate parts of the text. The spirit as well as the name of the ancient Russian holiday, “Rusal′naja nedelja,” ‘the mermaids’ week,’ celebrated beginning with the seventh Thursday or seventh week after Russian Easter, reflects the curious origin of the Russian “rusalka” belief, which is a blending of the Western tradition of holiday and games, “rosalia,” and the ancient Russian pagan holiday honoring the dead. This dualistic nature of the “rusalka” belief combining in itself both celebratory and funerary motifs, finds its reflection in the texture of the story where prefigurations of an impending death intertwined with the narrator’s tribute to his love manifest the very duality between life and death, celebration and mourning, joy and sorrow. As the “mermaids’ week” comes to an end and Fialta is filled with sunlight, our “rusalka” leaves, granting her beloved a unique moment of “cosmic synchronization” that defies the finality of death. Although the last sentence of the story informs us of Nina’s death, we are left with a feeling that “the main text still lies ahead.” Like many of Nabokov’s otherworldly women, a temporary guest in the mundane world, this elusive and unattainable “rusalka”/mermaid/Siren/nymph does not vanish, but simply moves into another dimension. Like Cincinnatus in Invitation to a Beheading, Nina seems to “ma[ke] [her] way in that direction, where to judge by the voices, st[and] beings akin to [her].”

Planes of Reality in Nabokov's Pnin Natalia Lechtchenko, Brown University The aim of this paper is to examine the presence of the existential planes of reality in Nabokov’s Pnin. Reading Pnin, one gets an impression of constant movement that affects the protagonist of the novel, Professor Timofey Pnin. The transitional nature of his existence is reflected not only in the direct relocation of Pnin’s constant physical journey, but also seems to be found in his passive transference throughout the metaphysical planes of reality. Whether it can be viewed as a transition through the subplanes of his memory, or a journey back in time, I believe that this journey is a phenomenon of an almost physical displacement in reality, rather than a mere act of memory. I would posit that Pnin’s reality is divided into planes, which in turn are subdivided into smaller sections through which Pnin drifts in a nonlinear manner. Pnin’s past, his present, the plane of the narration, and that of Jack Cockerell’s impersonations of Pnin, can be viewed as larger planes of reality. Thus, a subplane of Pnin’s life in Russia can be considered a section of the plane of his past, where it coexists with other metaphysical subplanes such as his life with Liza. The pattern in which Pnin drifts through the planes of reality is repetitive in nature. It is connected to concrete moments of physical action, be it physical pain that Pnin experiences during the “journey between the realities,” or Nabokov’s choice of verbal expressions which are usually associated with purely physical movement. These transferences are never solely confined to Pnin’s personal experiences, so we cannot say that Pnin just submerges in the simple act of remembrance. The lack of the distinction between Pnin’s planes of reality and those of other characters (be it the narrator or someone from Pnin’s literary studies) undermines the concept of the transference being a mere fact of remembrance. Moreover, it seems that despite the fact that most of Pnin’s journeys through the planes of reality are activated by his own personal experiences, they, nevertheless, are never limited to them. Taking into consideration the aforesaid, I propose to address the problem of a metaphorical “exile” that penetrates Pnin’s existence and Nabokov’s novel. In order to investigate the concept of planes of reality, I intend to address the problem of cognition and perception through the linguistic situation that penetrates Pnin’s existence. I would suggest that the constant split in his reality is caused by the dissimilarity of his mode of cognition from that of those around him. Thus, I would propose that Pnin moves through the planes of reality (away from the real) via a certain Pninian language (that determines his cognition) by means of perception (his memory, or the situation created for him by the author/narrator). Thus, Pnin’s inability to “materialize” in any of the planes of reality proves that the Professor’s journey represents an ambiguous melange of physical and symbolic transition that dualistically results in the comic tragedy of his existence.

Panel: 29A-5: Roundtable: Language Study in Programs Abroad Chair: Benjamin Rifkin, University of Wisconsin, Madison Equipment: Overhead projector Slot: December 29, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m. Participant: Lynne deBenedette, Brown University Participant: Graham Hettlinger, ACTR Participant: Frank J. Miller, Columbia University Participant: David Macey, Middlebury College

Panel: 29A-6: Forum: Materials for Intermediate- and Advanced-Level Russian Chair: William J. Comer, University of Kansas Equipment: Tape player; Overhead projector; VCR Slot: December 29, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m.

Let's Talk about Life Emily Tall, State University of New York, Buffalo Aspects of the Russian Verb and Getting Your Russian Sounds Right! Elena S. Hansen, St. Ambrose University

Working with Video Course V Moskvu? V Moskvu! Natalya M. Bogoslavskaya, University of Leeds V Rossiju s ljubov′ju Marina Anikina, Moscow State University of International Relations Panel: 29A-7: The Slavic Verb Chair: Gunter Schaarschmidt, University of Victoria Slot: December 29, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m.

On the Function of the Infinitive and the Expression of the Grammatical Subject in [Pacc/Pdat] + Finite Verb + Infinitive Constructions (With Evidence from Russian) Dagmar Divjak, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven 0. In this this paper I deal with the problem of the syntactic role of the infinitive in Russian in constructions consisting of [case-paradigm]+third person singular finite verb+infinitive. Here I introduce the Pronominal Approach, (PA), a linguistic method, situated in the field of tension between theoretical and descriptive linguistics. I. The PA is a constructivist method for the description of syntax, which was drafted by K. van den Eynde and further developed by different teams in Belgium (Leuven) for French, Dutch, Chinese, Russian and Japanese, in France (Aix-en-Provence) for French and in Denmark (Copenhagen and Odense) for Danish (see References). The PA provides linguists with an economic tool for analyzing syntactic data in a formal way by focusing on the pronominal entities, that are selected as valency elements by a predicator or construction kernel, instead of on the lexicalized items. Since the number of the minimal referentials of a language—pronouns and other proforms—is limited, they are highly suited for an exhaustive analysis. The PA calls on the constant relation that exists between a pronominal construction and the lexicalized construction to which it refers in order to examine syntactic constructions without explicit semantic paraphrase. The pronouns, grouped into paradigms, cover the basic syntactico– semantic skeleton of a language in a language immanent way. This relation of proportionality to pronominal paradigms reveals dependency as well as substitution possibilities; this helps to recognize the constituents of a construction, to define their syntactico-semantic status and to examine the implicational relations between constructions. Consistent sense distinctions are based on these syntactico-semantic features (see: http://www.cbs.dk/departments/dl/ska/ovd2.htm). II. Traditionally, the above-mentioned constructions are classed under impersonal one-compound sentences. However, the (AN SSSR) endorsed the viewpoint of these constructions being impersonal two-compound sentences, giving rise to a discussion on whether the infinitive can or cannot accomplish the function of grammatical subject. Two problems have to be solved in a constructivist way in order to answer the question of the syntactic role of the infinitive within the framework of the PA: the characteristics of grammatical subjects have to be distinguished and defined and a test has to be developed by which the different syntactic functions of the infinitive can be distinguished from one another. The nominative paradigm (Pnom) is characterized by a set of suspensive pronouns kto ‘who’ or čto ‘what’, by their assertive counterparts and all possible instantiations (see Soldatjenkova, On the Valency of Russian Verbs: A Constructivist Approach, Leuven: Peeters, to appear). This Pnom fulfills the function of grammatical subject. This fact is the base for dividing the studied constructions in those, which reserve a place for the Pnom and those, which don’t. I will argue that in Pnom-constructions infinitives can fill up the Pnom slot as long as the pro- infinitive form čto (s)delat′ ‘to do what’/èto (s)delat′ ‘to do this’ is proportional to both čto ‘what’ and èto ‘that’. The neuter/third person singular ending of the predicator is triggered by the grammatical subject, an infinitive,which is not specified as to gender or number. For example, Rebenku nadoela èta kniga The kid is bored with this book. komu ‘to whom’ čto ‘what’ emu ‘to him’ èto ‘this’

Rebenku nadoelo čitat′ The kid is bored with reading komu ‘to whom’ čto ‘what’ čto delat′ ‘to do what’ emu ‘to him’ èto ‘this’ èto delat′ ‘to do this’ Apart from the proportional Pnom–constructions there are others, in which only the proform čto (s)delat′ ‘to do what’/èto (s)delat′ ‘to do this’ maintains the relation of proportionality with the infinitive. I will argue that the roots of this divergence lie in the nature of the finite (third person singular) verb: the fact that an infinitive is only proportional to čto (s)delat′ ‘to do what’/èto (s)delat′ ‘to do this’ indicates that the finite verb is not a predicator but a modificator, with no valency scheme of its own. For example, Nam ponadobitsja vaša pomošč′ We will need your help. komu ‘to whom’ čto ‘what’ emu ‘to him’ èto ‘this’

Nam ponadobitsja pokazat′sja vraču We will have to go and see a doctor komu ‘to whom’ *čto ‘what’ čto delat′ ‘to do what’ emu ‘to him’ *èto ‘this’ èto delat′ ‘to do this’ Each finite verb can be assigned to one of the categories of modificators, that were established after research on the approximately four hundred verbs that can be combined with an infinitive . In order to do this the verbs have to be tested on their ability to add different rectional (verb general) elements of time and/or location to finite and infinite verb. Turning the construction into a subordinate (explicative) one with čto/ čtoby ‘that’ can provide useful subcategorizations. An important characteristic of the non-proportional constructions is the absence of a position for the Pnom. They share this peculiarity with constructions, built around finite verbs that never select a Pnom position, not even when having predicator status. The neuter/third person singular is triggered by the lack of a Pnom that could initiate agreement. For example, Bol′nomu xočetsja vody. The patient wants a bit of water. komu ‘to whom’ čego ‘of what’ emu ‘to him’ ètogo ‘of this’

Stariku xočetsja vernut′sja na rodinu. The old man wants to return to his home country. komu ‘to whom’ *čego ‘of what’ čto delat′ ‘to do what’ emu ‘to him’ *ètogo ‘of this’ èto delat′ ‘to do this’ It is interesting to study the role of the Pdat in Pnom-less sentences containing an infinitive- predicator. Different functions, varying from semantic or logical to oblique-case grammatical subject, have been assigned to this Pdat. If we take into account the valency schemes and formulas of these infinitives-predicators, it becomes possible to define the Pdat formally as a discontinuous grammatical subject or as fulfilling the function of a grammatical subject without having a one to one relationship with a morphological entity, nor occupying the usual paradigm. References Eynde van den, K. and C. Blanche-Benveniste. 1978. “Syntaxe et mécanismes descriptifs: présentation de l’approche pronominal.” Cahiers de Lexicologie vol. 32, 3–27. Blanche–Benveniste C. Eynde van den K. e.a. J. 1987. Pronom et syntaxe: L’approche pronominal et son application au français. Paris. Melis, L. and C. Eggermont (eds.) 1994. “A Pronominal Approach to Valency Dictionaries.” International Journal of Lexicography vol. 7/2 (summer), special issue.

K idee sozdanija ideografičeskogo slovarja modifikacij russkix glagolov Irina Ivliyeva, University of Missouri, Rolla Идея создания словаря глагольных модификаций возникла в ходе исследования автором синтезированных значений русских глаголов звучания. Главная задача словообразовательного синтеза состоит в том, чтобы, “имея индекс морфем русского языка с их значениями и формальными преобразованиями, попытаться определить те правила, с помощью которых можно образовывать новые слова от данных по заданному семантическому различию” (Милославский, 1980). Результаты словообразовательного синтеза на семантической основе должны отвечать двум требованиям—предсказуемости и регулярности. Однако смысл семантически производных слов не всегда представляет собой просто сумму значений составляющих частей, а имеет некоторые дополнительные элементы значения. Поэтому встал вопрос о необходимости создания идеографического индекса этих дополнительных приращенных значений. Как известно, ни такого перечня, ни правил работы с ним в существующих словарях нет. Очевидно, что созданию подобного типа словарей должна предшествовать полная семантическая классификация непроизводных глаголов и лексико-семантических групп всей глагольной лексики русского языка, которой на сегодняшний день также не существует. Автор счел возможным на основе исследованного материала, а также тех выводов и обобщений, которые сделаны в рамках одной семантической общности—ЛСГ глаголов звучания (“издавать, производить звук”), представить систему глагольных модификаций ( а также несистемные участки синтеза и лакуны) в форме лексикографического описания. Таким образом, лексико-семантическая группа глаголов звучания может стать первым фрагментом словаря глагольных модификаций (СГМ). В исследовании используются 1) аналитический семасиологический подход (выделение семантических составляющих модификаторов) и 2) синтезирующий ономасиологический подход (составление правил образования новых единиц с данным семантическим приращением). Отношения между производным и производящим рассматриваются не с позиции различных формальных словообразовательных средств (способы словообразования, словообразовательная модель, цепочка, гнездо и т.д.), а с сугубо семантической точки зрения. При этом модификационные отношения определяются как один из случаев семантической деривации (Курилович, 1962). Модификационные глагольные значения рассматриваются как поликомпонентные, разложенные на элементарные составляющие. Объектом исследования являются 198 непроизводных исходных глаголов (ИГ) звучания и их модификационные дериваты (более 2000). Для анализа семантических приращений модифицированных глаголов строится модификационное гнездо, элементы которого связаны между собой только отношениями семантической производности: грохать (ИГ) → загрохать, грохать (ИГ) → отгрохать, грохать (ИГ) → прогрохать и т. п. Раскладывая приращенное значение модифицированных глаголов на элементарные составляющие, на словообразовательном уровне у глаголов звучания мы выделили: 9 модификационных параметров и 21 характеристику, в них включенную: фазисные характеристики действия (I): начало (1), до некоторой точки (2), конец (3); достижение действием предела либо нормы (II): ниже предела/нормы (4), предел/норма (5), сверх предела/нормы (6); протяженность действия во времени (III): мгновенно (7), некоторое время (8), длительно (9); кратность действия (IV): один раз (10), много раз (11) и т.д. Центральной единицей в терминосистеме словообразовательного синтеза можно считать термин “семантический модификатор” (Марченко, 1991), или семантическую величину, которая присоединяется к исходному глаголу и может иметь разнообразные формальные (морфные, словные) средства выражения. По количеству входящих в модификатор характеристик мы различаем моно- компонентные модификаторы (односемные) и поликомпонентные модификаторы (двух-, трех- и четырехсемные). Всего нами выделено и описано 30 модификаторов (Ивлиева, 1997): односемные (9)— начало, до некоторой точки, конец и т.д.; двухсемные (10)—начало + один раз, до некоторой точки + один раз, и т.д.; трехсемные (9)—начало + один раз + спонтанно, начало + мгновенно + один раз, и т. д.; четырехсемные (2)—начало + один раз + сильно + постепенно, конец + предел/норма + длительно + негативная оценка. Следует отметить, что из 21 поликомпонентного модификатора 14 представляют собой комбинации различных характеристик с характеристикой “один раз.” Характеристика “один раз” накладывается на всю систему рассмотренных модификаций, в результате чего между лексемами, маркированными и немаркированными по указанному параметру, возникают отношения, носящие характер привативной оппозиции. Модификаторы и модифицированные дериваты анкетируются при этом 15 пунктам (стандартность, частотность, состав, осложненные дериваты и т. д.) пунктам, которые группируютса в смысловые зоны : Общая характеристика; Средства реализации; Результат модификации; Осложненные дериваты; Особенности семантики ИГ. Каждый модификатор, а также синтезированное значение деривата получают развернутое описание в форме словарной стати. В качестве примера приведем статью, описывающую однокомпонентный модификатор: Начало Общая характеристика: нестандартный модификатор. При присоединении к глаголам звучания в “чистом виде” минимальное количество дериватов. Результат модификации—3 из 198. Синонимия словообразовательных средств отсутствует. На синтаксическом уровне проявляется в виде сочетаний “начать + ИГ.” Отражает фазисный параметр действия. Средства реализации: за- + -ива-. Результат модификации (3/198): запевать, завывать, заговаривать. Осложненные дериваты: забалтывать (утомлыать болтовней). Особенности семантики ИГ: речевые и неречевые антропофоны. Исключение—завывать (маркирован по интенсивности). Проектируемый словарь глагольных модификаций относится к словарям с функционально-семантической (понятийно-денотативной) направленностью и “обслуживает,” главным образом, идею словообразовательного синтеза русских глаголов. Он может явиться началом разработки идеографического, семантического, а также толкового гнездового словаря, отсутствующих пока в русской лексикографии. Также результаты данного исследования могут быть использованы в практике обучения активным видам речевой деятельности иностранцев и для автоматического (машинного) построения русского текста. References Dokulil M. Tvoření slov v češtine. Praha, 1962. Janda, Laura A. Semantic Analysis of the Russian Verbal Prefixes za-, pere-, do-, and ot. Munich, 1986. Ивлиева И. В. Семантические модификационные возможности глаголов звучания в русском языке. АКД. Москва, 1997. Курилович, Е. Деривация лексическая и деривация синтаксическая. Очерки по лингвистике. Москва, 1962. Марченко, О. С. Возможности выражения на словообразовательном уровне модификационных значений наиболее употребительными глаголами русского языка. Москва, 1991. Mel'chuk, Igor A. “Lexical Functions: a Tool for the Description of Lexical Relations in a Lexicon.” In: Lexical Functions in Lexicography and Natural Language Processing. Amsterdam, 1996. Милославский, И. Г. Вопросы словообразовательного синтеза. Москва, 1980. Кузнецов, А. И. От компонентного анализа к компонентному синтезу. Москва, 1986. Тихонов, А. Н. Словообразовательный словарь русского языка в 2-х томах. Москва, 1990. Townsend, Charles E. Russian Word-Formation. New York, 1968. Земская, Е. А. Современный русский язык. Словообразование. Москва, 1973. Iterativity and Contemporary Aspect Selection in Upper Sorbian Gary H. Toops, Wichita State University The Upper Sorbian (USo) verb system is characterized by two aspects, perfective and imperfective. The imperfective aspect in USo is the only one capable of expressing eventive (continuous) actions (e.g., praesens actualis) and durative states. Otherwise the synthetic non- past (“present”) tense forms of both imperfective and perfective verbs can be used to express various “abstract” presents, such as the historical present, the gnomic present, the scenic (or dramatic) present, as well as any iterative present. The same holds true, mutatis mutandis, of the iterative past and future. Iterativity is understood as the repeated, multiple, and/or habitual performance or occurrence of an action. Because verb forms of either aspect can express iterativity, one expects to find, at least in theory, a certain “competition” between different aspectual forms in iterative contexts. Based on data elicited from native speakers of USo in 1996 and 2000, the present paper offers insights into the actual USo distribution of the two aspects in iterative contexts together with a discussion of potential factors influencing the selection of one aspectual form over another. A preliminary assessment of the data collected to date suggests that in present time frames, the USo literary language prefers imperfective verb forms to perfective ones in iterative contexts by a ratio of almost 3 to 2 (60% vs. 40%), while in colloquial USo the choice between imperfective and perfective verbs is virtually even and dictated almost entirely by lexical considerations. There is some evidence to suggest that aspect selection in literary USo is affected by certain “Slavicizing” norms that are largely unobserved in the contemporary colloquial language. In past and future time frames, however, the distribution of the two aspects is very different, with the perfective being by far the preferred aspect in both literary and colloquial USo. The present paper advances the novel hypothesis that this phenomenon can be explained in terms of an innovative USo correlation between temporal boundedness (roughly a morphological, albeit deictic, counterpart to A. V. Bondarko’s “external limit”) and aspectual boundedness (Bondarko’s “internal limit”). According to Bondarko, an “internal limit” is inherent in any perfective verb form, while “external limits” find lexical expression in various adverbials of time (mostly duration). Past- and future-tense forms are formally marked for temporal boundedness relative to the moment of speech (speech event): past-tense forms express a temporal end (anteriority), while future-tense forms express a temporal beginning (posteriority). Because the present tense is temporally unbounded, iterative actions are more likely to be equated with durative states and, accordingly, more likely to be expressed by imperfective verbs in present time frames than they are in past or future time frames. References Bondarko, A. V. (1995) Die Semantik des Verbalaspekts im Russischen/Semantika glagol′nogo vida v russkom jazyke. Frankfurt a.M. Fasske, H., and S. Michalk. (1981) Grammatik der obersorbischen Schriftsprache der Gegenwart. Morphologie/Gramatika hornjoserbskeje spisowneje rece pritomnosce. Morfologija. Bautzen. Maslov, Yu. S. (1985) “An Outline of Contrastive Aspectology.” Contrastive Studies in Verbal Aspect in Russian, English, French and German. Ed. Yu. S. Maslov, trans. James Forsyth, 1–44. Schuster-Sewc, H. (1996) Grammar of the Upper Sorbian Language. Phonology and Morphology. Trans. G. H. Toops. Munich,Newcastle.

A Semantic Analysis of the Slavic Future Perfect Marika L. Whaley, Ohio State University The Slavic construction of the perfective nonpast of the verb byti ‘be(come)’ in combination with l-participles is typically characterized as a future perfect construction; i.e. a tense construction that describes an action or event that takes place prior to a future event. Although attested extremely rarely in Old Church Slavonic texts, the construction is more widespread in later legal and administrative documents, especially those in East Slavic languages. Moreover, modern languages such as Polish, Kashubian, and Slovene, and dialectal Ukrainian, Slovak, and Serbo- Croatian, employ a structurally similar construction as a pure future. This construction is considered comparable to equivalent tenses in other languages such as Classical Latin and modern English, but an analysis of uses of this construction in OCS as well as Old Rusian suggests the presence of a greater degree of subjectivity, even irrealis, in its semantics. Many examples of so-called future perfects do not express a clear future-tense reference at all; rather, they express a displaced perception of state, the realization of which occurs at a moment posterior to the moment of speech. An additional problem regarding the future perfect is that many of the modern future constructions that resemble it are restricted to imperfective l-participles. This fact makes it difficult to argue that these modern constructions evolved directly from the future perfect construction. My paper presents a more precise semantic description of the so-called future perfect construction in Slavic that includes its apparent nuance of displaced perception. This goal is achieved by first performing a context-based analysis of several examples, and then incorporating the results into a formal semantic description called a reductive paraphrase. This analysis facilitates my ongoing investigation of the structurally similar modern future constructions. A more precise understanding of the semantics of the ancient construction, especially the imperfective future perfect, might lend insight into the problem regarding the admissibility of perfective complements in these constructions. Time: 29B Panel: 29B-1: Vision 20/20 Chair: Frank J. Miller, Columbia University Slot: December 29, 2000, 10:45 a.m.–12:00 p.m. Participant: J. David Edwards, JNCL/NCLIS Time: 29C Panel: 29C-1: Childhood and Children's Literature in Russia Chair: Janneke van de Stadt, University of Wisconsin, Madison Slot: December 29, 2000, 1:00–3:00 p.m.

Russian Girl Power: Female Heroines in Pre- and Post-Revolutionary Magazines Lora Wheeler, University of Southern California While heroic traits may be typically associated with men, from the Western tradition emerge two types of female heroines that seem almost allergic to each other: the active heroine such as Joan of Arc or Psyche; and the passive heroine depicted by a Cinderella or Snow White. This second type of heroine represents the traditional (and Disney-fied) role played by women: that of mother, wife, mistress and muse. These heroines are ultimately “rewarded” for a passive and docile endurance. The first type of heroine is a woman who takes upon herself attributes that are associated with male heroes. The first aim of my paper is to examine heroines as depicted in children’s magazines in late Imperial and early Soviet Russia. Many invariant motifs pervade both pre- and post- Revolutionary magazines for children, and my reading is therefore intended to go against the grain of the traditional Soviet scholarship that regards these two periods as disparate. I will conduct a close reading of several children’s stories with female protagonists from both periods in order to ascertain the extent to which the time period from 1900–1930 can be viewed as a continuum and on its own literary terms: those of Russian children’s literature. Two exemplary stories are Lidija Čarskaja’s novel Knjažna Džavaxa that ran serially for fifty-two weeks in 1903 in the magazine Zaduševnoe slovo dlja staršix detej, and Marija Morozova’s Kara-Kol which appeared in September 1928 in the magazine Znanie-sila. Attention to the role of female heroes in children’s literature raises a number of gender issues regarding this period, specifically the role of the female author in the creation of heroines, and the changing role of women and young girls in this turbulent period of Russian history. While woman authors of course wrote for children both before and after the revolution, there was a distinct change in the number of women writers and their influence over the creative process. Before the revolution it was primarily women authors, such as Lidija Čarskaja—whose girl- powered novels reached cult proportions—whose work graced the pages of children’s magazines. After the revolution, women continued to be heavily involved in the production of children’s literature but an increasingly important legislative power was reserved for men; and it was male critics, editors and patrons (such as Maršak and Čukovskij) who played a more prominent role in establishing the criteria for literary taste in Soviet Russia.

The Nature of Narration and Didactic Discourse in Zoščenko's “Lelja i Min′ka” Cycle David Vernikov, University of Wisconsin, Madison This paper concerns itself with the narrative strategies employed in Zoščenko’s “Lelja i Min′ka” cycle insofar as they are manifest in the narrator of its eight constituent stories. While Zoščenko’s narrator has been the subject of much critical investigation, his stories for children have generally been regarded as having minimal significance within his oeuvre. Nevertheless an investigation of the manner in which morality is presented in these stories enables one to shed light upon what has generally been considered the most important part of Zoščenko’s creative output. Throughout the course of the cycle, the narrator’s textual space oscillates between that of a character and that of the implied author, whereas his function gravitates respectively towards either the narrative or the didactic modes of storytelling. Thus the narrator serves not only as a marker and device of unity for the entire cycle, but also designates a point of convergence of a number of different narrative modes and provides a means of translating and organizing of information belonging to different narrative, cultural, and psychological systems. The didactic “avtor” of this cycle straddles first and foremost the boundaries between the logical and perceptive systems of children and adults, being himself both the child Min’ka and the adult “avtor”. There is considerable contamination between the two, which provides the opportunity for a number of ambivalent readings. The definitive child/adult dichotomy within the cycle is closely connected to two others that are crucial in Zoščenko’s other work: namely the conflation of pre- and post-revolutionary cultural systems, and the translation of biblical morality into literary idiom.

Animism and the Psychology of Childhood in Andrej Platonov's “Džan” Michelle S. Kelly, University of California, Los Angeles Animism, or the attribution of consciousness to non-living objects, has often been identified as a hallmark of Andrej Platonov’s prose style. The centrality of a child persona is also a common Platonov theme, particularly in his most controversial work. These two phenomena, animism and the prominent child figure, come together in a dynamic way in the story “Džan”. There the child- hero’s tendency to blur or to simply ignore distinctions between the animate and the inanimate, and the human and non-human, invites us to consider the thoughts, perceptions, and emotions invested in his grouping together of seemingly unrelated categories. These correspondences, these blurrings of boundaries, may be studied under the rubric of “childhood animism,” a concept borrowed from developmental psychology. “Childhood animism” lumps together the definition of animism stated above with the related concept of “anthropomorphism,” or the attribution of human traits to non-humans, either animals or inanimate objects. The tale of “Džan” unfolds as the hero Nazar Čagataev, returning from a Moscow institute to his people in the Asian wilderness, first recollects and subsequently relives his childhood struggle to survive in a land sparsely populated with fauna and flora. Each successive encounter with creatures or things in the wild, from the first time he leaves his homeland and adopts a tumbleweed as a traveling companion, to his amazement later in life when he meets an old man who bears greater resemblance to a snake than a human being, imparts new information about Čagataev’s psychological makeup. In my paper, I will incorporate ideas from cognitive developmental and analytical psychology as well as literary criticism to show how childhood animism fundamentally shapes Čagataev as a psychological being. I intend further to discuss how questions of self and other, of cognitive and emotive awareness, and of cultural context may affect the interpretation of a given passage and/or the narrative as a whole.

Panel: 29C-2: North American Dostoevskij Society Chair: Gary Rosenshield, University of Wisconsin, Madison Slot: December 29, 2000, 1:00–3:00 p.m.

Shame and Punishment Deborah Martinsen, Columbia University In this paper I argue that Dostoevskij creates a tension between guilt and shame that keeps readers off-balance for the duration of Crime and Punishment. Because Dostoevskij’s protagonist commits murder, readers expect a guilt script: crime, repentance, punishment/expiation. Instead, Dostoevskij portrays a man whose shame overshadows his guilt. Shame relates broadly to human identity, guilt more narrowly to human action. Shame arises when a person negatively evaluates his/her whole self in relation to an idealized self, thereby arousing feelings of inferiority or inadequacy. Guilt arises, in contrast, when a self acts so as to transgress against personal, moral, social, or legal norms. In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevskij fashions a protagonist whose crime results from and exacerbates an identity crisis. He develops a theory in which guilt serves as the litmus test of identity: those who can transgress without guilt (like Napoleon) prove their greatness; those who experience guilt demonstrate their weakness. Once Raskol′nikov commits murder, he opens a narcissistic wound: feeling guilt establishes his shame. He thus attempts to deny his guilt in order to avoid confronting his shame: admitting that it was wrong to murder the pawnbroker means destroying his dreams of greatness. Just as Raskol′nikov welds shame and guilt in his theory, so Dostoevskij offers both shame and guilt as motives for the development of that theory. Nonetheless, Dostoevskij provides readers with some help separating them out. The predominant figure in Raskol′nikov’s shame script is the pawnbroker. Her sister Lizaveta figures largely in the guilt script. Sonja, a fallen woman who lives at the crossroads of shame and guilt, reminds Raskol′nikov, and Dostoevskij’s readers, of Lizaveta and serves as the agent to heal the shame and guilt of Dostoevskij’s hero. By focusing on Raskol′nikov’s shame and his defenses against it, I will correct an imbalance in the scholarship on the novel, as most critics have paid greater attention to the hero’s guilt. To demonstrate my thesis that Dostoevskij unsettles readers by showing how Raskol′nikov’s shame interferes with his moral responses, I will examine Raskol′nikov’s dream of impotence (when he tries to kill the laughing pawnbroker), his confession to Sonja, and his final union with Sonja. Vico's Concept of Knowledge as an Underpinning of Dostoevskij's Aesthetic Historicism Nina Perlina, Indiana University In the first letter written upon his release from katorga in January, 1854, Dostoevskij briefly describes to his brother Mixail his life in prison. In the same letter he begs Mixail to send him “ancient and new philosophers in French translation”: Vico, Guizot, Thierry, Thiers, and Ranke. Noticeably, three authors from his list, Guizot, Thierry and Ranke, were admirers of Vico. One can surmise that Dostoevskij was familiar with Vico’s writings since before his arrest, and now, following the inspiration of his creative memory, he realized the need for rereading a philosopher in whose general ideas he sensed an affinity to his own views. The central tenet of Vichian tradition that states that “man creates his knowledge through the modification of his mind,” and his famous “corsi i ricorsi” procession substantiates the aesthetic historicism and teleology of Dostoevskij’s narrative in his nontraditional genre forms of zapiski/zametki, and dnevniki (Notes from the House of the Dead, “Winter Notes on Summer Impressions”, Notes from the Underground, Diary of a Writer) in which he reveals to his readers “a sense of knowing” which is as much individual and specific, as it is “basic to all human studies.” In contemporary philosophy of culture, Vico is known for several revelatory achievements. In his Vita (where he used the third person narrative) Vico modified an autobiographical discourse in such a way that it enabled him to view his own living experience as an illustration of the main social principles of human knowledge and consciousness. Vico stated that “men’s own efforts to understand the world in which they find themselves … continuously transform their worlds and themselves.” In Notes from the House of the Dead one finds the same type of interdependence between self-understanding and one’s vision of the external world. In this work Dostoevskij finds a narrative form that enables him to treat the problems of truth, guilt, crime, justice and culpability from a dual perspective--from within the prison house (Gorjančikov’s experience) and from the outside position of a thinker who foregrounds the fundamental question of how much redemption is possible within the social system. In his New Science Vico treated different social structures (laws, institutions, religious beliefs and behavioral norms) as “natural forms of self-expression, of communication with other human beings or with God.” According to this view, through co-experiencing and re- enlivening/recollecting the ways of people’s self- expression, one can understand their social and cultural history and come to an understanding of the basic principles that substantiate their sense of morality, social justice and their commonwealth. In my further analysis of the notes and diaries I will demonstrate how Dostoevskij develops his own new mode of learning about human interaction, and to what extent this new interpretation of collective experience is comparable to the Vichian conception of culture. In the world of Dostoevskij’s aesthetic historicism, a recollection is indeed a re-collection and a rearrangement of different seminal features of the past that make one capable of a better understanding of the present. Dostoevskij’s creative memory works through the realization of the corsi i recorsi procession that modifies, reconstructs and transmits the knowledge of others into his new concept of truth and justice. The Mothers Karamazov Carol Flath, Duke University Dostoevskij’s works have justifiably drawn their share of psychoanalytic readings. Raskol′nikov’s murder of the pawnbroker and her sister in Crime and Punishment, for example, has been interpreted as an attempt to overcome the oppressive power of the mother (Breger and others). Elizabeth Dalton’s brilliant reading of The Idiot demonstrates the sources of that novel’s power in hidden Oedipal tensions and the workings of the primal scene. The philosophical, psychological, and symbolic importance of the struggle of sons against fathers is dominant in studies of Demons and The Brothers Karamazov. The current proposed interpretation of The Brothers Karamazov focuses attention away from the obvious paternal conflict onto the missing mothers: Adelejda Ivanovna Mjusova, the gentle Sofija Ivanovna, and Stinking Lizaveta. Although the rage of the sons is directed against the father, it is the imbalance caused by the absence of their mothers that has allowed this conflict to develop to the breaking point. Fedor Pavlovič Karamazov’s guilt before his wives and sons has generally been taken as a given. And yet, as in all of Dostoevskij’s best work, the boundary between righteousness and sin is a fragile one. In spite of his misdeeds and weaknesses Fedor Pavlovič represents a vital life principle that can be demonstrated at all levels of the text. In contrast, his women are all dead— and not simply in the obvious, superficial sense of the word. Our reading is necessarily symbolic and to a degree abstract. It goes as follows: How is Adelejda Ivanovna, who deserted her husband and young son Dmitrij to run to Petersburg with a seminarist (a negatively marked character type and location in Dostoevskij’s works), not guilty? The answer to this question builds on Susan Amert’s insightful exploration of the Ophelia motif in the novel. The second wife, Sofija Ivanovna, presents a more enigmatic identity. The narrator describes her to us as childlike, abused, oppressed and religious (positive markers in Dostoevskij’s hierarchy of moral worth). Aleša’s memory of his mother’s icon-wailing scene is generally cited as the source of his own deep spirituality and goodness (most compellingly by Diane Thompson). I will explore two questions: 1. Elsewhere in the novel klikuši are shown to be possessed and in need of exorcism (or the equivalent) from Zosima; how, then, can we interpret Sofija’s hysteria as a source of spiritual peace and goodness? In solving this riddle I turn for help to Ljudmila Saraskina’s seminal and iconoclastic rereading of Demons’ Marija Timofeevna; 2. Might it be possible on the symbolic level to view Sofija’s marriage to Fedor Pavlovič Karamazov as a life-affirming choice? Relevant to this issue are a) his clear association with the life principle and b) her pre- marriage enthusiasm for suicide—the fate of Dostoevskij’s most irretrievably damned characters. Stinking Lizaveta, the raped innocent, may prove to be the most challenging of our targets. We will explore the pre-rape dialogue among the town drunks as to whether even this low creature can be considered a woman (not a beast—zver′)—to which only Fedor Pavlovič can answer in the affirmative—and Grigorij’s post-rape contribution to Fedor Pavlovič’s defense: “ona sama, nizkaja, vinovata” (14: 2). These are dangerous questions, but Dostoevskij’s art draws its great power from primeval ambiguities. And we anticipate an uplifting conclusion: all, including the ostensibly innocent, are guilty.

Discussant: Caryl Emerson, Princeton University

Panel: 29C-3: Maksim Gor′kij in the 1920s Chair: Jason Merrill, Drew University Slot: December 29, 2000, 1:00–3:00 p.m.

Once Upon the River Oka-Amur: Maksim Gor′kij and Andrei Makine Ruth Rischin, San Francisco Among Gor′kij’s short fiction written during his voluntary exile in Germany, the story “O pervoj ljubvi” (“About My First Love,” 1923) stands out as a work markedly different even from his other autobiographical works of the 1920s. Set in Nižnij-Novgorod during the 1890s at the very time of the narrator’s literary apprenticeship, the story tells of his “other” apprenticeship of those years. Infatuated with an older woman just back from Paris, the narrator at first leaves his hometown to distance himself from her and her Polish lover, only to discover that his feelings are requited. When upon his return, the woman consents to move in with him, he imagines that the squalor of their quarters (all that a neophyte writer can afford) will be transformed by love- making and his soul will be set afire. In its unabashed painterly evocations of the female nude; in its lyrical expression of a quest to break away from the vulgarity of daily existence in the Oka River town; and in its restrained contrast of Russian and Western culture, the story merits consideration within the Modernist corpus created by Russia abroad. It also reveals a nuanced didacticism uncommon for Gor′kij. Indeed, Nina Berberova wrote that Gor′kij’s fiction of these years reveals “the rise of all his creative powers and the weakening of his moralizing persona.” Published in Krasnaja nov′ (1923.6) as part of Gor′kij’s Avtobiografičeskie rasskazy, “O pervoj ljubvi” was overshadowed by the more conventional “Moi universitety” (Lenin’s “favorite”) and in the literary creativity of Russia abroad, it soon was eclipsed by Bunin’s autobiographical prose of the 1920s. Beginning with the response in the West to Gor′kij’s prose tract, “O russkom krest′janstve” (“On the Russian Peasantry,” 1922) the relentless focus on issues of Gor′kij’s politics rather than on the dimensions of his art, has further deprived “About My First Love” of a chance to be judged on its artistic merit. Seven decades separate Gor′kij’s autobiographical prose and the novel Au temps du fleuve Amur [Once Upon the River Love, 1994], by Siberian-born, Andrei Makine, written and published in Paris. The careful reader cannot help but note striking correspondences between the Gor′kij short story and the Makine novel. In the Gor′kij, the narrator (the young Peškov) sets off to distance himself beyond the Oka from what he fears may be his first, perhaps never to be requited, erotic attachment. In the Makine, the narrator treks eight hours from Nerlug, his hometown along the river Amur, in order to experience love—vicariously—through imported French films that provide the Saturday fare at “The Red October.” In the Gor′kij and the Makine, the lure of what lies beyond the river is conflated with the lure of the unknown—woman. In the Makine, this quest motif is encapsulated in the very name Jean-Paul Belmondo [beautiful world] to whose sex-and-adventure films the narrator and his two chums become addicted. The woman with whom Gor′kij’s narrator takes up, represents an import to Nižnij of a boulevard cynicism that mildly discredits Western mores, whereas the cinematic heroines about whom Makine’s young heroes dream, represent an equally parodic assessment of the West. Each young man ultimately is led to discover another “jouissance,” as writer and film-maker, respectively. No mention, however, of Gor′kij is to be found in the literature about Makine in his adoptive France or in the United States. Makine, in his official statements, acknowledges Turgenev, Bunin, and Proust alone as his masters. This absence of Gor′kij in Makine’s rendition of his literary apprenticeship, stands to reason. Given the prevailing severity toward Soviet culture and politics by the current French literary establishment, a turnabout from its earlier accepting gestures, Gor′kij, as a literary model of any kind, would be unacceptable. The young, non-native French writer, initially spurned by the gatekeepers of the French publishing establishment, would have to hew to a clean literary genealogy. All the more reason to demonstrate in Makine’s art a thorough reading of Soviet prose in the very years when Gor′kij not only was contributing to >Krasnaja nov′, but was encouraging the young Vsevolod Ivanov, many of whose works on the Civil War were set in Siberia. In this paper I examine Gor′kij’s fiction of the 1920s, with an emphasis on “O pervoj ljubvi” as a work that Makine read and to an extent re-made in his Au temps du fleuve Amur, and I then go on to single out issues in narratology that ultimately divide the two. I conclude by suggesting that Gor′kij’s writings were important for Makine in his subsequent novel, Le testament [Dreams of My Russian Summers]—that the depiction of the invincible grandmother, Charlotte, who dominates the Makine novel, has a literary antecedent in Gor′kij’s memorable portrait of Akulina Kaširina. This paper therefore serves as the introduction to a longer essay devoted to the impact of Soviet prose of the 1920s on the art of Andrei Makine.

“Two Souls”: Čukovskij and Gor′kij Barry P. Scherr, Dartmouth College In 1924 Kornej Čukovskij published “Dve duši M. Gor′kogo”, the title an unsubtle reference to an article that Gor′kij himself had published nearly a decade earlier. Čukovskij’s essay recalls his pre-revolutionary writings on Gor′kij, which at the best were mixed in their evaluation of the writer and at times quite negative. It was the fate of “Dve duši” to become as unmentionable a work in the Soviet Union as Gor′kij’s own “Nesvoevremennye mysli.” Both, in somewhat different ways, presented an image that was hardly in keeping with the official view of Gor′kij: if his “Untimely Thoughts” revealed him as hardly an unquestioning supporter of the Bol′ševik regime, then Čukovskij’s work insisted that Gor′kij was not the literary giant that he appeared to be in Soviet literary histories of the following decades. However, unlike the “Nesvoevremennye mysli”, which were published in the West and have been quite familiar to literary scholars for some time, Čukovskij’s essay has largely disappeared from the scholarly consciousness in both East and West, albeit a few references to it have started to appear during the post-Soviet era. My contention in this paper is three-fold. First, the essay itself is worth rediscovering; it, along with Xodasevič’s far better-known piece, represents perhaps the most penetrating study of Gor′kij the man and Gor′kij the writer to be published by one of his contemporaries. Second, the essay turns out to be difficult to reconcile with the Gor′kij-Čukovsky correspondence, which has been published in full in Russia only during the last few years and which “sandwiches” the date of the essay: the first group of letters covers the years 1917–21, and then there is a break of several years before the correspondence resumes in 1926. Here we get a quite different picture of the relationship between the two men, where Gor′kij’s support for literature, both as an organizer of publishing endeavors and as a defender of writers under the Bol′ševik regime, comes to the fore. Third, I would suggest that this contradiction oddly mirrors the duality that Čukovskij expresses in “Dve duši”: just as there are two Gor′kijs—on the one hand a spontaneous, natural writer and keen observer of the human condition; on the other a person with a political and social agenda, which, whenever it appears in his fiction, tends to undercut its effectiveness—so too does the relationship between the two men differ, depending on whether literature or politics appears at the fore. In this case, though, the positive and negative values of the two activities are inverted: if the two find themselves in opposing camps when literary values are the issue, they nonetheless emerge as frequent, albeit uneasy, allies when faced with the real-life agenda of survival under the Bol′ševik regime. Čukovskij, K., “Dve duši M. Gor′kogo” (Leningrad: A. F. Marks, 1924). Čukovskij, K., 1901–1929 (Moscow: Sovetskij pisatel′ 1991). Čukovskij, K., Dnevnik 1930–1969 (Moscow: Sovetskij pisatel′ 1994). Gor′kij, M., Nesvoevremennye mysli: Zametki o revoljucii i kul′ture (Moscow: Sovremennik, 1991). “Perepiska M. Gor′kogo s K. I. Čukovskim.” Neizvestnyj Gor′kij (Gor′kij i ego èpoxa: Materialy i issledovanija), vyp. 3 (1994), pp. 97–132 and vyp. 4 (1995), pp. 228–60.

Discussant: Richard Sheldon, Dartmouth College

Panel: 29C-4: Czech Literature in Transition (North American Association of Teachers of Czech) Chair: Malynne Sternstein, University of Chicago Equipment: Computer projector Slot: December 29, 2000, 1:00–3:00 p.m.

The Unbearable Lightness of Laughter Anna L. Kleshelskaya, Dartmouth College The latest trend in the corpus of critical articles dealing with the controversy of magical realism has been that of broadening the theoretical borders of the term in order to allow writers outside the conventional circle of magical realists into the privileged club that Alejo Carpentier claims to be exclusively Latin American. According to Wendy B. Faris, one of the leading critics of the genre, Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is an example of the “scholarly,” “epistemological” magical realism in which the source of magic stems from the observer’s vision. Wendy Faris is certainly not the first one to notice Kundera’s bordering on the “mythical expansiveness of ‘magical realism,’” (Kleberg); however her direct categorization of the novel in the critical framework of the genre does move forward to “unlock the door” to “[the] uninterpreted facets of [the novel’s uniquely Czech] experience” (Liehm). Through a close textual analysis of the levitation scene in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, this paper will examine Kundera’s construction of laughter as a metaphor and the source of magical departure from reality. In this scene the author observes a dancing circle of laughing children lift off the ground and fly above Prague propelled by the physical lightness generated by their laughter. I will contextualize levitation by exploring the narrative techniques that Kundera employs in constructing lightness as a mode of physical and fictional departure from reality attained through the metaphor of laughter. In “The Angels,” Part III of the novel, the narrator defines two types of laughter: the devil’s laughter and the laughter of angels. Kundera articulates the dominance of the Devil over the angels, as the Devil’s laughter questions the divine creation while the laughter of the angels is a submission to the order of God’s world. By reversing the commonly accepted “demagogy of the angels,” the angels are presented as the false advocates of truth while the Devil holds the ultimately true knowledge. In exploring this ideological metamorphosis, I will attempt to show that Kundera creates a parallel: between the author standing outside the circle of laughing children and the dichotomy in this scene, where the lightness of angels is opposed to the devil’s “weightiness.” I will draw on the magical episode not only to demonstrate the manner in which it transgresses Kundera’s narrative style and the textual boundary of the novel, but also its simultaneous departure from and reversal of the common connotation of magic in a number of magical realist texts. If for Alejo Carpentier magic is a celebration of a national myth, history and culture—all that is Latin American—for Kundera magic seems to be endowed with a negative meaning. He reveals the source of this magic to be a product of “uncontested” meaning—that is, of submission to the political status quo. Thus, apart from demonstrating magical realist qualities of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, I set out to show how, on a larger scale, these qualities present a powerful and sweeping critique of the social and political order, where magic embodies the absurdity of reality. References Lars Kleberg, “On the Border: Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting,” Scando- Slavica 30 (1984): 57. Antonin J. Liehm, “Milan Kundera: Czech Writer,” ed. Aron Aji, Milan Kundera and the Art of Fiction, (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992), 29.

Exploding Realities: Jáchym Topol's Use of Language in Sestra Karin Beck, Columbia University Jáchym Topol’s novel Sestra was published in 1994, four years after the Velvet Revolution. The novel depicts this revolution as the Explosion of Time. However, not only time, but reality itself is explosive in the novel. The old order is shattered and a new one emerges from the rearranged broken pieces. The language of Sestra reflects Topol’s concept of this new reality. I argue that the use of language in the novel represents the tension between the postmodern concept of reality as a continuously changing textual construction and the idea of an independent reality. The language of Sestra is explosive. A polyphonic and dialogic use of different languages, dialects, and linguistic codes marks the novel. Although colloquial Czech has been traditionally used by Czech writers, Topol’s use of heterogeneous linguistic elements is much more radical: Sestra draws from the whole range of the Czech language from Standard Czech to historical argot. Furthermore, it combines these language varieties with elements of foreign languages. Borders between languages become blurred, and the words of different languages are creatively recombined. I will use the example of an invented language called “Kanacky,” the idiom of a group of foreigners in Berlin, to illustrate the process of language construction in Sestra. Kanacky is in a permanent process of creation and change and thus represents the postmodern aspect of Sestra. It shows reality as a permanently changing construction. The explosive use of languages in the novel is contrasted with the sparing use of expressions that the narrator calls “old words.” These are words such as the biblical expressions “humble” and “vale of tears” or the phrase “I love you.” Sestra tries to uncover their original meaning that has been buried under their clichéd everyday use. I explore the role of the “old words” in the novel using the example of the narrator’s search for an address to God: He avoids the Standard Czech term (Bůh) and instead uses either its archaic form (Bog) or slang expressions (such as Starej Krvak ‘Old Bloodhound’). The narrator’s preoccupation with “old words” and their true meaning symbolizes his search for a reality outside of human construction. In my paper, I show how the juxtaposition of “old words” with the experimental new language creates a tension that is central for Sestra. The world of Sestra emerges between two poles: the postmodern concept of reality as nothing but a text, on the one hand, and the idea of an extra- textual reality, on the other. Unlike other postmodern novels, Sestra presents a concept of reality where text is not everything.

Translating Literature of the Transition: Jáchym Topol's Sestra and Alex Zucker's City, Sister, Silver Yvonne Howell, University of Richmond With few exceptions, issues of translation were subordinated to issues of ideology when literary works from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were introduced to the West as morally and aesthetically courageous, or in defiance of censorship. At this point, our understanding of how literary texts from the “emerging” and “transitional” societies of Russia and Eastern Europe are received in translation in the West is incomplete. My paper will examine Jáchym Topol’s 1994 novel Sestra and Alex Zucker’s recent translation of the novel into English. This paper will selectively use contemporary translation theory to “make [Zucker’s] translation visible,” in order to better understand what happens when post-Soviet literary texts from Russia and Eastern Europe are introduced and marketed to the West through translation. Specifically, I will look at Albrecht Neubert’s theories of textual approach to translation and Carol Maier’s analysis of the politics of reviewing translations in literary journals. Jáchym Topol’s novel City, Sister, Silver (Sestra) was an immediate critical sensation when it arrived on the Czech literary scene in 1994. It won the Egon Hostovský Prize for the best Czech book of the year, and was the only post-Velvet Revolution book included in the writers’ and critics’ list of the 100 Greatest Czech Prose Works of the Century (ahead of all but one of Kundera’s novels on the list). What Czech critics saw in this epic novel (the original is 488 pages) was a stunningly new and serious attempt to transform the literary and artistic resources of the Czech language, to make it express the profoundly different spiritual and social reality of the post-Communist Czech Republic. When social change is accelerated by revolutionary events, language develops and changes more quickly and noticeably than usual. The first Czech edition of this novel actually includes a note from the editors on the back page warning the reader that the novel deviates from the norms in spelling, morphology, syntax, oscillation between standard written and substandard dialectical forms, use of the accusative pronoun ji, etc. Since it is hard to imagine what kind of English prose could provoke such editorial concern in our times, one might assume that any translation of Topol’s linguistic experimentation would inevitably involve a substantial loss of the original. From this point of view, the reviewer is left with little to do but to praise the translator for a “resourceful” and “remarkably accurate” translation and finish up. On the other hand, we can see Zucker’s translation as a strategy and a creative trade-off, whose goal is communicative equivalence in the English-speaking world, but not equivalence of meaning. From this point of view, the translation reopens a dialog between the original and the target language, and what is lost is not as relevant as what is discovered. Clearly, the reception of this novel in the Czech literary world had at least something to do with its radical extension of the possibilities of Czech as a contemporary literary language capable of expressing both the elation and the alienation of Topol’s generation. My analysis looks at the translator’s strategies for recreating in a different linguistic and aesthetic system some of the cultural impact of the original.

Geography of the State and Geography of the Self: Czechoslovak Travel Notes from the Soviet Union David Lightfoot, University of Toronto In the years leading up to the Second World War, intellectuals from around the globe continued to report from the New World—what Julius Fučík called “the land where tomorrow is already yesterday.” This presentation will look at inter-war travel writing from Soviet Russia, primarily by Czechoslovak and French writers. When foreigners first visited Soviet Russia, they found a world that was difficult to describe in the language of past and the present. What they saw before them was not only a new society, but a mirror. Today these texts are interesting not so much for the political messages they contain, but for what they say about the writer; about personal and geographical affiliations. The last text of this kind to be published in this period was Jiří Weil’s Moscow the Border. This fascinating work not only gave its own account of Soviet Russia in the 1930s, but also provided an intriguing framework for reading Olbracht, Fučík, Istrati, Gide, and others. It is a novel where characters attempt to align themselves with a new land, a new philosophy, and a new geography of self.

Panel: 29C-5: Film in the Language Classroom Chair: Emily Tall, State University of New York, Buffalo Equipment: VCR Slot: December 29, 2000, 1:00–3:00 p.m.

Russian Animated Films for the Russian College Curriculum Bella Ginzbursky-Blum, College of William and Mary This paper will suggest ways in which Russian animated films can be integrated into the Russian language classroom. Russian animation has a lot to recommend itself for use in the Russian curriculum and many of the best films are now available on video in both Russian and English. My paper will focus primarily on the uses of animated short films in Russian classes throughout the curriculum. The appeal Russian cartoons would have for our students is obvious. Unforgettable characters and memorable songs from some of the best-loved Russian cartoons already have an impact in our classrooms. For example, students who had studied Russian in high school, visited Russia or hosted a Russian student often ask me to teach the class “the Russian birthday song”—the song one of the most popular cartoon characters, Gena, sings on his birthday. While cartoons are fun for students, they can also be used as powerful teaching tools. The visual and musical cues cartoons provide are ideal mnemonic devices for students of any language. Ultimately, I believe the real use of cartoons in the language classroom will not be for listening comprehension exercises—there are enough educational videos and film excerpts for such purposes—but as both a reward and an authentic source of new cultural information. Animated shorts appropriate for the level of study can be chosen for each chapter, or each month, as a series of milestones throughout the year. After learning the vocabulary and the new grammatical constructions the students can understand and enjoy something short and amusing in the target language. The viewing will also ideally spark class discussion of cultural issues represented in the cartoon. Ryžij, ryžij, konopatyj, for example, is an interesting example of the less-than-accepting Russian attitude toward redheads, while Čeburašska, besides containing “the birthday song,” offers our students a glimpse of such aspects of Soviet life as a Young Pioneer-organized metal drive. Russian cartoons are also suitable for more serious language and cultural study. Over the years the Sojuzmul′tfil′m studio has produced a great number of Russian fairy tales and animated a number of short stories by Russian writers. Such animated films can add an interesting dimension to the upper-level culture, literature, and conversation courses taught in Russian. Animated fairy tales are an ideal introduction to Russian folklore and its characters, and they are also a wonderful way to help students visualize Russian village life, folk objects, and customs. In addition to animated fairy tales there are many Soviet-period cartoons that provide many topics for discussion of Soviet art, life, and humor. Skaz o mal′čiše-kibal′čiše, a disturbing example of Stalin-era patriotism drawn in the style of early Soviet propaganda posters, can be a springboard for discussion about politics, art, or even the role of children in Russian society. Avtomat, about an unruly matchbox dispenser, lends itself to a myriad of interpretations about Soviet reality. The whimsical Soviet version of the Bremen Town Musicians proved to be an exciting source of discussion in my course on “Russian Views of the West.” Not only did we discuss the story line, the significance of its deviations from the original tale, and the visual portrayal of the characters, but we also examined possible reasons for this cartoon’s enormous popularity with the Russian public. Finally, the one idea I think is crucial in using cartoons in the Russian classroom is that cartoons offer students access to Russian culture in a way that is fun and intimate, easy to understand and hard to forget.

A Course of Russian Military History through Movies as a Means of Linguistic Competence Growth, Background Knowledge Enlargement, and Increase of Learning Incentive Yelena Vasyanin, Moscow State Linguistic University This paper begins with a brief overview of new textbooks and courses designed in Russia in the last few years. As the analysis shows, they as before are often oriented towards the student’s ethnic origin or scholarly specialization (Russian for philologists, students of humanities etc.). At the same time, the falling interest in Russian language learning which has been quite evident in the last years in the West and the changing body of students, demand from teachers of Russian and those who design university curricula and programs to pay special attention to the student’s future or present profession, way of life, interests, needs. In many cases they have to create “tailor-made” courses for some categories of learners (this notion gave birth to such programs as Russian for Lawyers, Russian for Humanitarian Organizations’ Members, Russian for Hotel and Restaurant Staff, Russian for Housewives, Moscow Youth Slang, etc.) This paper describes a course of Russian military history through movies which was created as an attempt to answer to such a special request for an “oral practice course for advanced learners with the special attention to Russian military history, including some acquaintance with Russian culture, traditions and mentality (60 academic hours).” It will also show why and how following this “order,” a course combining elements of traditional courses on Russian cinematography and speaking practice was designed. Several parts of lessons with different types of linguistic, speech and communicative exercises will be demonstrated as well. Besides sixty hours of classes (eight hours a week) the course has included additional homework on viewing the movies (a total of ten) and, as it was conducted in Moscow, the course was combined with several theme tours (sixteen hours). The classroom lessons, movies and excursions were deeply interrelated. For example, study of the subject “The Battles of Old Days” was preceded by a guided tour to Moscow’s Kremlin Armory where students got acquainted with most important individuals and events of ancient Russian history and saw arms and armor of the past. The students’ background knowledge of the Russian military history was recalled next day in the classroom while they were discussing what they already had known. At the same time they worked on texts, figures and fiction extracts connected with the Russian military history, did a lot of lexical and grammar exercises and prepared for a movie demonstration. By the end of the lesson students received homework, which was only possible to complete after viewing the movie, Aleksandr Nevskij. The next day there was an in-class discussion of the movie’s events, characters, cinematography methods and ideological background. Additional texts helped students to learn more about the “massacre on the ice” and Prince Aleksandr’s personality, history of making the movie, its popularity among the Soviet people during the war years (1941–1945), leading the students to a discussion about the role of cinema in forming public opinion and to a debate on the issue of whether the cinematography could (should) be an ideological tool. Ten popular Russian movies were selected for the course. All of them were representative in a sense that, on the one hand, they covered some of the most important and well known events in Russian history and, on the other hand, they clearly reflected the most popular, widespread opinions and views of Russian people on their country’s past. Despite the fact that nowadays the perception of almost all historical events has been revised, and the popular opinion has been changing, these ten movies still reflect the most stable connotations, related to the military history. For instance, the War with Napoleon in 1812 is perceived as difficult but romantic time with lots of songs, poetry, brave, honest and handsome hussars; the Second World War for Russians is still more understandable as the Great Patriotic War, a horrible but just war of liberation; the Chechen War is viewed as a dead-end campaign which is useless, strange and cynic. The greater the differences in Russian and Western points of view, the more interesting and lively was this discussion in class. As for the historical component of the course, by contrast with traditional history courses, we paid special attention to typical Russian stereotypes and allusions related to historical events. For our purpose, the acquaintance with Puškin’s “Pesn′ o Veščem Olege” or Lermontov’s “Borodino” seemed to be more important than memorizing the dates of Car′-grad’s capture and studying the details of Borodino battle. The paper also raises the issue of positive and negative outcomes of interdisciplinary and limited time courses. According to students’ evaluations and test results, the goals of the course were reached: we saw the growth of linguistic competence in the professional field (military), students learned a lot about Russian history, saw several “cult” movies, increased their background knowledge of Russian culture and people. The negative feedback received from the students was in a way connected with a nonsystematic approach to teaching Russian history and history of cinema, although the students understood that the time frame of a course could not allow it to be done in a different way. The lacunae which students discovered in their knowledge, were sometimes frustrating but at the same time were stimulus for further studies.

Discussant: Eloise M. Boyle, University of Washington

Panel: 29C-6: Roundtable: New Visions in Foreign Language Education Chair: Jane W. Shuffelton, Brighton High School Slot: December 29, 2000, 1:00–3:00 p.m. Participant: Peter Merrill, Phillips Academy Participant: Jim Sweigert, University of Northern Iowa

Panel: 29C-7: Sociolinguistics Chair: Jane Hacking, University of Utah Equipment: Overhead projector Slot: December 29, 2000, 1:00–3:00 p.m.

“Imam Canadian Friends.” The Use of English-Serbocroatian Code-Switching by Bosnian and Croatian Communities in Canada Mirna Emeršić, University of Alberta During the war in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, there was a large wave of immigrants who came to Canada. Since most of them have not been in Canada for an extensive period of time, there have not been any studies conducted to establish the influences of the new environment on the language behavior of such immigrants. In the United States, Savić’s study (1995) was limited to the first-born American generation of Serbian community. This study examines the phenomenon of code-switching, its frequency, and patterns in particular in the speech of the Serbo-Croatian/English bilinguals in the Bosnian/Croatian community in Edmonton, Canada. It concentrates mainly on code-switching, defined as an alternation of two languages within the same discourse, sentence, or constituent. This inquiry seeks to answer the question whether there is any code-switching, taking into account the short length of the subjects’ stay in Canada. The subjects of this study are comprised of five current and two former university students—two of them men and five women—originally from Bosnia and Croatia, who range in age from nineteen to forty years old. They speak Serbo-Croatian as their first language (L1), yet exhibit varying degrees of bilingualism since they have been living in Canada from one to six years. They were tape-recorded as pairs (e.g., husband and wife, best friends) speaking for approximately one hour in Serbo-Croatian. The recordings were conducted in informal situations such as at their home or in a café. The results show that code-switching, a prevalent manifestation among bilinguals, abounds in the speech of these Bosnians/Croatians. It occurs even among those who are nonfluent bilinguals. Furthermore, two out of three types of code-switching—inter- and intra-sentential—were found to be present, with the intra-sentential type being the most predominant. A quantitative analysis of their switches revealed that both fluent and nonfluent bilinguals were able to code-switch frequently and still maintain a very high degree of grammaticality in both L1 and L2. The results of this study of code-switching among Serbo-Croatian/English bilinguals will contribute further to understanding language contact phenomena in bilingual immigrant communities in Canada. References Savić, J. M. (1995). “Structural Convergence and Language Change: Evidence from Serbian/English Code-Switching.” Language in Society, 24:4, Dec, 475–92.

The Sociolinguistics of the Cemetery: Using Gravestones as a Source for Sociolinguistic Data (On the Basis of Three Russian Old Believer Communities in Poland and the Eastern United States) Jeffrey Holdeman, Ohio State University The cemetery can provide an informative and interesting diachronic glimpse into linguistic and sociolinguistic issues in an ethnic community. In addition to being the object of a textological and dialectological study, headstones can yield valuable data for analysis of the chronology of language shift, language use as an emblem of ethnic identity, and the negotiation of competing language systems. The present paper examines the twentieth-century cemeteries of three related Old Believer communities in Suwalki, Poland; Marianna, Pennsylvania; and Erie, Pennsylvania, as examples of a community relatively successfully maintaining its ethnic language, a disappearing community, and a community in the final stages of linguistic shift, respectively. All three communities have their roots in the priestless Pomortsy of the Pskov-Novgorod region—the first directly and indirectly giving rise to the second two at the turn of the twentieth century. The paper develops the methodology of sociolinguistic research in the cemetery, presents data analysis from the cemeteries of the aforementioned three groups, and discusses how such data can be used as part of a larger sociolinguistic study in an ethnic community.

Attitudinal Factors Influencing Language Choice among Qazaqstani College Students William Rivers, University of Maryland The citizens of the Republic of Qazaqstan rightly regard themselves as among the first to assault the monolith of the Soviet Government: in December of 1986, the Želtoqsan uprisings over the sacking of the Qazaq chair of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Qazaq SSR, Dinmuqamed Qunaev, and his replacement by an ethnic Russian, Gennadij Kolbin, were the first violent crack in the edifice of Soviet power in the late 1980s. That the enactment of the language law of 1989 was among the first major undertakings of Nursultan Nazarbaev signaled both a further policy shift from monolithic , and a symbolic gesture measure of self- determination for the ethnic Qazaqs of the Qazaq SSR (Williams, 1997, makes a clear case for the linkage between nationalism, self-identification, and language policy). In 1995, Qazaq was declared the government language, and accorded the role of the language of national integration. Russian was declared the language of political integration, and given official status (see Kopylenko, 1999, for an attempt to delineate these functions). The current Qazaqstan 2030 plan calls for all citizens to be (at least) trilingual by 2030—in Qazaq, Russian, and one foreign language. The proposed paper will examine attitudinal and socio-psychological factors affecting language use and language choice among Qazaqstani college students, based on biographical, demographic, attitudinal, and behavioral data collected from 857 Qazaqstani college students at seven institutions of higher learning in Qazaqstan. The fieldwork was conducted during the Spring Semester of 1999. Preliminary results indicate that family background, in particular, the lack of an interethnic marriage in the parents’ generation, and the use of Qazaq by grandparental caretakers, predict greater use of and proficiency in Qazaq among the respondents. Other factors predicting future shift to Qazaq, as measured by the hypothetical question, “In what language would you raise your children?,” include male gender, urban birthplace, and Qazaq as maternal language. The first two predictors—that men and urbanites are more likely to respond that their children would be raised in Qazaq, may indicate a nationalist/chauvinist response, given the expectation (Kopylenko, 1999; Dorian, 1986) that rural populations are more likely to retain a minority tongue.

Russian College Slang Today Artemi Romanov, University of Colorado, Boulder Of all the linguistics levels (phonology, morphology, syntax and grammar), vocabulary is the most sensitive to political, economic and cultural changes, since it is tied referentially to the culture. During the 1990s Russian student culture experienced significant changes that are manifested in the composition of student slang vocabulary. In transitional Russian conditions students seek to strengthen their social identity, value system, and emotional growth, but are finding this difficult to achieve. Increasingly students turn to one another for support, but struggle to create group harmony in a society experiencing a difficult transition from collectivism to competitive individualism. Russian college slang reflects the adaptation of university students to cultural changes, particularly cultural influences from the West. Under the Soviet regime substandard vocabulary was not a subject of systematic linguistic investigation. Most introductions to lexicology mentioned slang only in passing; youth slang words were not included in dictionaries (with few exceptions) and were often viewed as lexical elements that contaminated the Russian language and shattered literary norms (Linguistic Dictionary. Moscow: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1990). In the last decade this attitude has changes: Russian youth slang words have been collected and systematized by Russian scholars (T. G. Nikitina. Tak govorit molodež. Youth Slang Dictionary. St. Petersburg: Folio Press, 1998), but no observations have been made about the restrictive character of slang, slang word-formation process, the semantic organization of slang, the frequency of slang words, methods of creating expressive tone typical of slang etc. Slang is an ever changing set of colloquial words and phrases that speakers use to establish or reinforce social identity or cohesiveness within a group or with a trend or fashion in society at large. (See C. Eble. Slang and Sociability. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.) Dumas and Lighter proposed four identifying criteria for slang—“(1) its presence will markedly lower the dignity of formal speech or writing, (2) its use implies the user’s special familiarity with the referent, (3) it is a tabooed term in ordinary discourse with persons of higher social status, (4) it is used in place of well-known conventional synonyms in order (a) to protect the user from the discomfort or annoyance of further elaboration”—criteria that I use in my project (B. Dumas and J. Lighter, “Is Slang a Word for Linguists?” American Speech 1978, 38:164–177). American college slang has been studied by a number of scholars (among them Dundes and Schonhorn 1962, Eble 1989). The most numerous group of slang expressions are general words with a particular specific meaning. For instance, chick, fox ‘attractive person,’ cool, sweet ‘excellent’ (in American college slang); krutoj ‘excellent,’ lit. ‘steep’; buterbrod ‘group sex,’ lit. ‘sandwich’; skleroz ‘computer memory,’ lit. ‘sclerosis’ (in Russian college slang). Slang vocabulary offers clues about how group members conceptualize the world, how they organize their knowledge, and how deep their knowledge goes in specific areas. The study of college slang is closely related to the question of how much lexical variation can be explained by group-based and age-based differences. An often cited characteristic of slang is its group-identifying function. However with the possibility of instant and wide-spread communication, the group-identifying function of slang for the population at large may be diminishing in favor of identification with a style or an attitude rather than with a specific group. (See C. Eble 1996.) It will be important to determine whether or not this is the case for Russian college slang. Russian college slang requires a special study with a focus on the slang word-building process (affixation, compounding, shortening, functional shift, blending and borrowing), on how slang terms get to mean what they do (generalization, amelioration and pejoration, metaphors, metonymy), on semantic organization of slang vocabulary (semantic fields), on the use of slang, its tone (colloquial, descriptive, judgmental) and the effects of slang. In addition to lexicological questions, cultural issues will be equally important to the project. What cultural phenomena are lauded, supported, stereotyped, made fun of, or condemned in modern Russian college slang? In order to carry out my project I plan to go to Russia. During the summer 2000, I plan to conduct a lexicological survey among college students in St. Petersburg. Questionnaires with selected words and expressions (taken from T. Nikitina 1998) will be presented to respondents (a sample of about 300) who will be asked to indicate: (1) how often they hear a selected word, (2) how often they use a slang word on their own speech, (3) how fashionable they think a selected slang expression is, (4) what their attitude to speakers who use such an expression in their speech is. Participants will be also asked to put down ten words and phrases that they consider examples of good current student slang. This part of the project will be carried out with the help of research assistants (students from the Russian language department of St. Petersburg State University). I also intend to conduct two focus groups in St. Petersburg to examine the attitudes of participants toward college slang. One group will consist of participants of student age, and the other group will include people from different age group (30–50 years of age). The focus groups will help me to interpret the results of the survey part of my project and make judgments about the validity of the survey. Time: 29D Panel: 29D-1: North American Tolstoj Society Chair: Andrew B. Wachtel, Northwestern University Slot: December 29, 2000, 3:15–5:15 p.m.

Gender and the Meaning of Money in Lev Tolstoj's The Power of Darkness Lida Oukaderova, University of Texas, Austin After distancing himself from Russian aristocratic society in the early 1870s, Lev Tolstoj wrote a series of essays criticizing the country’s move towards industrial development. Touching on broader issues of Russian religion, politics and economics, these essays illustrate Tolstoj’s conviction that capitalist development was inherently destructive, leading above all to a nation of alienated subjects. The Power of Darkness, written in 1876, is one of Tolstoj’s first literary works to express similar beliefs. Primarily concerned not with the high society of St. Petersburg and Moscow but with rural peasant life, the drama juxtaposes the developing capitalism of the city to agrarian village culture, and attempts to illustrate the dangers of capitalism’s inexorable spread. My paper reconsiders The Power of Darkness through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis, beginning with an investigation of the unusually central role of money in the drama. One of my basic questions is to ask why money is associated with women throughout The Power of Darkness, and what kind of danger money represents to Tolstoj’s conceptions of God and patriarchy. Contrasting the relationship of men and women to money as portrayed in the drama, I argue that Tolstoj’s rejection of Russia’s capitalist development is based not only on the perceived immoral qualities of commodity exchange, but more importantly, on money’s potential revelation of the contingent nature of patriarchal society. The struggle between capitalist development and the old agricultural society turns, in fact, into a struggle between men and women structured around castration anxiety, and The Power of Darkness establishes a set of opposites following exactly these lines: on one side (identified as masculine), God and legal society; on the other (coded as feminine), money and crime. Integrating an analysis of the function of these divisions throughout Tolstoj’s drama with an investigation of both broader social developments and Tolstoj’s other writings of the period, my paper argues that our understanding of Tolstoj’s work and thought can be greatly enhanced by psychoanalysis—just as our thinking about feminism and the nature of capitalism can be made more complex by re- reading Tolstoj.

Narrative Art in Dramatic Form: The Plays of L. N. Tolstoj Karla Cruise, College of St. Mary's In L. N. Tolstoj’s dramas, there is a constant tug-of-war between what the author wants to say and how the dramatic form (satire, comedy, or domestic drama) will allow him to say it. Tolstoj had much to lose in exchanging his complex verbal medium of narrative fiction for drama’s reliance on dialogue and action, and his plays reveal his successful and unsuccessful attempts to make up for those losses by “staging” his dramatic techniques. Not only do Tolstoj’s plays show the tension between the author’s literary imagination and the genre’s form, they demonstrate the degree to which he thought of his dramas as being primarily acts of persuasion and secondarily objects of art. Despite Tolstoj’s desire to instruct his theater audiences, he avoided the dramatic structures and devices characteristic of didactic drama and moralities. With the exception of his peasant plays, which were written for a largely illiterate audience, he refrained from allegory, refusing to make his dramatic characters into personifications of virtue and vice. Instead, as in his prose, Tolstoj often creates “dogmatic heroes,” protagonists whose quest for virtue and happiness instructs the audience. As the audience observes the protagonist’s struggle to articulate their thoughts and emotions and substitute realistic for unrealistic desires, it learns how it may do the same. While in the narratives, consciousness could be revealed through interior monologue and the narrator’s commentary, the dramatic form afforded fewer opportunities for portraying the inner workings of the psyche. Throughout his career as a playwright, Tolstoj developed several dramatic devices to externalize the characters’ inner struggle, combining actions, gestures, language, indirect characterization and staging. However, these devices proved inadequate substitutes for Tolstoj’s omniscient narrator who could intertwine the author’s “objective” “Truths” with the characters’ subjective thoughts and impressions. In switching to the dramatic form, Tolstoj lost his narrator and his most important method of rendering his characters’ consciousness and maintaining authorial control.

Exiles to the Family in Tolstoj's Resurrection Anne Hruska, University of California, Berkeley In my paper, I begin by examining the role that exclusion plays in Tolstoj’s portraits of the family. I argue that Tolstoj, from his early writings through Resurrection, was deeply concerned with identifying the borders of the family. For much of his life, he felt that the family could survive only by excluding outsiders. Obviously, this means that one must avoid extra-marital affairs, which allow encroaching outsiders into the hallowed domestic realm—but the implications extend beyond simple adultery. Successful families in Tolstoj’s works tend to have hanger-on figures who, through no apparent fault of their own, must live on the outskirts of the family. In this paper, I intend to concentrate on two figures whom Tolstoj saw as archetypal outsiders: the sexless single woman and the prostitute. Tolstoj was certainly not alone among his contemporaries in seeing similarities between the apparently chaste “old maid” and the prostitute; he was also not alone in feeling that both such figures were necessary for the health of the family. His statements to such effect may shock us today, but they were in fact quite typical for a man of his class and time. What was far less typical in Tolstoj was his lifelong identification with outsiders of all kinds. It is this deep-seated sympathy that complicates his understanding of familial structure, leading him finally to reject the biological family, since it exists on the sufferings of those excluded. I begin, therefore, by examining the images of single women, or “sterile flowers,” as Tolstoj sometimes calls them, and of prostitutes in War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and other works. I then detail the way in which these figures, formerly handled with, at best, distaste, are now, in the persons of Katjuša and Marija Pavlovna, important members of what Edwina Cruise has called the “universal family,” which, according to Tolstoj, needed to take the place of the narrow, selfish, biological family. And yet, the supposedly all-inclusive family still has a figure who never quite belongs: this time, it is the aristocrat Nexljudov. While Katjuša, Marija Pavlovna, and others are able to translate God’s universal love into asexual love for individual people, Nexljudov, who tries to love universally, ends the novel in a frighteningly lonely position. He seems to have come to the truth that Prince Andrej recognizes while dying: that “to love everyone … means to love no one.” Nexljudov is not the first of Tolstoj’s aristocratic heroes to be uncertain of his own position within the family. But no other major hero is so thoroughly excluded, and with such apparent finality.

Panel: 29D-2: Elective Affinities Chair: Judith E. Kalb, University of South Carolina Slot: December 29, 2000, 3:15–5:15 p.m.

“What is to be done?”: L. Andreev's Anfisa in the Context of Čexov's Three Sisters Alice Harris, University of Wisconsin, Madison Like Three Sisters (1900), Anfisa (1909) takes place in a single household of a Russian river town over the course of a year. Andreev clearly modeled his title heroine on Maša Kulygina (née Prozorova). Anfisa, the middle of three sisters, dresses in black, has musical talent and is rejected in her attempts to reach out to her sisters in a moment of crisis. Andreev even takes details from Three Sisters: Maša and Anfisa share a personal attachment to “justice” and eyes that shine in the dark. Most significantly, the central “action” of each play revolves around an adulterous liaison between the middle sister and a father-protector figure. However, significant plot differences have long repelled critical comparison of the two plays. Maša betrays her own husband, while Anfisa has an affair with her sister’s husband. Maša and Veršinin are forced by duty to part; Anfisa ends the play by poisoning Kostomarov, like his great-aunt, who joins her in the final scene, killed her own husband long ago. To date only I. F. Annenskij, in his 1909 article “Teatr Leonida Andreeva,” has compared Anfisa and Three Sisters. The present paper takes an intertextual approach, analyzing Anfisa in conjunction with Three Sisters and Andreev’s own understanding of Čexov’s play as stated in his 1901 review. Such a reading reveals that behind the melodramatic shock value of Andreev’s plot, Anfisa grapples with the same questions upon which Three Sisters rests: “What is to be done?” “How are we to live?” “Whither Russia?” By reworking Maša in Anfisa, Andreev indicates that his “answer” is a permutation of the hope expressed at the end of Three Sisters. Without the context of Čexov’s play, the Russia of Anfisa appears to have come to a dead end in the great-aunt’s closing line: “There’s nothing to be done, everything has been done. Be silent,” an echo of her advice in the opening act. But this overt cycle rouses in the reader a desire to escape, to seek the future upon which the Prozorov sisters pin their hopes. Leonid Andreev’s dramas of everyday life have been neglected due to critical concentration on his more overtly symbolist plays. A contextualized reading, such as taken in this paper, could surely deepen our understanding of other “everyday” Andreev dramas, such as Ekaterina Ivanovna and Sobačij vals and their relations to nineteenth-century Russian literature. Cultural Dialogs Across Continents and Time: Adaptations of Chinese Verse by Judith Gautier and Nikolaj Gumilev Maria Rubins, Rice University This paper will address the peculiar way in which Russian Modernism took Oriental motifs as one of its identifying features but presented Asia largely through the medium of Western European interpretations. The leading Acmeist, Nikolaj Gumilev, is a case in point, as his 1918 collection The Porcelain Pavilion contained versified adaptations of French translations from Chinese classical poetry. Gumilev’s immediate source was The Book of Jade, published in 1867 by Judith Gautier, a fiction writer and an accomplished Sinologist. French art of the middle of the nineteenth century was marked by an intense creative exploration of the Far East, and the “chinoiserie” style also became pervasive in literature. This style survived into the turn of the twentieth century, when stylization of the East was incorporated into the Art Nouveau movement. Art Nouveau came to Russia from the West, notably from France, a country with which Russian artists traditionally maintained close ties. It was only natural that they should turn to the medium of French culture in their assimilation of Oriental themes, promoted by Art Nouveau. Gumilev was no exception, as he traveled to France in 1917 in order to discover the beauty and aesthetic potential of Chinese verse through French translations. Judith Gautier, who was fluent in Chinese, carefully rendered a number of Tang Dynasty texts in rhythmic prose, aiming primarily to introduce Chinese verse, still a largely unexplored area at the time, to the French cultural elite. Gumilev, who did not know Chinese, used Gautier’s The Book of Jade as a mere starting point for his collection, which is no slavish translation, but an independent work of literature. Although the theme, plot, and mood of each piece are conserved, the structure of Gumilev’s book, the use of versification in lieu of rhythmic prose, and the emphasis on metapoetic content all betray the Russian poet’s original agenda. In this paper, I will analyze why classical Chinese poetry became a vehicle for the expression of Gumilev’s aesthetic sensibilities, as well as how the ideals of art for art’s sake, the careful crafting of verse, and leisurely creativity, so prominent in these texts, reflect the poet’s stance with respect to the political turmoil of revolutionary Russia. Ultimately, Gumilev’s example will emerge as an illustration of yet another form of Modernist cultural exchange between Russia and the West.

Conrad and Dostoevskij on the Origin of Russian Communism Ludmilla Voitkovska, University of Saskatchewan This presentation will focus on Dostoevskij’s Crime and Punishment and Conrad’s Under Western Eyes, the novel examining a political milieu, which was written in 1912 in response to Crime and Punishment. Conrad’s Under Western Eyes is a fictional attempt to revisit Russia, the country of his birth, which had a powerful impact not only on Conrad’s personal life, but on the lives of many generations of Poles. The novels are similar in structure, characterization, plot and even patterns of “polyglossia”. However, there is the great tension between the two novels, since the differences in structure do not easily translate into an insight into Conrad’s conceptual disagreement with Dostoevskij. Dostoevskij’s love of Russia contrasts in the most dramatic manner with Conrad’s furor at anything Slavic. However even if Conrad disliked Russia’s influence profoundly and saw the country as “atavistic”, why should he engage so deeply with its problems and why did his argument with Dostoevskij not preclude him from borrowing the Russian writer’s framework for the organization of the novel? The organization of Under Western Eyes is structured as a polemic against, rather than a dialogue with Crime and Punishment. However, one cannot explain away the intensity of Conrad’s argument with Dostoevskij or with his Russian characters by the mere affirmation of his dislike for Russia or by the contrast in the respective novels’ organizations. Instead, and this is the main claim of the present study, the stress of the situation was brought about by the fact that Dostoevskij and Conrad in their respective novels employed all their artistic capacity to penetrate the secret of contemporary Russian analysis to predict by means of this analysis the country’s future. As both writers use their formidable artistic gifts as means of truth-telling, Conrad’s fury at Dostoevskij springs from the following problem: in his novel he envisages a different cause for Russia’s predicament and predicts a different unfolding of her fate. Conrad’s novel of ideas goes beyond a simple borrowing of imaginary world; rather it centers around the most complex question of Russian history: the origin and cause of terrorism, and, thus, of Russia’s future. Readers of Dostoevskij know only too well Dostoevskij’s answers to this problem. In Crime and Punishment these are articulated in “Raskol′nikov’s idea”, that is, in his fascination with Napoleon, and with the French Emperor’s ability to prove that “he is not a louse”, which, by implication, means placing the blame for violence in the camp of Westernizers. Conrad’s diagnosis and his articulation of the cause of the disease is not hard to diagnose, for it is spelled out in every aspect of Russian life. And thus he frames his diagnosis even in the book’s epigraph: “I would take liberty from any hand as a hungry man would snatch a piece of bread.” Sofija Antonovna restates these words as a political characterization of the country: “the great social inequity of the system resting on unrequited toil and unpitied suffering” (Under Western Eyes 257). The novel’s central characters, then, are Conrad’s notable paradigmatic doubles borrowed from Dostoevskij: the terrorist Haldin and the peace-loving Razumov. But since the disease is not inspired by Napoleon as such but lack of liberty, Conrad powerfully contradicts the fates of Raskol′nikov and Razumixin in Dostoevskij’s novel. Conrad extends profound sympathy to his characters trapped by Russia’s political reality, and particularly for Razumov, in his argument against Dostoevskij’s insistence upon the need for the isolated individual to kiss the land and take up its cross. What is clear is this: Conrad is moved here not by dislike of Russian culture, but by his opposition to the resistance Russia provides to the solutions of its “communal understanding” of individuality. It is precisely this Slavophile communal understanding that appears to preclude, in Conrad’s view, the development of an individuality which cannot be developed without individual liberties. For Conrad, therefore, Slavophiles, and not Westernizers contribute to the cause of a disease which will continue to undermine Russia and so many other countries.

Saša Sokolov's School for Fools and Dante's Vita Nuova Ludmilla Litus, Michigan State University In one of his lengthy reference lists, Saša Sokolov invokes the name of Dante. Although Dante’s Divine Comedy is considered his most important work, in terms of School for Fools, however, his 1292 novel Vita Nuova (New Life) is more significant. In this paper, I examine parallels between Vita Nuova and School for Fools and briefly outline the relevant aspects of Dante’s biography that provide a context for several of Sokolov’s themes. Thematically both works deal with questions of artistic freedom, the fate of the creative individual and the creative process itself. Dante’s text may be counted among the first works of “metafiction,” a tradition that Sokolov turns to as well. Susan Strehle’s theories developed in Fiction in the Quantum Universe serve, in part, as theoretical framework for this paper, as do the theories of intertextuality popularized by Julia Kristeva and others. In my analysis, I also take into account the long-standing tradition in Russian literature in which political reality and art appear inseparably intertwined.

Panel: 29D-3: Russian Prose of the 1920s: Physical Landscapes Chair: Kevin Moss, Middlebury College Slot: December 29, 2000, 3:15–5:15 p.m.

Writing, the Body, and Prostitution: The Case of Babel′'s “My First Fee” Janneke van de Stadt, University of Wisconsin, Madison In her reminiscences on Isaak Babel′, Tatiana Tess remarks on the “muscular energy” of his prose. Indeed, the characters that people the author’s writing are often defined, or distinguish themselves, by their bodies’ activities. Hence the physicality of life in “,” whose inhabitants, whether pimply, flabby, tanned, or toned, are seen to indulge in the bodily experience; or even Pan Apolek’s astonishing frescoes, whose hallowed saints take on the physical appearance of poor, local sinners. “It is a pity,” Babel′ once told Georgij Markov, “when writers base themselves on books and not on life.” For him, the immediacy of the individual experience is not only a crucial element of genuine art, but the very foundation of his own creative process. Whenever Babel′ pauses to consider literature or the creative moment itself (for example in such texts as “Odessa,” “Inspiration,” “Guy de Maupassant,” and “Di Grasso,” he consistently broaches the subject of bodily life and physical expression. His memorable, and insufficiently studied, tale, “My First Fee” (1922–1928), provides us with a perfect example of how the author experienced the creative process as a supremely intimate and physical event. Structured as a frame-tale, Babel′’s “My First Fee” deals with the subject of a young man’s initiation into “authorship” in the context of a sexual encounter with a prostitute. Modeled, in part, on Babel′ himself, the story’s narrator lives in Tiflis and leads a life of creative and sexual frustration. He finds a way to remedy this double predicament one night, when he goes home with Vera, a local prostitute whom he dubs his “first reader.” In her room, and inspired by the moment, the narrator concocts a masterful tale describing his life as a male concubine, which Vera believes entirely. It is this “fiction,” the narrative’s inner-tale, that I isolate as the focus of my discussion so as to examine Babel′’s understanding and experience of the creative process itself. Throughout the main tale, the narrator either presents stories as human bodies or equates the physical intensity of lovemaking to the exhaustion of creative activity. But it is in the composition of the inner-tale itself, a process we witness in its entirety, that we see the actual conflation of the sexual and creative acts. By way of such body theorists as Mary Douglas, Marcel Merleau-Ponty, and Bryan Turner, my analysis of the inner-tale’s formal structure shows that the narrator’s fictional anecdote is, in essence, a sexual and “prostituted” body in its own right, and that it changes or “contorts” itself according to the reader’s (or client’s) wishes. The result is what I have elsewhere called a “somatic text,” a text which, formally speaking, seeks to mimic particular functions of the human body.

What is Boiling in a Retort? The Fatal Eggs and A Heart of A Dog as Laboratory Experiments Elena Mikhailik, University of New South Wales In 1926 Victor Šklovskij dismissed the success of Bulgakov’s “Fatal Eggs” as the “success of an opportunely used quotation.” Since then “The Fatal Eggs” and “The Heart of a Dog” have been discussed mostly in terms of their satirical message. However, if we consider the motif structure of The White Guard and The Master and Margarita, it could be argued that while the motif capacity of the two satirical novelettes is unequal to that of Bulgakov’s major works, it still seems to maintain many of the basic motifs of Bulgakov’s prose (e.g. motifs of home, death, betrayal, responsibility, professional work, of the besieged world-city, of the fury of the elements, of the urban phantasmagory, aggressive Soviet newspeak and the ever-present classic arias). Especially prominent in the novelettes are motifs of catastrophe. That motif structure gains yet another dimension through the highly visible system of literary references Bulgakov employs. While the eggs of “The Fatal Eggs” are presented as a straightforward science fiction text, a local replica of “The Food of the Gods” by H. G. Wells, “The Heart of a Dog” could be perceived as a twentieth-century Soviet echo of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. And The Master and Margarita, among its plethora of literary reminiscences, contains aggressive references to Goethe’s Faust, eighteenth-century picaresque novels, medieval legends of the devil, the New Testament and its apocryphal versions, and ancient Jewish demonology. It seems that the more complex and detailed Bulgakov’s description of the brave new revolutionary world grows, the more archaic become the literary sources he draws on. In this paper I will examine the motif structure and intertextual “packaging” of “The Fatal Eggs” and “The Heart of a Dog” in their relationship with the corresponding structures of The White Guard and The Master and Margarita. I suggest that Bulgakov used his two satirical novelettes as a kind of a testing ground, a laboratory where he tried to catch the essence of the catastrophe he depicted in The White Guard, to determine the nature of a post-catastrophic society and to develop artistic devices capable of representing both that catastrophe and that society. I demonstrate that the novel The Master and Margarita incorporated the results of those experiments, and on a certain level in itself was created as a much larger experiment, as an attempt to take a bird’s-eye view of the retort basking in the light of Professor Persikov’s miraculous red ray—an experiment that questions not only the normality, but the reality of Moscow in the thirties.

Soccer and the Hermeneutics of Play in Oleša's Zavist′ David B. Polet, University of Wisconsin, Madison The soccer match in Jurij Oleša’s Zavist′ has long served as a symbolic representation of the conflict between Soviet society and Western individualism. However, the soccer match also acts as an allegory of the concept of play as a fundamental ontological, metaphysical category, which creates structure and order and reflects the nature of ritual and artistic creativity. In this presentation, I propose that Oleša’s artistic representations are directly related to “play” as an ontological category. These concepts are written into the soccer match scene and are expanded throughout the novel, especially as related to the game which surrounds the “conquest” of Valja. These principles of play are founded upon Gadamer’s Truth and Method and Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens. To support this hypothesis, I will briefly explicate the nature of play as understood by Huizinga and Gadamer. Play is more than a game; it is a phenomenological concept. Gadamer asserts that play creates its own structure in which players and even spectators participate. “The presentation of a god in a religious rite, the presentation of a myth in a play, are play not only in the sense that the participating players are wholly absorbed in the presentational play and find in it their heightened self-representation, but also in that the players represent a meaningful whole for an audience. [The] openness toward the spectator is part of the closedness of the play”(109). Through the full interaction of players and spectators, the nature of play can assume artistic and cosmic proportions. Applying this hermeneutical approach to Zavist′, the most important scene to focus on is the one which is most transparent in reference to the idea of “play,” namely the soccer match. Here, I will focus on the essential structure of the game and how the players fulfill that structure. Then I will focus on Kavalerov’s “participation” regarding the soccer game and the “conquest” of Valja. Through spectating, Kavalerov participates not only in the game itself, but also determines the meaning of the game through the process of play. His participation highlights all aspects of play—the structure of play (including rules and boundaries), the flow of play, participation and spectating. The game surrounding Valja is one in which the methods of conquest become representations of contrasting artistic visions, visions which are embedded in the nature of play. The conquest of Valja not only represents the defeat of Kavalerov, but also the ineffectiveness of his artistic vision within the structure of that game. Sources Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Second edition. Trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. New York: Crossroad, 1992. Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston: Beacon Press, 1950. Oleša, Jurij. Izbrannoe. Moscow: Xudožestvennaja literatura, 1974. Panel: 29D-4: Studies in Russian Futurism Chair: Olga Peters Hasty, Princeton University Slot: December 29, 2000, 3:15–5:15 p.m.

A Quiet Voice of Futurism: the Poetry of Grigorij Petnikov Karen Evans-Romaine, Ohio University In his landmark study of Russian futurism, Vladimir Markov characterized Grigorij Petnikov as “an interesting minor poet of futurism.” Though not a member of the Centrifuge circle with which Pasternak, Sergej Bobrov, and Nikolaj Aseev were associated in the 1910s, Petnikov shared with that group the eclectic and primarily Western-oriented literary interests for which it was known. Markov has noted Petnikov’s strong interest in the work of Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis). As I have written elsewhere, Petnikov was important to Pasternak as a translator of Novalis, whose work was of fundamental importance to Pasternak’s oeuvre and world view. Petnikov published translations of a selection of Novalis’s Fragmente in 1914, followed by a translation of his Lehrlinge zu Sais in 1919. Pasternak drew not only on the Novalis originals, but on Petnikov’s translations, as subtexts for his own work. The recent republication, in a Futurist anthology, of a selection of Petnikov’s poetry, previously published only in collections now considered rare, has made possible a study of Petnikov’s original work. This paper will examine a small group of Petnikov poems, with an emphasis on subtextual analysis according to the models of Taranovsky, Ronen, and Smirnov. I intend to show the impact of Petnikov’s translations of Novalis texts on his own poetry. Petnikov’s poems draw on subtexts both from his translations and from the Novalis originals, including his novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen, of which Petnikov and Bobrov began, but never completed, a translation. While lacking the sophistication we find in the poetry of Pasternak or Xlebnikov, of whom Petnikov was considered a disciple (Markov, Al′fonsov), Petnikov’s poems provide the reader an opportunity to see a kind of futurist workshop, in which Novalis’s Naturphilosophie undergoes a transformation into poetry strongly reminiscent of Xlebnikov’s work. Marks of Novalis remain more obviously on the surface than is generally the case with Pasternak who, as Fleishman and others have pointed out, was highly skilled at covering his literary “tracks.” Petnikov’s poetry reflects subtexts from Russian Romantic poetry as well, particularly that of Tjutčev, one of whose famous lines appears in anagrammatical form in a Petnikov poem on spring. Finally, Petnikov’s verse reflects literary conversations with his colleagues in Centrifuge; I intend to show, in particular, intertextual links between his work and that of Bobrov. While heavily laden with references to the work of his literary predecessors and contemporaries, Petnikov’s poetry has a quiet voice of its own. His literary interests reflect those of his era and thus shine additional light on the reading tastes of the time; yet his poems are also worthy of study in their own right.

Pasternak's “Zamestitel′nica” Ivana Vuletic, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill This reading of Pasternak’s poem “Zamestitel′nica” in its original 1922 version takes as its point of departure Lotman’s 1968 analysis of the poem. Lotman situates Pasternak’s poem in the context of a certain Romantic tradition, primarily Heine’s poem “Ich stand in dunkeln Traumen” and the Schubert romance based on this text, as well as Lermontov’s “Rasstalis′ my; no tvoj portret … .” Lotman concludes that “Zamestitel′nica” subverts the tradition by substituting the Romantic “I” with a Futurist one in utilizing the poetic device of identifying words with objects. My reading of “Zamestitel′nica” takes into account one more classic poetic text of Russian Modernism—Blok’s “O doblestjax, o podvigax, o slave” (1908) —and thus recognizes one more layer of complexity of Pasternak’s poem. My basic objection to Lotman’s reading is that, while establishing the Pasternak poem within a larger literary context, it neglects the fact that “Zamestitel′nica” is an integral and meaningful part of the book Sestra moja žizn′: Leto 1917 goda. The special place “Zamestitel′nica” has in this poetic cycle is seen in the present paper in the perspective of the multi-faceted artistic connections between Pasternak’s early poetry and Blok’s oeuvre. My reading pays special attention to the parallels between the position that “O doblestjax, o podvigax, o slave” occupies in the cycle “Vozmezdie” and that of Pasternak’s “Zamestitel′nica” in Sestra moja žizn′. My reading of Pasternak’s “Zamestitel′nica” discusses the aesthetic ramifications of the poet’s 1957 decision to exclude the second half of the poem in subsequent versions. In doing so Pasternak has effectively destroyed the composition of Sestra moja žizn’, since the central position of “Zamestitel′nica” was warranted, among other reasons, for its uniquely “hybrid” construction. The second half of the poem, its last five stanzas are thus understood in the present paper as a part of the poetic text that imbues Pasternak’s dedication of Sestra moja žizn’ to Lermontov with additional meaning in the book as a whole. This paper is inspired by the now classic position of Joseph Frank, stated in his The Idea of Spatial Form; he writes, in reference to the poetry of Modernism: “The one difficulty of these poems, which no amount of textual exegesis can wholly overcome, is the internal conflict between the time-logic of language and the space-logic implicit in the modern conception of the nature of poetry” (Frank, 1991: 14). If there should be one important feature of Pasternak’s “Zamestitel′nica” that radically distinguishes it from his Romantic and Symbolist predecessors it certainly is its lack of narrativity and its reflexivity and self-referentiality of language. Unfortunately, scholarship has largely overlooked these founding aesthetic principles of Pasternak’s early poetry.

Futurism Revisited Nicholas Rzhevsky, State University of New York, Stony Brook Recent scholarship and revisitations of Futurism and the cultural period that nourished it suggest an ongoing reappraisal of its texts and directions. (Two notable examples are Victor Erlich’s monograph and the recent compilation Russkij Futurizm. Teoriia. Praktika. Kritika. Vospominanija, edited by V. N. Terexina and A. P. Zimenkov. Moscow: Nasledie, 1999.) Indeed, in the light of postmodern trends, Russian culture in the first twenty years of the past century offers trenchant lessons. Such issues as the conjunctions of literature and politics, attempts to do away with logocentricity or with writing in general, and denials of the self’s roles in culture and history are our legacy of those years, even as their historical fulfillments in Russian space and time are sometimes forgotten in the onrush of the exciting subversions they offer. In the following paper, I (1) reconsider some of these major trends, particularly in the light of Mystery-Bouffe; (2) use the advantages of retrospect to note their dilemmas; and (3) draw some conclusions with regard to current cultural issues.

Discussant: Mark Konecny, University of Southern California

Panel: 29D-5: Language Programs: Challenges, Curriculum, and Staffing Chair: Betty Lou Leaver, Independent Scholar Equipment: Overhead projector; Computer projector Slot: December 29, 2000, 3:15–5:15 p.m.

Making the Grade: Perceptions of “The Good Foreign Language GTA” Valerie A. Pellegrino, Ohio State University Each year, foreign language departments accept hundreds of new graduate students who will be tomorrow’s language teachers. These young teachers often undergo some order of pre-service and/or in-service teacher training that helps to mold their ideas of what constitutes effective teaching. Yet the type of teacher they will become depends greatly upon their own perceptions of what it means to be “a good teacher.” In 1982, Ervin and Muyskens surveyed teaching assistants concerning their perceived training needs and found that graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) expressed different needs according to their experience and nationality. Furthermore, GTAs’ responses also differed from those of experienced faculty who may be conducting GTA training programs. Such differences in perception can affect the quality of teacher education and the success of young teachers in the classroom. The present study seeks to revisit the findings of that study and further expand the investigation into the characteristics and behaviors of what it means to be “a good foreign language GTA.” Using qualitative research methods, “Making the Grade” examines the perceptions GTAs in Slavic languages hold of what it means to be a “good teacher,” including aspects of requisite knowledge and skills, teaching philosophy, demographics, teacher-student relationships, classroom behaviors, and appropriate GTA preparation and experience. Moreover, this study seeks to compare and contrast the perceptions of multiple populations, including pre-service, novice GTAs, experienced GTAs, GTA education faculty, other language faculty, and the undergraduate students that GTAs teach. The study participants are drawn from the Slavic department of a major state university in the United States. Data are collected through the use of interviews, diaries, and questionnaire instruments and are analyzed according to Grounded Theory Methodology, a rigorous form of narrative data analysis employed primarily in the social sciences fields. The findings of this study will inform GTA training and education programs as well as further GTA needs analyses. Furthermore, this study will provide insight into the impact of GTA education and training on perceptions of successful teaching. This study serves as a pilot for a larger study to be performed at multiple universities and across language departments.

Learning Outcomes for Russian: A Comparison of Academic-Year and Summer Immersion Instruction Benjamin Rifkin, University of Wisconsin, Madison Many in our field bemoan the lack of nationally recognized tests to assess our students’ language skills. Using the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines for listening and reading, I have developed tests for listening and reading comprehension for use at the Russian School of Middlebury College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I have also developed a test of grammar and syntax for use at these two institutions; this test is based on a series of principles indirectly related to the proficiency guidelines for speaking and writing. In my presentation, I will describe these computerized tests (which do not consist of any multiple-choice questions), the principles or criteria on the basis of which they were developed, and the range of scores earned by students at different levels of instruction in the course of several administrations of the tests. In my discussion of students’ results, I will describe the differences in language gain for those students enrolled in an academic year program of study (150 contact hours over nine months’ time) and those enrolled in a summer immersion program (170 contact hours over nine weeks’ time). I will compare students’ results on these new tests with results in oral proficiency interviews for a sample of the students tested. Lastly, I will compare my findings with regard to learning outcomes (as demonstrated on these tests) with those reported by Thompson in her 1996 study (of students of Russian), by Brecht, Davidson and Ginsberg in their 1993 study (Predictors of Language Gain during Study Abroad), of Magnan in her 1986 study (of oral proficiency of students of French), and of Carroll in his 1967 study (of the language competency of graduating seniors who majored in foreign languages.) I will conclude my presentation with questions for the field regarding directions for future research and curricular reform. Works Cited Brecht, R., D. Davidson, and R. Ginsberg. 1993. Predictors of Foreign Language Gain During Study Abroad. Washington, DC: National Foreign Language Center. Carroll, J. B. 1967. “Foreign Language Proficiency Levels Attained by Language Majors Near Graduation from College.” Foreign Language Annals 1:131–151. Magnan, S. 1986. “Assessing Speaking Proficiency in the Undergraduate Curriculum: Data from French.” Foreign Language Annals 19: 429–437. Thompson, I. 1996. “Assessing Foreign Language Skills: Data from Russian.” Modern Language Journal 80: 47–65.

Increasing Student Success with In-Class Placement Testing Donald K. Jarvis, Brigham Young University A key element of student success in any given class is readiness, mastery of expected prerequisites for that class. Capable and diligent students may experience catastrophic failure in intermediate and advanced classes of any given curricular sequence if they are seriously deficient in any aspect of preparation for that class. This is an especially serious problem where students are entering any class other than the beginning one in a university sequence such as a Russian program having had some non-university background such as in high school, or study or residence abroad. The thesis of this paper is that students will be more likely to succeed in any given class if the teacher administers a placement test at the first of the term, especially in intermediate classes known as entry points for those transferring from other institutions or returning from residence or study abroad. Such a placement test should be used not to exclude students who score poorly, but to advise them as to how many hours per week they will have to prepare out of class in order to earn a given grade. Students scoring low appreciate the advice and readily accept it: they either prepare to spend the necessary time for the class, transfer into preparatory classes, or switch to an audit or other preparation before taking the class for credit. Such in-class placement testing may help Russian programs retain students, always an important goal, but especially crucial during the present enrollment crisis. Standard ACTFL oral proficiency testing usually requires too much time and in any case may not be sufficiently focused on the skills needed for a given intermediate or advanced course if the course emphasizes anything other than oral proficiency. A search of the available Russian placement or proficiency tests reveals that they are all too time-consuming, too expensive, or too elementary to be practical for the intermediate college level and above. In-class placement testing has several advantages over more general placement testing, which is designed to place students into any of several classes. In-class placement tests: 1. need not be standardized, expensive instruments, but can be devised by the teacher; 2. can be focused on the material of the class syllabus, thereby allowing a relatively short test with good face validity; 3. can be administered over several years and correlated each time with final grades and preparation hours, thereby assessing their predictive power; 4. can be administered to all students registered for the class without involving separate rooms, computers, or scheduling of students; 5. allows the teacher to provide immediate counseling for those scoring low, in many cases saving students a wasted semester and the devastation of a failing or low grade. Such an in-class placement test of multiple-choice items was administered to two large third-year university-level Russian culture classes on the first day of class. Many of those registered had lived abroad, some had studied abroad, some had simply come through the local university Russian program. Since the main skill needed to succeed in the class was reading, the test was a reading test, based on the textbook that students would be reading during the term. The first version required fifteen minutes to take and the second twenty-five minutes. Both were machine- scored during the class period. After taking the test, several students with low scores decided immediately to postpone taking the class for credit. Student placement scores of the remaining students were correlated with number of hours of preparation and final class grades and revealed modest validity for the shorter placement test, better validity for the longer one.

Discussant: Masako Ueda Fidler, Brown University

Panel: 29D-6: Roundtable on the Future of Slavic Linguistics: Life Beyond the Slavic Department (AATSEEL Ad Hoc Linguistics Committee) Chair: Cynthia M. Vakareliyska, University of Oregon Slot: December 29, 2000, 3:15–5:15 p.m. Participant: Leonard Babby, Princeton University Participant: Laura Janda, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Participant: Christina Bethin, State University of New York, Stony Brook Panel: 29D-7: Luther College Balalaika Ensemble Chair: Laurie Iudin-Nelson, Luther College Equipment: stand microphones, amplifier, speakers Slot: December 29, 2000, 3:15–5:15 p.m. Time: 29E Panel: 29E-1: Early Slavic Literature Chair: Andreas Johns, University of Washington Slot: December 29, 2000, 7:00–9:00 p.m.

Text and Context: The “Mobility” of Slavic Medieval Works Tania Ivanova, Ohio State University A typical feature of certain Slavic medieval works is their ability to “move” from one functional context to another one which facilitates the construction of a textual reality in reply to certain institutional needs such as those of the Church or State. As a result of such “mobility”, texts may loose their initial integrity as works in some cases but continue functioning as segments or quotations; while in other cases they are able to preserve their integrity and their initial structure. Two principles have been proposed to interpret this peculiarity—the principle of “segmentability” with reference to texts (W. R. Veder) and the principle of “portability” with reference to works (N. Ingham). These principles elucidate to a certain extent the problem of genre flexibility which in all respects refers to the categories of social need, Sitz im Leben, and the convention of usage (cf. the ideas of the Berlin School, and particularly of K. Seemann). The adaptation of a work to the liturgical and extra-liturgical needs of a given Slavic Orthodox society accomplishes certain ideological needs and semantically “maps” reality (in Halliday’s terms), which in turn reinforces some changes in generic models. The communicative nature of Slavic medieval works, which were meant to praise, to instruct, to persuade, etc., secured the “correct” functioning of a canonical literature but at the same time left room for scribes to experiment with segments and parts of works, “adjusting” them to various contexts. This paper reflects recent tendencies in the genre analysis of Slavic medieval literature, considering it in the light of functional theory. An attempt is made, however, to elaborate the theoretical framework outlined above focusing on the role of the audience in “recognizing” (after J. Swales) the initial function and genre structure of a work. What follows is the implementation of the principles of “segmentability” and “portability” in South Slavic texts found in Russian sources from the sixteenth–seventeenth centuries. The final step is the utilization of the theoretical observations by their application in a more detailed catalogue description. The works analyzed here are later copies of the Laudatory Homily to Ilarion of M″glen (a fourteenth-century Bulgarian text) and discourses on reading which originally appeared in a tenth-century South Slavic milieu. These texts were taken from their initial functional context and “transplanted” to a new one with different social and cultural dimensions. Examination of such “movement” has a solid textological basis which allows speculation about the raison d’[ecirc]tre and the cultural setting of the later copies. Attention is drawn also to the placement of these texts in the manuscripts with regard to their “convoy.”

Folly Without Holiness: Ivan the Terrible and the Paradigm of Holy Foolishness Svitlana Kobets, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Already in the sixteenth century textualizations of holy foolishness [a type of Orthodox Christian asceticism] were no longer limited to hagiographic texts depicting holy foolish ascetics. The holy fool (Russ. jurodivyj) was no longer perceived solely in the religious context of the Orthodox Christian kenotic tradition. As the writings of Ivan the Terrible show, the paradigm of foolishness in Christ started being transferred to the secular context. In the contemporary Russian language, the word jurodstvovanie denotes a secular type of behavior, where its practitioner shapes his own demeanor in accordance with the extrinsic features of holy foolish phenomenology. The external similarities between jurodstvujuščij and jurodivyj are obvious: they both display insanity, self-denigration, and outrageous and shocking behavior. Yet there is a major difference between the two: while the jurodivyj is an ascetic and a saint, the stance of the jurodstvujuščij is neither saintly nor even religious. In my paper I discuss one of the first documented examples of secular (and literary) application of holy foolish paradigm, jurodstvovanie, found in the writings of Ivan the Terrible. This ruler, who came to epitomize absolute power in Russia, not only acknowledged spiritual authority of holy foolish ascetics and drew on the kenotic “philosophy” of foolishness in Christ in order to sanctify his stance of a car′ and a sinner, but he also mimicked the holy fool’s behavior both in his writings and in real life. His secret pen name, Parfenij Jurodivyj, is indicative of this fact. This penchant of Ivan’s has attracted the attention of such scholars as Lixačev, Lotman, and Uspenskij, who have considered Ivan’s behavioral and stylistic peculiarities in the context of holy foolish paradigm. On the other hand, Priscilla Hunt discusses Ivan the Terrible’s personal “mythology of kingship” in the light of holy foolish paradigm of sanctity. Ivan the Terrible’s orientation toward the holy foolish complex of behaviors and paradigm of sanctity, presents on his part a powerful statement that cannot be overlooked. It offers a productive angle for the analysis of Ivan’s complex, often impenetrable and seemingly disunified personality. I argue that Ivan’s play-acting at being a holy fool was triggered by his compulsion to reconcile antagonistic sides of his personality as well as by other psychological needs. Eventually jurodstvovanie became not simply part and parcel of his writing and behavioral styles but also a powerful means of arguing in favor of supremacy of his power. Ivan’s play-acting at being the holy fool is prominent in his writings. In my paper I analyze Ivan’s epistles, paying special attention to his correspondence with Prince Kurbskij. As Ivan the Terrible puts on a mask of the (pseudo) fool in Christ, he chastises his opponents, mimics and ridicules them. Play-acting the holy fool gives Ivan the ultimate liberty of the madman and the saint, allowing him to manipulate facts and situations. The behavioral paradigm of jurodstvovanie came to be regarded as uniquely Russian. It yields a great number of exponents both among Russian public figures and literary personages (e.g. Archpriest Avvakum, Leonid Rozanov, Ščedrin’s Ijuduška Golovlev, Dostoevskij’s Svidrigajlov, Fedor Karamazov, and many more). Later on religious connotations of this behavioral paradigm lost their distinct Christian references. The analysis of Ivan’s play-acting at being the holy fool enables us to explore the Orthodox Christian roots of the phenomenon that were very prominent during his epoch.

Stefan Zyzanyj and the Introduction of the “Papal Antichrist” in Ruthenian Orthodox Polemical Literature Michael Pesenson, Trinity College My paper examines the writings of the late-sixteenth-century Ruthenian Orthodox preacher and polemicist Stefan Zyzanyj, particularly his best-known (but rarely-studied) work Kazan′e sv. Kirilla Patriarxa Ierusalimskago o antixriste i znakox ego z rozšireniem nauki protiv eresej roz″nyx (Vilna, 1596). This work, in a seventeenth-century translation into Russian Church Slavonic (as the title piece of the Kirillova kniga, 1644) became widely read and admired in Muscovy, particularly among the Old Believers. In the Kazan′e, Zyzanyj offers a simultaneous Ruthenian and Polish translation of the fifteenth catechesis (“On the Signs of the Antichrist”) of the fourth-century Church Father Cyril of Jerusalem, along with his own interpretation of these signs in light of the religious turmoil in Ruthenia surrounding the Union of Brest (1596). In the figure of the Antichrist, Zyzanyj sees the institution of the Catholic Church, and more specifically the person of the Pope. In the Pope’s Jesuit missionaries proselytizing in the Ruthenian lands, Zyzanyj sees the Antichrist’s precursors representing an imminent and grave threat to Orthodoxy, a threat that needed to be countered by equal or greater polemical vigilance on the part of the Orthodox Brotherhoods, whose fiery mouthpiece (at least in Lviv and Vilna) Zyzanyj strove to be. In his work, Zyzanyj introduces for the first time the concept of the “papal antichrist” into Orthodox polemical literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a concept borrowed from spreading Protestant polemics and consistent with the apocalyptic zeitgeist in the Ruthenian (and Russian) lands at the time. To this day, no scholarly study has been done on which Protestant writings in particular may have inspired Zyzanyj. Therefore, in the remainder of the paper, I examine the possible influence on Zyzanyj of the writings of several Polish Protestant writers, particularly Marcin Krowicki, whose Obraz własny antykrystów (Vilna, 1561) shows striking similarities with Zyzanyj’s treatise. This may be seen as evidence of greater Protestant- Orthodox literary-cultural interaction in sixteenth-century Ruthenia than has been generally assumed.

Discussant: Francis Butler, Northern Illinois University Panel: 29E-2: Anna Karenina Chair: Mark Konecny, University of Southern California Slot: December 29, 2000, 7:00–9:00 p.m.

The Case of Kiti Ščerbatskaja: Lev Tolstoj and the Love-Sickness Tradition Valeria Sobol, Columbia University The association of love with illness is an ancient one, both in medicine and in literature, and goes back in the Western tradition to ancient Greek medicine, Sappho’s poetry, Plato’s dialogues, and Ovid’s love poems. This rich tradition was gradually adopted by Russian culture beginning in the eighteenth century (Tred′jakovskij’s translation of Tallemant’s Le voyage de l’île d’amour; Tred′jakovskij’s and Sumarokov’s love songs and elegies; and Russian sentimentalist prose). The language of love-sickness provided the nascent Russian culture of love with a pseudo- physiological apparatus, as well as an elaborate discourse of amorous suffering. In nineteenth-century Russian literature, the love-sickness topos recurred with astonishing persistence, given the fact that the scientific foundation of love-sickness, together with the Hippocratic/Galenic humoral theory on which it is based, had long since been repudiated by medical science. The function of this topos, however, did not remain unchanged. The Romantic notion of love-sickness as a prestigious “disease of the soul,” or often as a mere metaphor, was replaced in the era of positivism by an understanding of love suffering as a rather simple medical condition, a physical affliction that can be diagnosed and treated by scientific medical methods. The controversy over the “psychological,” as opposed to the purely “physiological,” nature of love-sickness that became prominent in the novel of the 1840s (Gončarov’s An Ordinary Story, Gercen’s Who is to Blame?) clearly involved the problem of the dichotomy of body and soul. In this context, I will analyze Lev Tolstoj’s use of the love-sickness topos in its relation to the issue of body/soul dualism, as well as to Tolstoj’s views on medicine in general. I will focus on one particular scene for a close textual analysis: the medical consultation of the love-sick Kiti Ščerbatskaja in the second part of Anna Karenina. The two doctors invited to diagnose and treat the heartbroken Kiti represent two different theories of disease and, moreover, two competing understandings of the nature of love-sickness. This scene therefore can serve as a point of departure for a more general discussion of Tolstoj’s take on the given tradition.

The Idea of the Family in Tolstoj's Anna Karenina: The Moral Hierarchy of Families Olga Karpushina, University of Pittsburgh Although “mysl′ semejnaja” may be the dominant idea of Anna Karenina, unhappy families interest Tolstoj the most. Among approximately thirty families described or briefly mentioned in the novel, only two may be called truly “happy” and the number of pages devoted to them is minimal. However, these two give the reader an idea of Tolstoj’s moral hierarchy of families. Anna Karenina is in many ways the author’s expanded meditation on the reasons of happiness or unhappiness. The present paper argues against Sydney Schultze’s definition of a happy family and asserts five main principles according to which families can be structured. One of the cornerstones of family happiness is fidelity to one’s spouse. One of the main plot developments in Anna Karenina is the development of Anna’s family from “rather good” to the actual absence of family, and this development happens because she is unfaithful to her husband. Another very important criterion is a person’s ancestors, that is, pedigree. These two categories, however, seem to overlap: infidelity ruins the purity of pedigree, which plays a key role in Tolstoj’s concept of the family. Tolstoj adheres to the idea “the parents—the children” for an individual’s character is determined and defined by his or her origins. The criterion of ancestors intersects with another one, descendants. Tolstoj’s understanding of the role of children is quite clear: a child is “the moral compass” that shows adults the “true path.” A fourth criterion is role- distribution, i.e., male-female relationships. In the novel, “right” or “wrong” roles are based on the opposition “functionality” vs. “beauty” for females and “fatherhood” vs. “individualism” for males. Place of residence, the fifth principle, overlaps with the second, pedigree.

The Spell of Causality: Theories of Consciousness in Tolstoj's Anna Karenina and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason Steven Mannos, University of Chicago In this paper I take up the question of Tolstoj’s theory of mind at work in Anna Karenina. My analysis will respond directly to the work of Richard Gustafson and Donna Orwin but will also invoke the work of more structuralist-oriented readings such as those of Elizabeth Stenbock- Fermor, and Èjxenbaum. However the aim of the paper is not the structure of the novel but Tolstoj’s theory of consciousness and its affinity with Kant’s theory of the mind as transcendental. While other scholars have made direct links between Tolstoj and other philosophers, the Kantian connection has only been alluded to on the ethical/moral level and not on the level of a theory of consciousness or mind. The evidence that justifies placing Kant with Tolstoj comes from observations in Gustafson’s book Tolstoy: Resident and Stranger, where he characterizes Tolstoj’s metaphysics as “a movement out of the self toward something other, uniting this other to itself.” Also at work is Gustafson’s notion of man’s vocation as “self articulation”. This discussion is always included in a greater discussion of God and theology. My analysis will take these observations of Gustafson that are philosophical in nature and show that Tolstoj’s treatment of subjectivity is best seen in light of Kant’s theory of the subject. The affinity with Kantian metaphysics will reveal the Judeo-Christian backdrop of the novel as a problem of causality and human freedom versus necessity. What begins as an analysis of a theory of mind leads to a discussion of what one can expect from a “god” in Tolstoj’s world and how this is better understood in the context of Kant’s critique of the possibilities (faculties) of the mind.

Discussant: Gina Kovarsky, Virginia Commonwealth University

Panel: 29E-3: Phonology and Prosody Chair: Frank Y. Gladney, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Equipment: Overhead projector Slot: December 29, 2000, 7:00–9:00 p.m.

Prosodic Movement in Slavic Olga Arnaudova, University of Ottawa In this paper I examine some cases of prosodic movement (in the sense of Zubizarreta 1998) in Slavic, on the basis of Russian and Bulgarian. Prosodic movement is a local leftward movement, which allows for the neutral intonation to reselect the proper focus of the sentence. It applies after a syntactically determined Nuclear Stress Rule (first defined in Chomsky and Halle 1968, later definitions given in Cinque 1993, Zubizarreta 1998), in conjunction with a principle of Focus-Prosody Correspondence has selected the focus structure of the sentence. There are instances when stress, assigned by the Nuclear Stress Rule contradicts focus assignment related to discourse and, as a result, two nodes in the tree are assigned prominence, which triggers the movement. One variety of prosodic movement is found in OVS/VOS structures, shown for Russian in (1) and (2), and derived from a VSO order. The object moves out of the domain of focus and, as a result, the subject receives narrow focus.

(1) Plat′e kupila [FInna] dress bought Inna

(2) Kupila plat′ee[FInna] Inna bought a/the dress. The fact that the object is c-commanding the subject in (1) and (2), and not vice versa, can be determined by binding evidence (WCO effects), shown in the contrast between (3) and (4). This provides evidence that the subject is not right-adjoined, as previously argued (King 1994 a.o.). I propose a leftward adjunction of the object to vP for (2), or, to a higher projection (TP) in (1). In both cases, the subject remains in situ (Spec vP), where it checks its features and receives nuclear stress. (3) Ètu knigu podarila [každomu rebenku]i ego i mat′. This book gave each child-DAT his mother (4) Ètu knigu podarila ego (* i ) mat′ [každomu rebenku] i. This book gave his mother each child-DAT Constructions with dative and accusative objects constitute another variety of prosodic movement. On the basis of binding evidence, I examine the order of complements inside the VP to determine which one is base-generated and which one is derived from prosodic movement. The proposal is that in both Russian and Bulgarian 1) the element that benefits from this process always receives narrow focus, e.g. the other elements in the sentence cannot constitute a focus domain by focus spreading, and 2) prosodic movement creates new binding possibilities. References Cinque. 1993. “A Null Theory of Phrase and Compound Stress.” Linguistic Inquiry 24:239–298. Chomsky, N. and M. Halle. 1968. The Sound Pattern of English. New York: Harper and Row. King, T. H. 1994. Configuring Topic and Focus in Russian. PhD. Diss., Stanford University. Zubizarreta M.L. 1998. Prosody, Focus and Word Order. MIT Press. Constraints on Quantity in Czech Christina Bethin, State University of New York, Stony Brook In terms of its prosodic characteristics, Standard Literary Czech (LC) is fairly straightforward: it has word-initial stress and distinctive vowel length. There are no restrictions on the occurrence of quantity within words or in adjacent syllables in that all types of vowels are found in all positions: čítárna ‘reading room’, dvacátí ‘twentieth’, váhání ‘vacillation’ and robota ‘work’. There are alternations of length both within inflection (e.g., vúz ‘cart’, vozu gen sg) and derivation (e.g., hlas ‘voice’, hlásek, dim), and in some instances the alternation of quantity is a marker of a morphological domain, e.g., infinitival lengthening or genitive plural shortening. So it is curious to find what appear to be very specific restrictions on the distribution of quantity in Czech. I consider one such category, prefixed deverbal nouns, and suggest that Czech does have constraints on the distribution of quantity within a prosodic foot. Nouns derived from prefixed verbs regularly have vowel lengthening of the prefix, e.g., nahodit ‘to find by chance’, náhoda ‘happening, chance’, načrtat ‘to sketch’, náčrt ‘sketch’, vytahat ‘to extract’, výtah ‘extract’ utratit ‘to lose’, útrata ‘loss’. This is also true of suffixed deverbal nouns as in náčrtek ‘sketch’, výtažek ‘extract’, nadržet ‘to collect’ vs. nádržka ‘reservoir’, vyčesat ‘to comb out’ vs. výčeski ‘hairdo’. There are two main exceptions to prefixal lengthening in this grammatical category: 1) certain prefixes never lengthen, e.g., obklad ‘compress’, podklad ‘foundation’, doklad ‘proof’ vs. základ ‘foundation’ výklad ‘presentation’, príklad ‘example, sample’, and 2) prefixes which ordinarily lengthen sometimes do not, e.g., nadávat ‘to scold’, nadávka ‘scolding’, zacházet ‘to go around’, zacházka ‘detour’, vyplátit ‘to pay out’ vyplátka ‘payment’. The prefixes which do not show lengthening are do-, od-, po-, pod-, pro-, pre-, roz; those which do are: na, pri, u, vy, and za. The reluctance of certain prefixes to lengthen may be due to the consequences of potential lengthening, which in these cases produces more than just a quantitative alternation. The variation in prefix length of na, pri, u, vy, and za, however, seems to be conditioned by other factors, specifically by the existence of length in the verb root, e.g., nadílet ‘to distribute gifts’, nadílka ‘distribution’, prihlásit ‘to announce’, prihláska ‘announcement’, ukázat ‘to show’, ukázka ‘sample’. These conditions on the occurrence of quantity in Czech suggest that there is a constraint against adjacent long syllables in Czech and that it comes into play only at certain levels of derivation (not so much in inflection or derivation by suffixation, but at the word level derivation). This means that Czech pays a great deal of attention to bisyllabic domains even if this is not immediately obvious. The resolution of a constraint against adjacent long syllables may take the form of shortening either the first or the second syllable, and it is not uncommon for the verb root to shorten in favor of a long prefix: prikázat ‘to assign’, príkaz ‘order’, zachránit ‘to save’, záchrana ‘rescue’, with the result that the two syllable sequence is long- short. The preference for this type of foot over the short-long variant is prosodic and related to stress, whereby the more prominent syllable in the foot is then both stressed and long, a less marked situation than a stressed short syllable followed by a long one. Evidence for such prosodic preferences is given from Spoken Prague Czech, where lengthening is common in contracted forms such as prófa (profesor), véča from večere ‘supper’, ségra from sestra ‘sister’ and in hypocoristics such as Lída for Lidmila, Pét’a for Petr, Rísa for Risard, Bóza for Bozena.

Articulatory and Perceptual Factors in Typology of Contrastive Palatalization Alexei Kochetov, University of Toronto Linguists have long been interested in the study of phonotactic patterns, or restrictions on the concatenation of sounds. It has long been recognized that palatalized consonants do not show the same distribution as their non-palatalized counterparts. For instance, a survey of both Slavic (Bulgarian, Polish, Russian, etc.) and non-Slavic languages (Irish, Lithuanian, Nenets, etc.) with contrastive palatalization shows that in these languages palatalized consonants are found only in a subset of positions where “plain” segments occur (Kochetov 1999). The most common environment for a palatalized consonant to occur is in a syllable onset (initial and medial prevocalic) and the least favourable one is a preconsonantal coda. It appears that if a language maintains the contrast in a coda environment, it is necessarily has it in the onset position. Also, if a language allows a plain-palatalized contrast before a consonant, it does so in the final coda position. Among the three places of articulation, palatalized coronals are more likely to be found in coda position than labials and velars (place markedness). The place of articulation of the following consonant is also of importance. This paper investigates some typologically common phonotactic restrictions on phonemic palatalized consonants and proposes a phonetic (articulatory and perceptual) explanation for these phenomena. The proposal is tested experimentally on data from Russian. The results suggest that the peculiarities of distribution of palatalized consonants can be explained by phonetic, articulatory and perceptual, factors interacting with an Optimality Theory-type phonological grammar. To test this view we investigated articulatory and perceptual properties of Russian plain and palatalized stops in a series of experiments. In an articulatory magnetometer study a Russian speaker read nonsense phrases of the type taC (C)apy, where C stands for any of the consonants /p/, /t/, /p′/, and /t′/. This gave us all possible types of clusters (16) with respect to palatalization and homo-/hetero-organicity (e.g. pt, pt′, p′t, p′ t′, pp′, p′ p′, etc.). For each cluster articulatory gestures, or movements of the lips, tongue tip, and tongue body, were recorded and measured. The results show that the main indicator of secondary palatal articulation is tongue body raising and fronting (cf. Bolla 1981, Bondarko 1981). No complete assimilation to the following consonant (C′C → CC or CC′ → C′C′ was found: a palatalized C′1 (_C) was significantly different from the respective plain C1 (_C) in terms of tongue body height. However, this difference was less substantial than before vowels (_V). A preconsonantal C′ was found to retain its tongue body height to a greater extent before a hetero-organic C2. This was particularly true for /t′/. Even less articulatory difference was observed for plain and palatalized C1 before a palatalized C2. Homorganicity and place of articulation were also important factors here. In a perceptual study the nonsense stimuli obtained in the previous experiment were presented to twelve Russian listeners. The subjects were asked to identify the consonants of interest in phrases taC (C)apy by pushing the keys corresponding to the phonemes /p/, /t/, /p′/, and /t′/. As was expected, least identification errors were found in environments where articulatory differences between plain and palatalized consonants were most robust (e.g. prevocalic onset) and most mistakes were made in the least salient contexts (e.g. preconsonantal coda, esp. where C2 is homorganic). The contrast between /p/ and /p′/ was less reliably identified than the distinction between /t/ and /t(′)/. More errors were made before a palatalized C2 rather than before a plain one. Thus, assimilation with respect to palatalization (C′C → CC and CC′ → C′C′ was found on the perceptual level, but it was based on articulatory differences. The assimilation pattern corresponds to the observed phonotactic restrictions on the plain-palatalized contrast. The results suggest that specific restrictions on plain-palatalized contrast found in the phonological grammar of Russian and other languages are motivated by articulatory and perceptual factors. It is argued, however, that the synchronic grammars do not encode the knowledge of phonetic substance (contra the view taken by Optimality Theory (cf. positional markedness; Prince and Smolensky 1993 or licensing by cue, Steriade 1997). Rather the observed phonotactic patterns result from the interaction of the phonetic factors with the phonological grammar during language acquisition. References Bolla, K. 1981. A Conspectus of Russian Speech Sounds. Cologne: Boelau. Bondarko, L.V. 1981. Fonetičeskoe opisanie jazyka i fonologičeskoe opisanie reči. Moscow: Nauka. Kochetov, Alexei. 1999. “Phonotactic Constraints on the Distribution of Palatalized Consonants.” Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics. Holland Academic Graphics. Prince, Alan and Paul Smolensky 1993. Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Ms., Rutgers University. Steriade, Donca. 1997. Phonetics in Phonology: The Case of Laryngeal Neutralization. Ms., University of California, Los Angeles. Czech Quantity: Proto-Slavic Accentology Mark Pisaro, University of Chicago The purpose of this paper is to analyze vowel quantity in several Czech dialects to determine the relationship between Czech quantity and Proto-Slavic accentology. Making use of what we know from existing studies (Hruška, Gebauer), together with a focused analysis of selected manuscripts dating from the thirteenth century, and further aided by the work that historical linguistic studies has provided in the reconstruction of Proto-Slavic (Timberlake, Dybo), the present work will analyze the development of quantitative vocalic relationships in several Southern Bohemian dialects. The comparative historical method is used combined with dialect geography. The paper concentrates on selected lexical items, mostly nouns, that have good Proto-Slavic pedigrees and that are relevant for answering the questions that relate to the expected reflexes of the canonical Proto-Slavic accentological paradigms: acute oxytonic, acute barytonic, and circumflex. The dialects cited often exhibit patterns different from the literary language and should be taken into consideration when applying Czech data to arguments regarding e.g. the distribution of the neo-acute and the lengthening of short vowels under retracted stress from the neo-acute, the validity of the neo-circumflex, the lexical items identified as acute oxytonic, acute barytonic, and circumflex, etc. Several dialects in southwestern Bohemia (the Chod dialects, the dialect of Stříbro, and the dialects of Doudlebsko) that preserve what appear to be the most ancient reflexes of the neo-acute in masculine monosyllabic nouns and which are most reliable in preserving acute length will be examined. Special attention will be given to the Chod dialects around Domažlice which have preserved older patterns in the feminine (j)o-stem nouns than the literary language and which also exhibit more reliable reflexes of the neo-acute.

Panel: 29E-4: Myth in Literature Chair: Tatyana Buzina, Yale University Slot: December 29, 2000, 7:00–9:00 p.m.

Myth in Čexov's Plays: Isomorphisms and Deviations Vera Zubarev, University of Pennsylvania There are some names in Čexov’s plays, which may suggest references to mythology. For instance, the name Arkadina in The Seagull can be interpreted as derived from Arcadia and the names Elena and Sonja in Uncle Vanja allude to mythological Sophia and Helen who in the cosmogonic myth represent an opposition between murderous chaos and divine order. As the further analysis reveals, it is not only their structure, but functioning, as well, that suggest possible allusions to mythology. The question arises: to what extent mythological paradigms represented in Čexov’s plays are isomorphic to the classic myth and what is the meaning of deviations observed in his mythological structures? At this point, I would like to talk about the technique of establishing of isomorphisms between the literary and mythological texts. My analysis will be based on predispositioning theory by Aron Kacenelinbojgen in which he discusses styles and methods of establishing correspondences between the parts of the system: programming, predispositioning, and randomness. Programming is a formation of complete and consistent linkages between all the stages of the systems’ development. Predispositioning is a formation of semi-efficient linkages between the stages of the system’s development. Randomness is a formation of inconsistent linkages between the stages of the system’s development. All methods are combined in the process of creation/interpretation. Thus, some mythological allusions, such as Arkadina-Arcadia or Elena-Helen, can be made directly (programming), others, such as Marina-Marena in Uncle Vanja, require a more sophisticated multi-stage analysis (predispositioning). After isomorphic structures are established one can talk about deviations in order to see the peculiarity of the artistic system. Deviations may link to either a modification or a reconstruction of a mythological paradigm. The latter appears when the change of the sign of the classic paradigm is observed. For instance, one can talk about a decaying Arcadia in The Seagull, for the sign of the mythological paradigm is changed from positive (blossoming) to negative (degradation). This may also clarify the peculiarity of dramatic genre of Čexov’s plays some of which he subtitled as comedy.

Passion and Death: Gandel′sman's “Medea” Cycle Natalie Smith, University of Texas, Austin One of the most interesting, yet little-known voices in Russian émigré literature is the poet Vladimir Gandel′sman. Although his roots lie in the literary traditions of the past—Nabokov, Xodasevič, Cvetaeva, and more recently Brodskij—Gandel′sman’s poetry has been acclaimed by Brodskij himself as the greatest poetic innovation printed in the twentieth century. At once postmodern in its lyrical cacophony and in its appropriation of wide-ranging sources, Gandel′sman’s poetry also has traditional foci of love and loss. It is the yearning of an émigré for his homeland and the preservation of enshrined memory, which for an exile never becomes worn or faded by contact with reality. Particularly in “Stixi odnogo cikla” from Dolgota dnja (1998), sex and death are explored in the context of two myths: the garden of Edenic innocence before realization that passion, love and life are all transitory—and Medea, who has given up her life to Jason, and when he pushes her out of his life there is nothing left (see Shklar, Ordinary Vices). This paper analyzes three interrelated themes in “Stixi odnogo cikla”: 1) mythological symbolism, 2) passion, at once creative and desirous to control, and 3) death/preservation of memory. These poems take as their first point of departure the mythological garden of Eden. The impossibility of lovers’ true oneness inspires Gandel′sman’s violent image of peeling skin, the removal of physical barriers. Intangible barriers, including jealousy and eventual estrangement of lovers, are even harder to overcome. Thus the narrator confesses: “ja tebja ljublju, slovno ty umerla,” and, “neuželi tebja ne budet potom,” predicting the temporary nature of relationships and human mortality after the Fall. At the same time sex is equated with loss of the self or death; sexual union is “zabven′e” and “gibel′”. Passion is momentary (“na mgnoven′e”), yet beyond is only nothingness. The desire to limit the beloved, to control, fixes the beloved and the affair in the past. Gandel′sman then interprets Medea’s murderous rage as violence inherent in physical passion. Passion’s drive to possess and annihilate both the self and the beloved is blamed on an insane God, who created humankind and sexual passion. The sex/violence dyad is expressed in the narrator’s remark that nothing is more natural than destruction (“net ničego estestvennej, čem gibel′”). Thus jealousy is natural in Medea’s liaisons with Jason and the sculptor Oistr; indeed, this passionate vicious circle inspires the poetic cycle. Likewise Oistr’s gravestone sculpture marks the transformation of flesh, blood and bones into artistic reminders of dead loved ones preserved within a tomb. Even the earth’s rock skeleton becomes a tomb, incorporating the bodies of Medea’s children. After all, the passion that inspired these twelve poems is also buried in the irretrievable past. Therefore sex and death are a metaphor for destructive creativity— destructive, because while it seeks to create, it also traps the original inspiration as if in a tomb of poetry.

The Prisoner of the Caucasus: Nearly Two Centuries of Literary Succession Nonna Danchenko, Victoria University of Wellington Hardly could A. Puškin have thought when writing his poem The Prisoner of the Caucasus that its title would give rise to such a rich seminal tradition in Russian literature. And yet it did. Why? What is there in the nature of the mountainous Caucasus and Caucasian warfare that compelled and inspired residents of the Russian plains—A. Puškin, M. Lermontov, L. Tolstoj and V. Makanin to write about the Caucasus exploiting the same title (or nearly the same for Makanin)? This paper dwells on some literary and cultural aspects of the poems and short stories that maintain this literary tradition as well as gives a survey of the historical background that feeds it. It also traces the evolution of plennik into plennyj and makes references to the film of the same title directed by S. Bodrov.

Panel: 29E-5: Petersburg Texts, Petersburg Culture Chair: Ilya Vinitsky, University of Pittsburgh Slot: December 29, 2000, 7:00–9:00 p.m.

Ešče raz k voprosu o genezise “peterburgskogo teksta”: Ledjanoj dom Lažečnikova i peterburgskij kanon Dan Ungurianu, Vassar College Основной канон петербургского текста хорошо изучен в работах Топорова, Лотмана, Долгополова, Минц и др. В последнее время происходит расширение его поля, главным образом за счет выявления малых и периферийных фрагментов. При этом вне рамок канона странным образом остается истроический роман Лажечникова Ледяной дом, который пользовался огромной популярностью на протяжении многих десятилетий— сначала как произведение высокой литературы, а затем как книга, входившая в непременный круг детского чтения. Между тем, Ледяной дом представляет собой яркий петербургский текст как в “экстенсивном” плане (произведение о городе), так и в “интенсивном” плане (особая петербургская картина мира). Во-первых, в романе присутствуют маркированные физические черты Петербурга (пустоты в пейзаже, резкие контрасты, важная роль водной рамки города, странность климата, смешение Европы, России и Востока и др.). Во-вторых, Петербург у Лажечникова изображен как умышленный, фантасмагорический город, где жизнь разыгрывается как театральное действие, в котором придворная феерия переплетается с политической интригой, а святочный маскарад—со шпионажем и провокацией. В-третьих, миражность города имеет метафизическую подоплеку, причем отрицательного свойства. Петербург предстает как инфернальный город, из-за великолепных декораций которого зияет бездна, шевелится хаос, проглядывает мир иной. К тому же Петербург окутан эсхаталогическими предчувствиями; над городом и его обитателями постоянно витает угроза гибели. И наконец, Лажечников не ограничивается постулированием дурной метафизики Петербурга, но стремится к ее преодолению в нравственной и исторической перспективе. За исключением частностей, Лажечников не вносит каких-либо оригинальных черт в петербургскую картину мира. Но важно помнить, что роман опубликован в 1834–35 гг. и, таким образом, оказывается в положении одного из Ур-текстов петербургской традиции наряду с произведениями Пушкина и Гоголя. Интересен Ледяной дом и для определения удельного веса составляющих петербургской парадигмы, среди каковых можно выделить четыре компонента: 1) изначальная семантическая заданность, 2) культурно-литературная традиция, 3) исторические обстоятельства, 4) поэтика периода. В случае Лажечникова явно преобладает последний элемент. Петербург Ледяного дома генерирован по законам романтической поэтики в ее “неистовом,” френетическом варианте. Замечательно и то, что некоторые центральные мотивы романа приобрели исключительную важность в эпоху символизма, когда петербургская традиция русской литературы собственно и была осознана как некий единый текст. Сюда относятся: вселенский холод—космический ветер, маскарад, шпиономания и провокация и др. Речь не идет о прямых аллюзиях на Лажечникова, поскольку Ледяной дом в начале века вряд ли воспринимается как серьезный объект цитации. Однако трудно представить, чтобы оставленная в детской книга могла полностью изгладиться из творческой памяти ее повзрослевших читателей. В любом случае, роман Лажечникова не стоит упускать из виду при расшифровке генома петербургского текста русской литературы.

Mediation of Place: The Stranger in Gogol′'s “Portrait” Kristin Peterson, Ohio State University The terms space and place have long histories and bear with them a multiplicity of meanings and connotations which reverberate with other debates. Space may call to mind the realm of the chaos of simultaneity and multiplicity. Place can raise the image of one’s place in the world, which is constructed out of a specific arrangement of social relations, meeting and weaving together at a particular point. As Robert Maguire has shown, the notions of space and place are extremely prominent among Nikolaj Gogol′’s works and are an essential part of his world view (Maguire, Exploring Gogol). In this paper I seek to define Gogol′’s sense of place by examining the short story “Portrait” through the lens of the rhetorical device of the stranger, a link to the outside, which is nevertheless itself part of what constitutes the conception of place. Gogol′’s Petersburg stories included in Arabesques are centered on the theme of alienation. In each of the stories alienation from society is seen through the eyes of the stranger. The trope of the stranger functions on three levels --the spatial, temporal and psychological. Gogol′’s strangers are displaced physically, through the portrayal of foreignness, as represented in “Portrait”; temporally, as figured in “Nevskij Prospect,” through the use of dream sequencing; and psychologically, through the image of insanity as portrayed in “Diary of a Madman.” This paper focuses on physical displacement and the theme of alienation as an inseparable element of foreignness in order to outline Gogol′’s rhetorical use of the stranger in “Portrait.” The Russian terms neznakomec and postoronnij are used to refer to the stranger, although in some cases they are also translated into English as ‘unknown person’ or ‘outsider’. Postoronnij is derived from the word storonnij ‘side’ or ‘direction’, and is related to so storony, ‘from a distance, from another place.’ Postoronnij then can refer to either “that which is outside” or “he/she who remains outside.” Strangers, therefore, are entities who remain outside the society or community where they currently reside. My interpretation of Gogol′’s strangers will include emphasis on the devil-tempter Petromixali, who is able to negotiate cultural boundaries (supernatural—natural) and mediate social categories (he is able to make Čertkov rich). Gogol′’s liminal character occupies a state “betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention and ceremony” (Victor Turner, The Ritual Process). The liminal location, the gap or hole which the devil has taken up to live, writes Gogol′, “is not like the capital, not like a village, … everything that settles out of the living capital is here.” The artist of Part II designates Petromixali as the Anti-Christ, one who is neither here nor there. I postulate that Gogol′’s devil is related to the founder of St. Petersburg, the artist/creator Petr Alekseevič, who traveled Europe under the name Peter Mixail(ovič). I conclude that in “Portrait” there is often a metonymic slide from being a stranger to feeling estranged and vice versa. By examining outsideness through the image of the stranger as a locus from which social and physical marginalization may be articulated, I am able to show that Gogol′’s stranger is a liminal character.

In Search of the Petersburg Theme Jennifer J. Day, Indiana University This paper is devoted to a re-examination of the so-called “Petersburg myth,” that network of cultural constructs so intimately bound up with the literature in and of Petersburg, with a view toward defining its fate in terms of the entire twentieth century. In their respective works, the two recognized authorities on the subject, Nikolaj Anciferov (Duša Peterburga, 1922) and Vladimir Toporov (“Petersburg and the ‘Petersburg Text’” in Russian Literature, 1984), do not extend their analyses any further than the works of Konstantin Vaginov, whom Toporov considers “the one who closed the Petersburg theme.” Where does it go after the early part of the twentieth century? Solomon Volkov, in his St. Petersburg: A Cultural History (1995), extrapolates his discourse on the Petersburg myth to the present day, but provides no coherent theoretical framework for illustrations of what he calls the “Petersburg branch of literary modernism abroad” or contemporary Petersburg authors. In my discussion I will present my definition of what I will call the “Petersburg theme” in Russian literature; base this definition in standard Petersburg texts of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; and then go on to apply my findings to later works of Russian literature of the twentieth century, with special emphasis on Acmeist Petersburg, and including those of Vladimir Nabokov, Iosif Brodskij, and Andrej Bitov. I will address the question of whether émigré texts can be considered to participate in the Petersburg theme. In formulating my definition of the Petersburg theme, I rely to some degree on the approaches of Anciferov and Toporov. If the former designed his study to reveal the “spirit of the city” through its literature, the latter makes the correspondence work in two directions, so that the “spirit of literature” becomes visible in the city, and even aware of itself. First, I understand the term “Petersburg theme” to refer to those texts of Russian literature which depict Petersburg with pointed reference to both its own intertextual tradition and its existential co-dependence on this tradition. Furthermore, I understand this tradition to rest on an essentially dualistic value system characterized by a simultaneous dependence on irreconcilable impulses toward creation and those toward destruction. Such impulses, in their various embodiments from text to text, in this case necessarily lend an ethical dimension to aesthetic representation. Second, the Petersburg theme must operate in terms of a codependence between text and non-text. The implicit and necessary link between the life of the city and the life of the text is understood in terms of a mutual interdependence so well established that it is impossible to separate the existence of one from the other. Because of this dynamic aspect of the theme, my approach to examining texts will also include aspects of cultural semiotics, the framework for which was laid (specifically for Petersburg) by Jurij Lotman in his Simvolika Peterburga i problemy semiotiki goroda, 1984. Using case studies from Vladimir Nabokov (his novels Mary, The Defense, Pnin, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Ada, Look at the Harlequins! and his autobiography Speak, Memory); Iosif Brodskij (selected poems both from his Russian and American years, as well as his collections of essays Less than One and On Grief and Reason); and Andrej Bitov (Puškin House), I will have occasion to address new problems in characterizing the Petersburg theme for the twentieth century. What happens to the theme when the author is separated in space and time from the physical reality of the city? Here not only must the spatial dimensions of Petersburg as both a real and metaphysical place, but the legitimacy of nostalgia as a foil to memory must be taken into account. Is memory strong enough to function as “non-text” in the necessary interaction between text and non-text that constitutes the theme? Also relevant will be the issue of St. Petersburg’s transformation into Leningrad (and, latterly, vice versa); I will argue that literary treatments of the new realities of Soviet life in Leningrad do not necessarily contradict the fundamental cultural models of the Petersburg theme. Finally, what place, if any, can postmodernism have in the structure of the Petersburg theme? Many of the texts under consideration have formal features or thematic concerns clearly associated with postmodern design. I will maintain, however, that the Petersburg theme, in its association of ethics with aesthetics, does not endorse the true intent of the postmodern mode.

The Wanderlust of a Clerk: Pretenderism in Gogol′'s “Diary of a Madman” Jonathan Stone, University of California, Berkeley Aksentij Popriščin, the hero of Gogol′’s “Diary of a Madman” (1835), comes to the realization that he is no ordinary St. Petersburg clerk, but actually Ferdinand VIII, King of Spain. By shedding his name and rank in favor of a more royal identity Popriščin engages in a tradition that had played a significant role in Russian history since the seventeenth century—he is a false pretender (samozvanec). By the mid-1830s the theme of pretenderism had already come to prominence in both literature and histories (most notably for my discussion in the works of Karamzin and Puškin). As I hope to show, in fashioning his madman Gogol′ draws heavily from previous and contemporary depictions of pretenders, while he also makes important alterations and additions to this tradition by recontextualizing it in the hierarchical world of the post-Petrine bureaucracy. Gogol′ delves into the psychological motivations of a pretender while he also molds the concept of pretenderism to fit his own discourse on the lot of a civil servant in nineteenth- century St. Petersburg. Popriščin is a noble creature. Yet he expresses this critical facet of his identity with two quite different Russian terms—he is a dvorjanin and he is of blagorodnoe proisxoždenie. The first of these etymologically distinct words implies state conferred nobility (possessed by all clerks over the twelfth grade of the Table of Ranks) while the second denotes an inherent, inborn quality. Popriščin uses his nobility to set himself apart from the motley St. Petersburg crowd. Therefore he must distance himself from his rank and his utterly commonplace dvorjanstvo in order to seek out and embrace his blagorodstvo. Popriščin’s belief in his own inner greatness compels him to discard his identity as titular counselor Popriščin and discover that he is indeed of blagorodnoe proisxoždenie—he is a king. Like all pretenders he usurps another’s biography and lineage in order to justify his own true value. By drawing out his blagorodstvo, Popriščin’s pretenderism combats the depersonalizing forces of the bureaucracy which threaten to deprive him of any individuality whatsoever.

Discussant: Ekaterina Yudina, University of California, Riverside

Panel: 29E-6: Integrating Cultural Studies into the Russian Language Classroom Chair: Yvonne Howell, University of Richmond Slot: December 29, 2000, 7:00–9:00 p.m.

Real Life, Real News: Radio and Print Media Via the Internet as Resources in the Language Classroom Kathleen Ahern, University of North Carolina, Greensboro The battle for enrollments pushes teachers of Russian language to look beyond the traditional conceptions of course and classroom. In addition, students now demand an expansion of the traditional language course content, seeking a broad awareness of culture and tradition incorporated with language proficiency. The multi-level course presents an alternative that takes advantage of available classroom technology and builds upon the communicative approach to language acquisition. In my most recent foray into the multi-level arena, the incorporation of radio and print media via the Internet provided extensive resources for the inclusion of cultural studies in the language classroom. In addition, these materials proved invaluable for engaging students of all levels in communication activities. Seventeen students (three third-year students and fourteen evenly divided between first and second year) met together for fifty minutes, three times per week, using the Prentice Hall Golosa/V puti series, which utilizes a communicative approach. After an initial warm-up period incorporating all levels, the groups (first, second and third year) rotated through a set pattern of learning situations that steered students through group work, individual work, and work with the instructor. Each learning situation concluded with some type of evaluation, oral or written. The third-year group worked on semester-long portfolios. The portfolio work often took these students out of the classroom into the Multimedia Center, where they watched films, listened to radio broadcasts via the Internet, created web resource materials or videotaped interviews with native Russian speakers from the Greensboro community. The portfolios included summaries of these broadcasts, articles, web sites, and interviews and the third-year students, acting as mentors, peer tutors or guides, presented these materials to small groups of first and second-year students, actively incorporating culture and current events with active acquisition of language. The strength of the multi-level classroom is precisely that the students’ various levels offer a resource that is absent in a classroom setting where students are starting from the same skill level and are aiming for similar end-levels of proficiency. Using the resources unique to this class setting encourages beginning students by showing them success, while helping continuing students to see their own progress. This paper will focus on the development of the portfolio materials, available resources on the Internet, and the appropriate applications of these materials in the quest to incorporate culture into the language classroom.

Developing Oral Communication Skills in Advanced Russian Irene Walter, St. Olaf College One of the pedagogical challenges in teaching Advanced Russian is designing ways to push students’ oral communication skills to a level of communicative competence approximating the level of a generally educated native Russian student. This ambitious goal is more attainable than one might think. In the senior Russian course on The Russian Press that I have been teaching for a number of years I usually have a group of eight to twelve Russian language majors. Most of them have come back to this, their final college semester, straight from spending a semester in Russia. (Prior to the semester abroad most of them have had six semesters of the Russian language taken at St. Olaf College.) In other words, these are experienced language learners capable of making further and more challenging advancement in their language skills. Two years ago I took part in a summer workshop on incorporating Oral Communication credit into various content courses across the curriculum. The workshop, led by the Speech- Communication faculty, was offered by St. Olaf College and supported by federal grant funds. The basic idea of Oral Communication Across the Curriculum is to introduce students to principles of effective oral communication through assigned readings, lectures, class discussions, and other instructional features of the course, including a variety of assessments (the instructor’s, that of pairs, as well as self-assessments). Course assignments provide opportunities to practice speaking skills and may take a variety of forms: manuscripted or extemporaneous speeches, debates, student-led discussions, group presentations, individual interviews, watching and discussing Glasnost Film Festival documentaries followed up by role-play, problem-solving, etc. As a participant of the workshop I had to design discipline and course specific portfolios of assignments and evaluations. How do these oral communication strategies work in classroom practice? If, for example, I had to give a segment on speech presentation, I would start by giving an outline of various genres of speeches along with the particular features that pertain to each genre. This would be followed by a discussion of appropriate speech topics and goals. Next would come discussion about the body of the speech (introduction, purpose statement, theses, supporting information, use of quotations, transitions, conclusion, and summary). Students would be instructed to pay close attention to the alertness of their listeners. They would also be asked to stay within concrete time limits, and the evaluation forms would be distributed. The next class period would then be devoted to the students’ speech presentations. I have taught the course on Russian Press incorporating Oral Communication credit for the last two years and intend to continue to do so in the future. It has been my experience that the variety of techniques (most of them come from Speech-Communication principles) not only enhance the course by providing a lively variety to its content, but they also significantly contribute to the development of oral skills: speaking, listening, interacting within a group and effective communication. It is possible to apply oral communication techniques to a variety of language level courses. While teaching various courses I have observed that these methods help to foster student engagement with the course content, with communication concepts, with their own ideas, and with one another. I intend to accompany my presentation with a variety of handouts, which I will share with interested colleagues.

Folktales in the Russian Language Classroom Elena Kornienko, McGill University The present theoretical and experimental research is driven in part by the recognized need for more realistic models of L2 learning and instruction in respect to different types of world knowledge, different perceptions of foreign literary texts. The study investigates the system of values, attitudes and cultural background of foreign students learning Russian to their reading comprehension of unfamiliar cultural stories (Russian folktales). Usually in folktales authors attempt to convey their meanings and human values, their world knowledge by selecting and using conventions that exist in a certain culture. In this respect reading comprehension of Russian folktales has been examined in the context of narrative discourse rather than its word- by-word decoding. The starting point for my research is the semiotic theory of M. Baxtin (1986), according to which a text is a shared system of signs, understandable to native speakers of a language who use certain world knowledge and conventions existing in a certain culture in order to decode textual information. Thus, a text is analyzed from the point of view of two contexts— the author’s and the reader’s. If their contexts coincide, natural textual communication is possible. If not, the textual interpretation of the addressee becomes problematic and demands additional cognitive processing to identify its meaning and content. But even in the optimal case when the cultural contexts of addresser and addressee coincide, each of them has his own structure, depending on his own background knowledge that, to some extent, makes the process of comprehension difficult. To sum up, success in foreign language communication is possible only if the second language learners develop appropriate skills and gain relevant background knowledge which allows them to comprehend socio–cultural aspects of a foreign text (Donin and Silva, 1993; Chen and Donin, 1997). Thus, it is important to focus more on the cultural context, normative values reflected in a folktale. This study of the impact of language and culture on learning situation represents a new perspective branch of discourse important for both psycholinguistics and foreign language teaching.

Discussant: David J. Galloway, Hobart and William Smith Colleges Time: 30A Panel: 30A-1: The Idiot Chair: Robin Feuer Miller, Slot: December 30, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m.

Myškin's Confessional Discourse Mirande Bissell, Princeton University A persistent criticism of Dostoevskij’s character Myškin—both from within The Idiot itself as well as from its readers—is that the prince is insufficiently humanized, strangely vacant. Near the close of the novel, Radomskij offers the prince a bleak view of himself and his actions, pointing to the “enormously great mass of intellectual convictions which [Myškin] with [his] extraordinary honesty … , [has] hitherto taken for true, natural, spontaneous convictions.” (The Idiot, Penguin edition, 584). This overly cerebral Myškin takes the blame for the ends of the novel’s main characters—tragic in the case of Nastas′ja Filippovna and Rogožin, farcical in Aglaja’s—although readers sympathetic to the idea (of compassion) embodied by Myškin have sought to extricate it from its carrier in the novel. And yet Dostoevskij explicitly intended his readers’ sympathies to extend not simply to the idea but to Myškin himself, a great Christian hero not by virtue of his comic credulity or misfortune, but because of his innocence (J. Bortnes, 1994, 10). While acknowledging Myškin’s lack of “definitiveness” and his unwillingness to “crowd others out of” life with his presence, M. M. Baxtin argues that “[h]is personality possesses the peculiar capacity to relativize everything that disunifies people and imparts a false seriousness to life.” Baxtin is able to praise Myškin because he locates the prince “on a tangent to life’s circle” and not wholly removed from it. (Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 173, 174). By contrast, Kovac argues that the generic force of the novel “removes the lyrical theme” and the “Swiss— sentimental-Enlightenment—logic” espoused in Myškin’s early monologues (Kovacs, 1986, 118–120; see also Danow, 1989, 69–71). The novel does not so much exile these monologues as devour and re-exhibit them in its own manner. This paper will examine Myškin’s two great monologue scenes (both at the Epančins’, upon his arrival to Petersburg, and at the soirée) as confessions. The theme of recovery and renewal of life runs through the novel, both in comic and tragic versions, and the prince’s confessional “parables” of his own recovery meld these two strains in a mature vision. It is through these confessions that Myškin both attracts and repels (often simultaneously) the characters around him, and it is in them that he most clearly remembers himself and articulates his sense of earthly life (incarnation). The confessions are further significant because the prince himself is asked to hear others’ confessions (again, of both the comic and tragic sort), and in order to do so, he must draw upon his accumulated sense of his own lived life (condensed, perhaps distorted, in his long speeches). It is in his role as confessor that we find the crux of Myškin’s anguish over how to “read” others without condemning, and, conversely, how to offer gifts without condescending.

A Drastic Cure: Prince Myškin as a Castrated Figure B. Rufus Johnson, University of Wisconsin, Madison The premise of this study holds that in Dostoevskij’s novel The Idiot, Prince Myškin was physically castrated while in Switzerland as a treatment for his convulsive disorder. Such an understanding resolves the persistent ambiguity surrounding the Prince’s impotent asexuality. This interpretation of the Prince meshes seamlessly with the images of castration that pervade the novel, imbuing them with deeper and more complex meaning. It also deepens and clarifies the tortured triangle of Prince Myškin, Rogožin, and Nastas′ja Filippovna. The premise of this study does not originate simply by drawing upon a prevalent but seemingly underdeveloped theme within the novel to explain some ambiguities about Prince Myškin’s character. Castration as treatment for convulsive disorders was, if not widespread, well-known as a sensational success among the medical community of mid-nineteenth century Europe. Suffering from epilepsy himself, Dostoevskij took a great interest in reading about its cause and treatment and most likely would have been familiar with the sensational cure. The said cure was publicized in the decade prior to Dostoevskij’s commencement on The Idiot. Since Dostoevskij used real events in his fictional works, it is not beyond logic to assume he would have incorporated this sensational cure for epilepsy into a work dealing with epilepsy. Furthermore, in 1863 Dostoevskij consulted Moritz Heinrich Romberg, who had cited this treatment for epilepsy in a publication of 1853. (At this point in my research, I have not found proof positive that Dostoevskij knew about this work, and until such proof is found, knowledge of the castration treatment on the part of Dostoevskij must be treated as an assumption. However, it is an assumption I feel merits pursuit.) Beyond chronological harmony of events, elements within the novel, beyond the theme of castration itself, point to an understanding of Myškin as physically castrated in treatment for his convulsions. Prince Myškin himself states that he received treatment for his epilepsy while in Switzerland at the hands of Dr. Schneider. Presumably he received the most advanced medical treatment of his day. The medical treatments Myškin reports he underwent parallel precisely the treatment given the man who was eventually castrated. Furthermore, Myškin ties his convulsive disorder to his “inability to marry.” Given the fact that Dostoevskij, who used his own epilepsy as a model for Prince Myškin’s, had seven children, the statement on Myškin’s part that his disorder caused his inability to marry is suspect. Following a more detailed analysis of the above points, this study will examine the novel through this interpretation of Prince Myškin as castrated in treatment for his convulsive disorder. Elements to be touched upon include: Rogožin’s relationship to the skopcy and his relationship to Myškin; the knife imagery in the novel; the return of Myškin’s convulsions; and the death of Nastas′ja Filippovna.

Iconography in Dostoevskij's Idiot Kerry Sabbag, Brown University This paper stems from and follows the path of Victor Terras’s commentary on the beauty of Nastas′ja Filippovna in Dostoevskij’s Idiot: “But as a vision, as the symbol of an ideal, it is an immediate revelation of the divine. Again, this makes more sense in an Orthodox Christian context than it does in a secular context. The Orthodox belief that ideally the human face has retained the divine features of God’s face, a belief on which the worship of icons is based, makes Prince Myškin’s reaction to Nastas′ja Filippovna’s portrait more understandable.” The purpose of this paper is to follow Terras’s line of investigation, by identifying moments or scenes in the text which may be read as reflecting iconography and explore what insights this approach may offer the reader. Significant moments in the text focusing on the concept of “lico”, both two- and three- dimensional, point to the importance of the concept of iconicity. A familiarity with Orthodoxy allows one to better understand Myškin’s desire the reach the divine in Nastas′ja Fillippovna through her face in all forms, as well as his pursuit of this divinity regardless of her behavior. Myškin’s efforts to protect faces and to offer comfort through a physical connection with the face reflect an attempt to reach the archetype contained in the image. In addition, the concept of the icon suggests a connection between the face, Myškin’s moral code, and his potential as a teacher. In this respect, the face, like the icon, represents a means of knowledge, both to Myškin as its primary reader and through him to other characters. As a means of exploring these ideas, I will employ the primary theories of C. S. Peirce’s system of semeiotic. Peirce’s trilateral configuration of signification provides rich potential for investigating the relationships between divinity, face, and icon as well as between Myškin and other characters. A reading of Idiot through Peirce’s system offers better access to the concept of the icon embedded in the text and facilitates an understanding of the significance of the icon to the text as a whole. Reference Terras, Victor. The Idiot: An Interpretation. Twayne’s Masterwork Studies 57. Boston: Twayne, 1990.

Discussant: Katherine Tiernan O'Connor, Boston University

Panel: 30A-2: New Readings of Puškin in Dialogue Chair: Megan Dixon, Principia College Slot: December 30, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m.

A Feast in the Time of Plague in the Light of the Demonic in Puškin Felix Raskolnikov, Michigan State University The goal of my presentation is to suggest a new interpretation of Puškin’s A Feast in Time of Plague. As is known, A Feast in Time of Plague is, for the most part, a translation of Wilson’s The City of Plague, and it is only Walsingham’s “Hymn to Plague” and Mary’s song that are original works by Puškin. Unlike other scholars, I believe that there are two Walsinghams and two Marys in Puškin’s tragedy. The former are ordinary people terrified by imminent death, whereas the latter are the bearers of opposite philosophical and ethical declarations. Their juxtaposition lies at the core of the tragedy (and of my presentation). Unlike other participants of the feast, Walsingham is the Chairman of the feast, a thinker and a poet who in a fit of sudden inspiration composes his famous “Hymn to Plague.” On the one hand, this “Hymn” opposes the superficial hedonism of the Young Man; on the other, it contradicts radically with the Christian ethical norms represented by the Priest and with Mary’s song which reveals a Christian ideal of self-sacrificial love. Walsingham’s “Hymn” is a bold challenge to God, for he not only rejects submission to His will, but also finds “unspeakable pleasure” in confrontation with Him. Therefore the Priest is right calling this “Hymn” “demonic,” whereas Mary’s song can be called, by contrast, “angelic.” What is Puškin’s attitude toward Walsingham and his “Hymn”? Unlike other scholars, who suggest that Puškin denounces it as the revelation of human hubris and claim that Walsingham undergoes a spiritual defeat, I believe that, whereas as a person he is devastated, as a romantic poet he is not. It is Walsingham’s “Hymn to Plague” that makes him a heroic and tragic figure; without it he is only an ordinary human being crushed by his personal grief. This does not mean, however, that Puškin renounces Christian ethical values. The finale of the tragedy testifies to the fact that the philosophical dispute between the Demonic idea of rebellion and heroic self-assertion, on the one hand, and the Christian idea of love and resignation, on the other, remains unresolved. In other words, in my opinion, Puškin finds truth and poetry in both Walsingham’s “Hymn” and in Mary’s song. The disharmony of these “truths” explains the dialogical and tragic nature of A Feast in Time of Plague, which, in this regard, anticipates Dostoevskij’s novels. It also demonstrates an inner conflict in Puškin between a Christian and a Romantic poet that can be observed not only in A Feast, but also in many of his other works of that period.

Was the Poor Knight Covetous and Was the Covetous Knight Poor? Yevgeny A. Slivkin, Grand Valley State University Realistic-historical commentaries on Puškin’s “little tragedy” The Covetous Knight were attempted by G. Gukovskij (“Puškin and the Problems of a Realistic Style”) and B. Tomaševskij (“Puškin and France”). Both scholars considered baron Phillip a moneylender without indicating any proof of his usury in the text. This fact caused a number of Russian scholars of subsequent generations to oppose this view and instead to consider the baron’s debtors as subjects of a feudal lord paying a regular contribution to their seigneur. As V. Vetlovskaja put it, “the social relations in the Middle Ages, let alone the Code of Chivalry, eliminate the very possibility of combining a feudal lord and a usurer in one person.” In my paper I argue that this statment is not historically accurate, for the famous Order of Templars (founded in Palestine in 1119 and destroyed in 1307 by the French king Philippe le Bel) was a single social entity that conducted battles, owned land, and practiced large-scale usury. By the method of close reading I reveal the evidence of baron Phillip’s money-lending in the text of The Covetous Knight as well as the anachronistic features of the knight-templar reflected in his image. In order to support the idea that Puškin might have a special infatuation with the knights- templars and their secret doctrine (this can also be suggested by the references to the history of The Order of Templars in the elegy “Andrej Shen′e” [noted by V. Vacuro] and the description of the devil-worshipping sect Jazidy in “The Journey to Arzrum”) I turn to his poem “The Legend” (also known under the title “Ballad about the Knight in Love with the Virgin”) which was written a year before The Covetous Knight. In my line of reasoning the epithet “poor”in reference to the hero of “The Legend” could designate something more than a lack of material wealth and an absence of elaborately decorated armor on the part of the knight, since “The Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon” (the name of the Jew in The Covetous Knight!) was the full name of the Order of Templars. While the source of Puškin’s poem has been identified as certain motifs from a collection of old German poems and a collection of medieval French fabliaux and legends (N. Sumcov, G. Frid, N. Gudzij, D. Jakubovič), I demonstrate that a highly plausible source for “The Legend” is the motif of the mortal passion of the templar (!) Brian de Bois- Guilber for the Jewish girl Rebecca in Ivanhoe (1819) by Walter Scott. In the conclusion of my paper I show that in The Covetous Knight and “The Legend” Puškin implicitly depicted the love triangle: The Goddess—The Knight—The Devil whose underpinnings are the alleged dualistic and erotic elements of the secret doctrine of the knights- templars.

Puškin and the Koran John Henriksen, American University in Cairo Following Edward Said’s vision of European Orientalism as a categorizing of the East as a monolithic, distanced, and exoticized Other to all that is western, one might be tempted to read Puškin’s “Imitations of the Koran” (1824) as just this sort of exoticization of Islam. Imitating the Koran and the culture around it would be tantamount to reducing them both to a kind of style, a decorative effect, a bit of authorial clothing to try on. But in fact it may be argued that Puškin’s Koranic imitations are precisely the opposite of orientalizing. If Orientalism proceeds by externalizing the other, Puškin proceeds in this poem by poetically internalizing the role of the prophet—or rather by playing with identification with and difference from this role. This dialectic of identification revolves around the image of a man who has received a total illumination through language and is called to communicate it to his people: a man who could as well, ignoring the difference between literary and religious language, be Puškin as Muhammad. The people of the Book of Islam in some ways may represent Puškin’s ideal literary audience. Thus it is not surprising to see Puškin return to the theme of the prophet two years later in his famous “Prophet” (1826), which begins with an image of thirsting in a desert that seems borrowed from his earlier Koranic imitation. Yet here its geopolitical connotations (of Islam, of the Arab world) have been erased or neutralized. What happens if we restore these Muslim connotations to Puškin’s later well-known self-image as prophet? Immediately there arise questions about the authority of the poet: is he like the Muslim praying submissive before God’s authority, receiving it from above? The later “Prophet” is most often read as a straightforward intimation that being a poet for Puškin is like receiving a heavenly message, as Muhammad did. But in the “Imitations” this is made more complex by Puškin playing both the role of the submissive recipient of prophecy in stanza 1, but also the role of the divinity speaking to him in stanzas 2–4, where Puškin assumes God’s own voice. Yet later, when in Part II he delivers an injunction to female modesty in dress, the position is not God’s, since the language is suggestive rather than commanding, nor is it Muhammad’s own, since it refers to “the prophet” in the third person. Thus the content is Muslim, but it is ostensibly being borrowed by Puškin himself, as pseudo-prophet, for his own non-Islamic purposes. Similarly, when in Part V the Koran’s injunction to almsgiving is phrased as a command to give part of one’s financial “gifts” (“darov”) to the poor, one inevitably thinks of Puškin’s own literary gifts being squandered foolishly or being handed down to those who need them. Thus the talk as a whole focuses on Puškin’s reception of the Koran not so much as a religious text, but as an inspiration as to the possibility of prophetic writing, of revelation. My contention is that Puškin’s view of the analogy between sacred and literary writing is not as stable as many generations of readers of “The Prophet” have believed, or as he himself may have wanted to believe, and that viewing his own deep dialectic with Islam may help clarify this.

Pleasures of the Plague: Puškin and Camus Sofya Khagi, Brown University Although it has become a commonplace of Camus studies to point out the writer’s interest in the classical Russian writers (with Dostoevskij reasonably in the lead), Puškin has not been considered in the context. This is a significant critical oversight: connections between the famous French existentialist and the “iconic” Russian poet are more than worth exploring. An examination of Camus’ biography reveals that Puškin figured quite prominently in the Frenchman’s imagination from an early age on, and that both Camus’ acquaintance with the Russian poet’s heritage (including Little Tragedies, virtually unknown to western readership) and the interest he took in Puškin’s works were profound. This paper aims at shedding light on the neglected issue. Keeping in mind The Plague’s key role in Camus’ oeuvre as well as its focal position in the history of the twentieth century novel, I’ve chosen to commence by investigating the links between The Plague and Puškin’s Feast at the Time of the Plague. As I shall demonstrate, juxtaposing Camus’ celebrated novel and Puškin’s “mini-play” discloses affinities between the two works that go way beyond similarities one could reasonably expect from narratives treating a common theme. It is my contention that The Plague may (and must) be read as, among other things, a response to Feast. I’ll substantiate this proposition by concentrating on the level of motifs, characters and functions in the two pieces. Using as a springboard Jakovlev’s, Terras’s, Loewen’s and Beliak’s-Virolainen’s views of the play and utilizing Cleanth Brooks’s insights on paradox in poetry, I offer an alternative reading of Little Tragedies in general and Feast at the Time of the Plague in particular as a linguistic, structural and thematic realization of oxymoron. Paying particular attention to the Russian’s transformations of Wilson’s original material and considering them side by side with Puškin’s earlier “Bacchanalian Song,” I’ll present Feast as a “developed oxymoron,”" powerfully dramatizing a paradoxical intermingling of the joy of “Existenz” and the horror of mortality. I’ll demonstrate that The Plague is building upon, complicating and enriching the very same paradoxes which are at the heart of Feast. Focusing on parallels between Rieux/Rambert/Tarrou- Walsingham, Father Paneloux-the Priest and Madam Rieux-Mary, I’ll show how The Plague reconstructs faithfully the whole gamut of conflicting sentiments and motivations arising in connection with pestilence in Feast. The paper will make it apparent that staging a dialogue between the two works produces a subtler understanding of both Camus’ existential masterpiece and its Russian predecessor.

Panel: 30A-3: Biography and Autobiography in Russian Literature Chair: Jennifer Ryan Tishler, Dartmouth College Slot: December 30, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m. Karolina Pavlova's Reminiscences and the Issue of Poetic Identity Donald Loewen, University of Wisconsin, Madison When Karolina Pavlova, one of nineteenth-century Russia’s most prominent woman poets and a woman widely known for her passionate devotion to poetry, decided to write her autobiography it would seem natural that she would provide some clues about her views on poetry and an assessment of her identity as a poet. Instead, the only known segment of Pavlova’s autobiography contains virtually nothing to mark its author as a poet. Granted, this fragment describes only Pavlova’s childhood and youth: one might argue that her years of poetry were to be treated in succeeding installments. Yet the autobiographies of Fet, Cvetaeva, Pasternak, Deržavin and others all show significant “markers” which identify the writer as a poet from childhood. In Pavlova’s case there is an abundance of witty, ironical prose, but no sign of the poet who emerged to become one of the pivotal figures in Russian literary society of the mid- 1840s. I would like to explore the striking dichotomy between the proud, poetry-obsessed Pavlova presented in memoirs and biographies, and the sensitive, imaginative figure revealed in Pavlova’s Reminiscences. Because of the peculiar character of Pavlova criticism, where the absence of substantial historical data about Pavlova’s life has been obscured by the constant recirculation of several very colorful, very derogatory memoir descriptions of Pavlova by her contemporaries, I will make a special effort to juxtapose the picture of Pavlova found in secondary literature with the portrait that emerges in Pavlova’s own prose. I will focus particularly on the “missing material” in this autobiography, the striking absence of any indication that the writing subject of this work was in fact an accomplished poet whose very survival depended on her literary gifts. Throughout, my approach is based on a methodology similar to that used by Lidija Ginzburg, Paul John Eakin, Jurij Lotman and others who believe that the connection between autobiography and “real life” is an important element in the study of autobiography. A second element in this paper, and one which is inextricably bound together with the issue of Pavlova’s self-identity as a poet, is the issue of gender politics. I will briefly analyze the biased attacks aimed at Pavlova during her lifetime and in succeeding decades, as well as recent corrective attempts by feminist critics. I will argue that Pavlova’s autobiography actually betrays virtually none of the anxiety that one might expect to find in the autobiography of a woman poet at this time (see Clyman and Vowles, Russia Through Women’s Eyes), and suggest why Pavlova might be an unusual example of a woman entering the “gender gap” in Russian literary circles of the nineteenth century.

Spinning Stanislavskij: The 1952 Introduction to My Life in Art Maude F. Meisel, Pace University Theater scholar N. D. Volkov’s ordeal as author of the introduction to the 1952 edition of Stanislavskij’s My Life in Art offers a revealing look at the “Procrustean bed” of socialist realism—as related both to the world of the theater and to the genre of autobiography. The innocuous blandness of the published introduction belies the intensity of the artistic and intellectual struggle preserved in the minutes of the editorial committee meeting that treated Volkov’s draft (in Baxrušin Theatre Museum archives). Analyzing the objections raised by the two most politically important committee members, it is possible not only to extrapolate very interesting material that must have been present in the missing original version of Volkov’s introduction, but also to characterize the underlying artistic and ideological problems with which the speakers are wrestling. In general they aim to cast Stanislavskij into the mold of a traditional socialist realist Revolutionary hero, which would make his book into the record of his heroic deeds as well as a major weapon in his struggle to bring the Revolution to the theater. At the same time, of course, the book would become a weapon in the permanent campaign to promote the regime and create ideologically effective art. In criticizing Volkov’s introduction, the committee focuses on his treatment of three interrelated aspects of Stanislavskij’s autobiography: personal life details, stylistic and writing issues, and concern with self-presentation. All three are intrinsic to the writing of autobiography, but very difficult to reconcile with the traditional image of the socialist realist Revolutionary hero. For instance, the hero-makers feel obliged to find ideological significance for frivolous pastimes. Likewise, they object to such material as Volkov’s discussion of Stanislavskij’s artistic choices in the areas of genre and form on the nominal grounds that stylistic matters have no importance and are unworthy of a traditional hero’s concern. Finally, the committee shows itself most uncomfortable with the self-presentational aspect of the work, for self-consciousness of any such kind should be completely alien to the selflessly dedicated Revolutionary hero. Unfortunately for the committee, this quality taints Stanislavskij both as actor and as autobiographer, and casts a problematic light not only on the accounts of working on acting technique, but also on the basic principle of Stanislavskij’s method that requires creatively but consciously combining life with art. In the last few pages of the minutes, Volkov makes a valiant attempt to oppose the committee. He borrows categories and terms from the previous speakers in an attempt to challenge their recommendations—and indeed, their position is so riddled with inherent contradictions that he has no difficulty doing so. However, the chairman of the committee responds with an analogy involving Mejerxol′d, and Volkov is obliged to capitulate. (Volkov had published a two-volume study of Mejerxol′d in the 20s, which doubtless left him vulnerable on this subject.) Overall the minutes offer an illuminating glimpse into the Regime’s relationship with the creative arts. The effort to develop an artistic system (socialist realism) for the reliable production of popular but regime-supporting art has interesting parallels with that of Stanislavskij (as described in My Life in Art) to discover reliable rules for the production of good acting. However, maintaining the “permanent revolution” through art, like discovering an infinitely renewable theory of acting that would never degenerate into a dead cliché, requires embracing both sides of a number of delicately balanced paradoxes: revolution and stasis, tradition and innovation, inspiration and technique, and life and art. The attempt to present Stanislavskij’s delicately balanced artistic quest as a one-sided ideological one vividly illustrates the regime’s telling inability to walk that tightrope. The “permanent revolution” becomes merely permanent, and all life and originality necessarily depart from any work of art or literary introduction that falls into its orbit.

Innovations to the Pseudo-Autobiographical Tradition in Jurij Trifonov's The House on the Embankment Juliette Petion, College of the Holy Cross In this paper, Jurij Trifonov’s The House on the Embankment is analyzed from the standpoint of pseudo-autobiography. Andrew Baruch Wachtel, in his study The Battle for Childhood: Creation of a Russian Myth, was the first to identify the genre of pseudo-autobiography in Russian literature and, accordingly, a brief summary of his definition is provided in my paper. Next, it is demonstrated that The House on the Embankment satisfies Wachtel’s conditions in both form and content. Trifonov, however, experiments with the genre. Whereas the traditional pseudo-autobiography is narrated in the first person, Trifonov’s novel contains alternating sections of first- and third-person narration, which gives the reader two perspectives of the narrated events. Wachtel stipulates that a pseudo-autobiography must be based on autobiographical material. The House on the Embankment presents an interesting case with regard to this condition, as well. While the first-person sections have an autobiographical basis, the third-person narrative about Glebov is mainly fictional. However, in contradiction to Fiona Björling’s claim that each of the two narratives belongs to its own genre (the third-person narrative to fiction, and the first-person insertions to autobiography), one can see that there is some cross-fertilization between the two. (See Bj&öuml;ling’s article “Jurij Trifonov’s The House on the Embankment: Fiction or Autobiography?” in Autobiographical Statements in Twentieth-Century Russian Literature, ed. Jane Gary Harris.) Furthermore, although a number of similarities between the author and the first-person narrator can be discerned, the two are not identical—which is the third component of Wachtel’s definition. Lastly, the complex voice structure (of author, narrator, and child) may also be discerned in The House on the Embankment, though Trifonov complicates the matter by adding the voice of the third-person narrator. But the role of the authorial voice is diminished in Trifonov’s text, as compared to the earlier pseudo-autobiographies analyzed by Wachtel. The absence of a strong authorial position suggests that Trifonov’s intention is not to provide readers with explicit moral judgments but rather to give us different points of view and let us draw our own conclusions.

Panel: 30A-4: The Philosophical Dimension of Russian Literature Chair: James West, University of Washington Slot: December 30, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m. The Crime and Punishment of Theory: A Study of Universality in the Novel Ilya Kliger, Yale University What is the nature, in literature, of spaces where philosophy might lurk? Thus can the most fundamental question that motivates this limited study be stated most broadly. It can be understood as an attempt to address the question of the relationship between philosophy and literature not in terms of conscious appropriation of ideas or historically determined overlaps in ideology but from the point of view of their formal characteristics. Thus, my paper provides a discussion of various modes in which the idea is represented in Crime and Punishment. Specifically, I will address the function of narrative voice, characterization, plot and, finally, the epilogue as a set of complex framing devices, intended to contextualize and thus render problematic the more straightforwardly philosophical tendencies within the novel. What we find in Crime and Punishment, and what generally distinguishes the novelistic method of treating ideas from the philosophical one, is precisely the predominance and density of framing mechanisms, whereby the universal is contextualized and thus revealed in its contingent, non- absolute status. While the universal in philosophical discourse remains disembodied, claiming freedom from all limiting context, a novelistically represented idea is one that is ironized, always already “fallen” into particularity. In the case of Crime and Punishment, I would argue, this is true not only about specific ideas expressed by particular characters but about whatever generalizations might be attributable to the implied author as well.

Dostoevskij and Schelling's Philosophy of Freedom Tatyana Buzina, Yale University This paper will analyze Schelling’s treatise Of Human Freedom in comparison with Dostoevskij’s views of freedom as expressed in his novel The Devils. There is no direct proof that Dostoevskij read Schelling, although there is also no proof that he did not. I will proceed with my comparison since I believe that, first of all, it can exist as a typological study, and, second of all, Schelling was so influential in Russia (see S. Pratt, Russian Metaphysical Romanticism) that Dostoevskij was bound to get at least a whiff of his ideas even if he did not study Schelling’s texts proper. Four staples of Schelling’s system are starkly similar to Dostoevskij’s worldview. These four tenets are the following: Man is determined by his own choice made out of his own free will. The ultimate goal of human striving is deification. Deification is becoming one with God, it should be achieved through prayer and contemplation (J. Pelikan Christian Tradition). However, when man chooses evil over good, he is motivated by his desire to become God not with God, but outside of God. In Dostoevskij’s terms, man wants to become man-god, and this is the cause of all the evil in the world. Schelling envisions two kinds of will: the self-will, blind, passionate and unreasonable, and the will proper, enlightened by reason. It is the first kind of will that strives to become outside of God what it could only be with God and it is, therefore, that will that leads to all human misfortune and all the evil in the world. Man is determined through the choice made in accordance with his own free will. Man’s choice for Schelling is a single and final act that determines his future. Schelling’s stance might be compared to the Christian doctrine of predestination. The similarity lies in the fact that both in Lutheranism and in Schelling’s teaching, man’s destiny is foreordained. The crucial difference, however, is in the agent that foreordains the destiny: it is God in any form of Christian predestination and man himself in Schelling’s philosophy. Man is fated, but this fate comes from his own volition. For Dostoevskij, man’s existence in the world is conceived in Schellingian terms: firstly, a man is determined by his own decision. Secondly, even though Dostoevskij’s character is faced with a string of choices, there is a point after which choice is no longer possible, and man’s future life is thoroughly determined by his previous actions (Stavrogin). This parallels Schelling’s sole moment of choice. Thirdly, Dostoevskij is very concerned with the distinction between “volja” and “svoboda”—in English we can roughly translate these terms as ‘liberty/will’ and ‘freedom’—which correspond to Schelling’s self-will and will. And fourthly, in their exercise of the self-will Dostoevskij’s characters are motivated by the same desire that consumed Schelling’s man: craving for deification. The Devils presents its readers with multiple examples of striving for deification. Kirillov seeks to be deified through the ultimate exercise of self-will, i.e., through suicide. Šatov seeks deification through deifying the people as a collective entity. Marija Timofeevna strives to present herself as the second Virgin Mary at the side of the new antichrist unbound by God’s will. Verxovenskij envisions himself as the new Peter, the apostle of the antichrist who is destined to build a new church. This paper seeks to explore these cases in detail linking Dostoevskij’s characters’ philosophy with the philosophy of Romanticism through the parallel reading of Dostoevskij and Schelling.

The Unified State and the Unified Mind: Social and Moral Utopia in Zamjatin's My and Plato's Republic Sara Stefani, Yale University Evgenij Zamjatin’s novel My has emerged as one of the most important works of twentieth- century Russian literature. Because of his anti-utopian description of the hypothetical “One State” of the future, Zamjatin has often been hailed as a prophet who foresaw the advent of the totalitarian Soviet regime. Only a few critics, however, have remarked on the striking parallels between Zamjatin’s One State and the ideal community envisioned by Plato in his Republic. T. R. N. Edwards, for example, briefly notes in a footnote in his study the characteristics shared by the two communities, but then dismisses the matter. In a recent article, A. I. Semenova treats the parallels between My and Republic in greater detail, but analyzes only the most salient similarities between the political structures of the societies in both works. Indeed, the correspondences between Zamjatin’s futuristic society and that of Plato are so extensive, one could argue that Plato’s philosophy forms the skeletal frame on which My was constructed. Where Edwards and Semenova fall short, however, is in viewing Zamjatin’s treatment of Plato purely in terms of its political implications. It is my contention that by exploring the Platonic underpinnings of Zamjatin’s work, we can see beyond the question of political ideology and examine a neglected aspect of the novel: that of Zamjatin’s criticism of Plato’s conception of morality. While Republic presents Plato’s vision of the ideal future society, we should keep in mind that Plato is concerned first and foremost in his work with defining morality. According to Plato, the unified state in which the class of workers willingly submits to the classes of guardians and philosopher-kings is also the ultimately moral state. This version of the state, in turn, is meant to serve as a paradigm for the ultimately moral person, whose mind is completely unified, with all desires and passions subjugated to reason and rationality. It is this definition of morality as dependent on unification that Zamjatin attempts to subvert. Current readings may take it for granted that the state depicted in My is not a perfectly moral one. However, Zamjatin’s text suggests that it should be read as questioning not only Plato’s conception of the ideal state, but also his conception of morality as it applies to both an individual and an entire society. Moreover, this correspondence between Zamjatin’s writing and Plato’s philosophy seems hardly coincidental, but rather conditioned by a revived interest in Plato in Russia during the period just before and after the revolution, i.e., before and during Zamjatin’s writing of My. My paper will be divided into three principal sections. The first will discuss the textual parallels between Zamjatin’s state and Plato’s community in order to establish a framework of comparison from within which to work. Section two will briefly discuss the possible importance of contemporary discussions of Plato to the origins of Zamjatin’s novel, as well as the role some later Western critics ascribed to the Greek philosopher in the development of totalitarianism. The final section will analyze Plato’s definition of morality and how it is presented and refuted in Zamjatin’s text.

Eternal Return on Russian Soil Elizabeth Sheynzon, Northwestern University I will explore connections between Moskva-Petuški by Venedikt Erofeev and the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche. Memoirs testify that Erofeev knew Nietzsche’s works, once he even wrote in imitation of Nietzsche. This is not to imply that Erofeev consciously constructed Moskva- Petuški after a Nietzschean model, but to show that the philosopher’s thought was already integrated to a certain degree in Erofeev’s worldview. The genre (poema) and style (reversal of commonly accepted valuations) of Moskva-Petuški reflect affinities between Erofeev and Nietzsche, the “philosopher-poet,” who made the method of reversal of values his characteristic device. Nietzschean notion of eternal return fosters new understanding of the overall structure and dynamics of Moskva-Petuški. The letter “IO” (Russian “ju”), whose burning image appears to the protagonist in the very end, becomes an allegory of the teleology that Venička follows and the circle of eternal return in which he is caught. The whole trip, a straight road from Moskva to Petuški, wraps into a loop and reveals its circular nature: thoughts, images, personages from the beginning catch up with the protagonist in the end. The narration ends where it started, in an unknown lobby, with the unconscious hero. “Everything straight lieth. All truth is crooked.” The verdict of Zarathustra’s dwarf becomes a death sentence in Moskva-Petuški—in the teleological sense. But the ending acquires a different meaning in the light of eternal return: Venička ends exactly in the same place and condition in which he started, the circle is complete and unbroken.

Panel: 30A-5: Issues in Teaching Russian: Research, Theory, and Practice Chair: Marita Nummikoski, University of Texas Equipment: Overhead projector Slot: December 30, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m.

Substantiation—Contents—Form: On Writing a New Textbook of a New Generation Marina Anikina, Moscow State University of International Relations Finding fresh ideas for a new textbook can safely be assumed the thorniest problem of today’s methodology. Writing a new book is not merely recasting, enlarging or improving the old version – the situation prevailing presently in the market of educational literature. A new textbook should be based on a new concept and offer a solid grounding of new work. What we mean are not only (still less solely) new approaches taken to the description and representation of the grammatical material that has to be learnt. The textbook must first of all be comprehended from the philosophical and psychological aspects which, in turn, will dictate the shape, contents and methodological principles of the book. We should like to share with others our own view of the problem, our hands-on experience in preparing and writing a new textbook. Schematically the suggested type of a new textbook can be founded on the following theoretical grounds: ego → cognition (teaching + individual) → system of interrelationships (horizontal) → contents (teaching + subject-matter) → shape (manual + book) → methodical apparatus (principles, consistency, ways of introduction, scope of material, system of assignments). Let us make it explicit what each element of the system means. Philosophically ego is the point of reference. What is meant by ego is concrete individuality in all the diversified variety of its manifestations. There are at least two egos—a student and a teacher—in the process of teaching. The textbook is addressed not to a group of users (by age, nationality) but rather to a concrete person whose aim is either to learn or teach language. Striving to cognition is immanent to each ego, such cognition being bilateral: on the one hand, it is the cognition aimed at educational cognizing (the wish to learn the subject under study); and on the other hand, it is the cognition aimed at personal knowledge (the wish to learn the Weltanschauung, views, experience of the other ego). Hence, the textbook has to become the source of such bilateral cognition. Its contents must meet the requirements of educational and personal cognition. Intercognition is possible only if horizontal (in other words, individually-oriented) system of interrelationships between all the participants of teaching process (including those in-between the teacher and student) have been established. In principle, the educational content is invariant. It is determined by the objectives and tasks of educational stage (in our case—primary). Proceeding from the above, the subject-matter content must be interesting to both participants of the educational process since personal cognition is immanent to both of them. We have resorted to polling to find out those problems and topics that are interesting to all people regardless of their objective and subjective traits and found out that such topics include love, work (career, money), interrelationships (within the family, between people), health (sport, pernicious habits), travel and some other. All of them fall within a broad notion: Me and the life around me. A denominated subject-matter field is an inherent feature of a fiction book which more often than not is built with a plot principle. This is why we suggest that a new form of a textbook should be developed that would combine all typical traits of traditional textbook and yet be built around the principles of a fiction book. Changing the form will, in turn, dictate a consequent alteration of the methodical apparatus. A Good Metaphor is a Dead Metaphor: A Classroom Perspective Igor Pustovoit, Hofstra University In this presentation I examine Russian metaphoric devices in order to stress their importance for the Russian-language classroom. Metaphor is considered by most people to be a common trope—a matter of poetic-rhetorical rather than ordinary language, related to the processes of defamiliarization of nouns and personification of verbs (Wales, 1989). However, as shown by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), metaphor is an inseparable part of communication that affects even the most mundane topics. Metaphor can also reveal a great deal of the conceptual system of a given nation, and this must be treated as important device in cultural studies. In terms of FLT, metaphor is similar to such concepts as formality, politeness, and vagueness, which, as was previously shown (Pustovoit 1997, 1998, 1999), are either ignored in foreign- language methodology or receive a rather narrow interpretation. My belief is that the aforementioned communicative categories must be studied along with traditional grammatical categories, the latter playing a subordinate role as a means of achieving the desired effect. In this presentation I approach metaphor from the perspective of the suggested trilateral scheme of Russian styles: Formal—Informal—Literary (Pustovoit, forthcoming). Emphasis is made on language metaphors (Skljarevskaja 1987) that are lacking the qualities of striking aesthetic devices, and especially on dead metaphors used in everyday communication. This presentation provides a number of examples of metaphoric use that, for the most part, are not even perceived as such by speakers. I also show that metaphoric devices penetrate even formal communication, which, at first glance, seems to be a violation of the Maxim of Quality (Grice 1968). In this case metaphor is used mainly as a politeness strategy in order to win the interlocutor’s approval. Parenthetic devices serving as warning signs often accompany such usage (tak skazat′, tak nazyvaemyj, etc.). Two types of parallels become apparent: on one hand, such introduction is similar to that of new terminology, and on the other, it is reminiscent of foreigner talk. Finally, cases of seemingly disrupted conceptual system in modern colloquial style are discussed (indeks upal vs. den′gi upali na sčet).

Implications of One Analogy: Lev Vygotskij on Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Serafima Gettys, Stanford University The purpose of this presentation is to interest foreign language teachers in Vygotskij’s theory of language and thought by showing it relevance to the today’s concerns of foreign language education. Without a doubt some of the aspects of Vygotskij’s socio-cultural theory successfully entered in recent discourse on foreign language. Such concepts as the zone of proximal development, collaborative learning, learner-centered classroom, pair and group work, role-plays, etc. are effectively employed in teaching. In the meantime, Vygotskij’s insights into the nature of thought-language interdependence, i.e., Vygotskij’s original and innovative psycholinguistics, which seems to be especially pertinent to the problems of foreign language teaching, are, in fact, overlooked by the field. The paper is an attempt to fill this gap. Although the issue of second language acquisition never appeared in Vygotskij’s works as an object of special exploration, in his “Development of Scientific Concepts in Childhood,” in elucidating the differences and similarities between the child’s spontaneous concepts and scientific concepts, Vygotskij uses L2 learning as a way of creating a brilliant analogy: he draws a vivid comparison between the acquisition of spontaneous and scientific concepts, on the one hand, with the acquisition of the mother tongue and the foreign language, on the other hand. The way this analogy is developed enables one to draw some conclusions about Vygotskij’s views on how foreign languages are learned and how they should be taught. Seen out of the context of the Vygotskij’s theory of language and thought, some of his views might seem somewhat outdated and presenting only historical interest today. However, when placed in the context of his theory in all its entirety, his views on this matter acquire a new significance. An attempt will be made to identify the underlying causes of the field’s neglect of Vygotskij’s psycholingustics and its reluctance to accept his views on the issue of language and thought. One of such reasons is existence of unnecessary dichotomy between the cognitive conception and the communicative conception of language and thought and the resulting dominant position of the latter in the field of foreign language education. A brief analysis of both conceptions will follow. In the course of this analysis the presenter will attempt to show that both conceptions can be reconciled. Bringing together both conceptions will allow investigators in the field to discover new possibilities, which were previously discarded due to this absolute, although unnecessary, dichotomy. For the foreign language education field, resolving such dichotomy may signify an important breakthrough and departure from the views that have already become traditional because of their narrow focus on skill acquisition. The concluding part of the presentation will show that some of Vygotskij’s ideas have enormous instructional implications and applications.

Panel: 30A-6: Forum: New Russian Stage II: Live from Moscow! and Russian Grammar Chair: Cynthia Martin, University of Maryland Equipment: VCR Slot: December 30, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m. Participant: Cynthia Martin, University of Maryland Participant: Andrei Zaitsev, University of Maryland Participant: Irina Dolgova, Yale University Participant: James Levine, George Mason University

Panel: 30A-7: Slavic Syntax Chair: John F. Bailyn, State University of New York, Stony Brook Slot: December 30, 2000, 8:00–10:00 a.m.

Assymetry in Slavic NPS: Deriving Focus from Ordered Set of Functions Olga Arnaudova, University of Ottawa Alena Soschen, University of Ottawa This paper discusses focus relations obtained within NPs on the basis of Slavic NPs, and shows that focus creates an asymmetric syntactic relation within the NP equivalent to predication (Rothstein 1983, 1995). This is formalized as a succession of semantic operations. This is illustrated in (1) and (2), which include two hierarchically ordered assertions. The first assertion introduces a variable x, which is found in a presupposed set, while the second provides an equation relation between the variable defined in the first assertion and a value: (1) Assertion 1: there is an x, such that x is an element of S(x) Assertion 2: x = “woman”, S(w) (2) Assertion 1: there is an x, such that x is an element of W(x) Assertion 2: x = “smart”, W(s) With contrastive focus, the stress, which can fall either on the N or the A, is marked (as in (3), (4) for Russian and (5), (6) for Bulgarian). In this case focus assignment involves the existence of a set of alternatives (Rooth 1996). (3) umnaja ŽEnščina (Russian) smart woman (4) UMnaja ženšina (Russian) smart woman (5) umna/umnata žeNA (Bulgarian) smart/the smart woman (6) UMna/UMnata žena (Bulgarian) smart/the smart woman First, a single value is assigned against either a specified (singleton or otherwise) or unspecified set of values. In (3) and (5), the set of “women” is “checked” against this set. Then a relation is established between two sets: “women” and “smart things,” where “women” is a preferred set. By “preferred” we mean that a relational function is mapping the set of “women” on the set of “smart things” and not vice versa. In (4) and (6), the set of smart things is also referred to a (pre- existing) set of things that fall outside the scope of “smartness” but the mapping is done from the set of “smart things” (preferred set) to the set of “women.” In our view, introduction of a variable x of a presupposed set and subsequent introduction of an equation relation between the variable and a value (as in (1) and (2)) can be referred to as predication (Rothstein 1983, 1995). In case of contrastive focus ((3)–(6)) in Slavic NPs, syntactic predication relationship is asymmetric and comparable to the one found at a sentence level: a non-focused element is linked to its non-predicative focused “argument”, while within neutrally focused NPs, the predication relation is achieved by selecting either the adjective or the noun as predicate/argument. References Chomsky, N. 1998. “Derivation by Phase.” MIT Occasional Papers in Lingustics. Cambridge, Mass. Partee, B. 1991. “Topic, Focus and the Semantic Partitioning.” Proceedings of SALT. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Linguistics Publications. Rooth M. 1996. “Focus. In S. Lappin, ed. The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 271–297.” Rothstein, S., 1983. The Syntactic Forms of Predication. Doctoral Dissertation, MIT. Rothstein, S., 1995. Syntactic Predication: A Syntactic Primitive or a Thematic Relation? Seminar in Phrase Structure, Bar Ilan University.

Dlja kogo vs. komu: A Preliminary Investigation Susan Bauckus, University of California, Los Angeles I propose to examine the differences between the experiencers dlja kogo and komu when they represent the entity experiencing a state or situation, as in sentences such as Mne xolodno or Dlja nego neprijatno govorit′ ob ètom. While Švedova (Russkaja grammatika) and others have pointed out that in some environments these experiencers can compete, a description of the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic conditions favoring either dlja kogo or komu is missing from the literature. I propose to offer a preliminary description of these conditions, based on an analysis of the distribution of dlja kogo and komu in a corpus of the works of Fet, Čexov, and Bunin. I also propose to offer conclusions on what these conditions may suggest about the types of experiences that favor the use of one or the other construction. I hypothesize that sentences with dlja kogo tend to characterize an experience by evaluating it, and sentences with komu tend to characterize experiences of emotion or perception. I intend to focus on the following areas: 1) Syntax: Sentences with komu seldom need a subject, although they may have one; sentences with dlja kogo almost always must have a subject, e.g., Mne strašno/Èto mne strašno vs. Dlja menja strašno /Èto dlja menja strašno. 2) Semantics: The above distinction itself has semantic implications which I will discuss. Moreover, part-of-speech membership for subjects and predicates appears to play a role in the experiencer used in a sentence. For example, sentences with infinitive subjects seem to appear frequently both with dlja kogo and komu, but sentences with noun phrase subjects overwhelmingly seem to favor dlja kogo. Short-form predicates in -o (often called “Category of State” predicates) are variably acceptable with either experiencer depending on their semantics: a predicate containing semantic component of evaluation (e.g., ponjatno, interesno) is likely to appear with dlja kogo as well as with komu; a predicate expressing perception is likely to be the accompanied by komu; and one expressing emotion can, depending on what else is present in the sentence, appear with either experiencer. 3) Pragmatics: Factors such as word order and tense can play a role in depicting a particular type of experience which is more or less likely to be accompanied by dlja kogo or komu. For example, the speaker can use use word order, such as the placement of the experiencer between the subject and the predicate, to show diminished empathy between the speaker and the experiencer, even if they are the same person, as in the sentence Ostavit′ vas dlja menja tak tjaželo, kak umeret′! (Čexov) This sentence combines several features described above: 1) it is bipartite; 2) it has an infinitive subject; 3) it has a short-form Category of State predicate; and 4) it has the experiencer dlja kogo. While the predicate tjaželo by itself may suggest emotion over evaluation, the use of the experiencer dlja kogo, in addition to its placement between the subject and predicate, suggest that the speaker is saying one thing to the addressee but is in fact thinking another. Moreover, dlja kogo is frequently placed between the subject and predicate when the speaker is recalling an event in childhood when his perspective on the situation may have changed since the time the experience took place, as in, for example, the sentence Èto bylo dlja menja samoe gluxoe iz vsex gluxix mest na svete. (Bunin) This sentence also shows how tense can be used to indicate diminished empathy and can add an evaluative characterization to an experience that was originally emotional or perceptual. The characteristics noted above, and others, such as the frequent use of tropes in dlja kogo sentences, contrasted with their rarity in komusentences, indicate the possibility of an additional distinction between dlja kogo and komu, on the level of speech act vs. narrated act: dlja kogo sentences often seem to draw greater attention to the speech act, and komu sentences to the narrated act. The Role of Polysemy and in the Renewal and Development of BE and HAVE Constructions Steven J. Clancy, University of Chicago Expressions for BE and HAVE quite often exhibit polysemy (multiple meanings and functions) and suppletion (multiple roots). In this paper, the processes of polysemization and suppletion are identified as the sources of semantic change and renewal of constructions for BE and HAVE. Data will be drawn primarily from Russian, Czech, Polish, and Bulgarian and will be analyzed in the framework of Cognitive Linguistics. The ideas behind BE and HAVE are the organizing principles in a nexus of semantically related concepts that include important lexical items for any language, particularly verbs with meanings such as ‘become’, ‘get’, ‘do, make’, ‘give’, ‘put’, ‘come’, ‘hold’, ‘keep’, ‘move’, various verbs of position, ‘die’, ‘take’, and ‘go, leave’. In the process of polysemization, a given lexical item may augment itself by taking on the meanings of other, semantically related concepts in this nexus. In the process of suppletion, a given concept may augment, develop, and/or replace itself by including another lexical item or construction in its expression. Although verbs for BE and HAVE are not found in all languages, where these verbs do occur, they tend to be among a core set of the most important verbs, participating in auxiliary, , modal, and other grammatical constructions and appearing in various idiomatic expressions. The grammaticalization of these two verbs is by no means arbitrary, rather it is driven by the central semantic concepts of “EXISTENCE, COPULA, POSSESSION,” and “RELATIONSHIP”, concepts at the heart of BE and HAVE. Various connections exist between items in the conceptual nexus and we may find verbal alignments such as GIVE-HAVE-TAKE- GET, MAKE/DO-BE-BECOME, GET-BECOME, and so forth. The extent of the connections between these concepts in a given language depends greatly on the nature of the lexical items. For instance, in Czech, where BE and HAVE are expressed by verbs and the items in the conceptual nexus are also verbs with similar behavior, more connections develop between nexus concepts than in Russian, where the core concepts of BE and HAVE are fragmented and expressed by multiple forms including R byt′ ‘be’, the single form R est′ ‘is/are’, the zero form of ‘be’, R u + gen + (est′) + nom ‘have’, and the marginal verb R imet′ ‘have’. Once such connections are established, we see further extensions of syntactic constructions from one item in the nexus to another, e.g. the extension of constructions with ‘have’ + past passive participle to use with the Polish verb trzymać ‘hold, keep’ and to dostat ‘get’ in Czech. When connections are broken or have failed to develop, as in Russian, items from the nexus may come to participate in new expressions of BE, such as R naxodit′sja ‘be, be located’, R javljat′sja ‘be, appear’, R predstavljat′ soboj ‘be, present oneself as’ and the more frequent use of specific verbs for BE or verbs of position such as R suščestvovat′ ‘be, exist’, R prisutstvovat′ ‘be present’, and R stojat′ ‘stand’. It is clear that the languages discussed in this paper have developed elaborate systems surrounding the concepts BE and HAVE. The identification of the conceptual nexus involving BE and HAVE, the types of semantic items included in the nexus, and the kinds of semantic interactions and changes that take place within the nexus may help us to better understand historical change, predict possible future developments, and understand the grammaticalization and meaning of auxiliary and modal constructions. Constructions for BE and HAVE also help us to understand the ways in which we think about and interact with the world around us.

Superlatives and the Grammaticalization of Czech ten Susan C. Kresin, University of California, Los Angeles Having a wide range of functions that overlap with both demonstratives and definite articles, the Czech demonstrative modifier ten is often compared to a definite article. Particularly in superlative modification, little or nothing appears to remain of its original demonstrative meaning. (1) … má máma někdy trojčila, jako by na celým světě chodila do rachoty akorát ona sama a ostatní se flákali a leželi držkou na sluníčku. Jo, začala být taková, že měla tu nejtěžší dřínu, tu největší otročinu za nejmíň prachů. (‘My mother sometimes carried on about how only she in the whole world had to go to work, and everyone else just bummed around and lay in the sun. She started to act as if she had the heaviest load, the greatest slave–work for the least amount of money.’ [Václav Dušek, Tuláci]) In this example ten lacks any kind of deictic meaning, a basic semantic feature of demonstratives. Furthermore, since the noun phrase modified by ten is attributive, rather than referential, the core demonstrative function of matching the modified noun phrase to an identifiable referent (Hawkins 1978) is annulled. Zubatý (1917: 292) writes of similar examples that ten fills an emphatic function, implying a belief on the part of the speaker that the superlative statement has a more universal validity than the specific discourse context. This function of highlighting the modified noun phrase is typical of all uses of ten, both in its core demonstrative functions and in the various extensions in which it operates more like a definite article. Turning from the semantics of ten to pragmatics, ten can be characterized as having a uniform and consistent function of focusing the addressee’s attention on the modified noun phrase, regardless of whether or not a specific referent is identifiable. A simple set of pragmatic inferences, reanalyses and extensions, to be discussed in the paper, leads from the more concrete, “demonstrative” function of indicating identifiability to this relatively abstract function. In turn, various inferences can derive from this general pragmatic function, depending on the specific context and the individual speaker’s intentions and goals. This type of pragmatic enrichment, accompanied by semantic bleaching, is typical of early phases of grammaticalization (Hopper and Traugott 1993). The next question, then, is, how far can ten be said to have grammaticalized? Is it at all reasonable to consider it a definite article? The most cogent argument against this potential reclassification has traditionally been based on the alleged fact that there are no grammatical contexts in which the use of ten is automatically predetermined. Instead, its use is conditioned by the needs of a particular discourse, as interpreted by the individual speaker. While this is true of most of the contexts in which ten is used, on closer examination of the issue one finds that, in fact, there do exist certain syntactic constructs that require the use of ten. Consider the following pair of examples, with the superlative adjective nejdůležitější “most important”. In (2a), the omission of ten is uniformly rejected by native speakers; in (2b), ten is possible but not obligatory. (2a) To je to nejdůležitější./*To je nejdůležitější. (‘That’s the most important.’) (2b) To je ta nejdůležitější věc./To je nejdůležitější věc. (‘That’s the most important thing.’) This minimal pair indicates that in the syntactic construct to je X, in which X is a superlative adjective, ten functions as an obligatory device of nominalization. In other words, the use of ten is grammatically determined by the mere existence of this syntactic construct—an indication of its full grammaticalization in this particular context. This pair of examples and variants will be discussed in greater detail, as illustration of the extreme end of a cline toward grammaticalization. As part of this discussion, it will be shown that it is a combination of the semantic meaning of superlatives and the pragmatics of their typical usage that enables them to lead the path toward a state of full grammaticalization. Selected References Hawkins, John (1978) and Indefiniteness: A Study in Reference and Grammaticality Prediction. London: Croom Helm. Hopper, Paul J. and Elizabeth Closs Traugott (1993) Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zubatý, Josef (1917) “Ten.” Naše řeč 1: 289–294. Time: 30B Panel: 30B-1: Recent Russian Writing Chair: Helena Goscilo, University of Pittsburgh Slot: December 30, 2000, 10:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m. Ženščiny-poèty kromki veka: Inna Bogačinskaja, Vera Zubareva Viktor Finkel, Independent Scholar Анализируется творчество двух значительных поэтов русского зарубежья: Инны Богачинской и Веры Зубаревой. Обе родились и выросли в Одессе (одном из центров послереволюционной российской словесности—родине Ахматовой), окончили Одесский университет. Обе успешно стартовали в России и были отмечены и поддержаны выдаюшимися поэтами:Инна Богачинская—Андреем Вознесенским, назвавшим ее в перестроечном “Огоньке” (1989) одной из наиболее значимых фигур русской зарубежной поэзии, а Вера Зубарева— Беллой Ахмадулиной, опубликовавшей в журнале Смена (1988) предисловие к книге Зубаревой Аура. При этом Смена номинировала Зубареву Поэтом Года. Поэты эмиграции делятся на ностальгирующих и не ностальгирующих. Обе поэтессы относятся ко второму типу. Однако, в первую очередь, эти поэты выбраны потому, что их творчество—Поэзия Космоса. Но, если поэзия Богачинской—турбулентный Космос человеческих чувств и отношений, то поэзия Зубаревой—это бесконечный физический, философский, мирозданческий Космос. В докладе сопоставляются эти две поэтические позиции. Инна Богачинская—автор четырех поэтических сборников: Стихия, Подтексты, В четвертом измерении, Перевод с космического. Вера Зубарева—автор пяти поэтических сборников: Аура, Менуеты с тенью, Ледяная игла, Трактат об ангелах, Жизнь звезд, одной книги прозы и двух литературоведческих монографий. Ряд из них переведен на английский и немецкий языки.

Flight to Idyll: Ljudmila Petruševskaja's Countryside in Her Late Prose Juras T. Ryfa, George Washington University In her 1998 story “Nikogda” Ljudmila Petruševskaja, traditionally a city writer, continues to search for the answers to the questions posed in her earlier stories (Novye Robinzony: Xronika Konca XX veka) by exploring the alternative environment of the countryside. In this story, Petruševskaja discloses the dark side of the “national behavior” that makes the reader ponder the fate of Russia and what, according to Petruševskaja, may lead to overall national demise. She does so by juxtaposing the city and country and presenting a dismaying vignette of country life, with wide implications of the bleak national present and an unsettled future. The paper focuses on the textual analysis of Petruševskaja’s story. Its heroine’s bizarre yet believable skirmish with the country people reveals that the conflict lies in the eternal Soviet- style housing crisis. In the story the author demonstrates that in new Russia as in the Soviet times, mortal combat for a dwelling space transfigures the very nature of people and corrodes the fabric of society, even in the areas not touched by the corruptive “evil” of the cities. As in the city, even in the traditional Russian village, where ethical values were shaped through many centuries of Russian history, such values have fallen victim to the omnipresent housing crisis. According to Petruševskaja, this erosion of ethical values continues today. A related problem of the myth of Russian people is explored in greater detail. Like Solženicyn’s narrator in “Matrenin dvor,” Petruševskaja’s main character goes to the village hoping to escape pressure of city life. Whether created by the apologists of socialist realism or their ideological and aesthetic opponents, the myth of Russian country people as the keepers of hallowed cultural traditions passed from generation to generation—especially in the hostile Soviet era—is seriously questioned by Petruševskaja. The author explodes the traditional perception of the Russian country side as the last stronghold in a nation corrupted by an all-pervasive moral contamination and materialism, the byproducts of communist rule. She dethrones the idealized image of the rustic people by unveiling the dark realm of contemporary rural Russia. In this respect, her story is an instant throwback to Bunin’s “Derevnja” and Čexov’s “Mužiki” and “V ovrage.” Petruševskaja’s flight to idyll turns into a real life nightmare—the all pervasive leitmotif of “Nikogda.”

Skazka Out of Context: Petruševskaja's Defamiliarization of the Fairy Tale Jenne Powers, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Ljudmila Petruševskaja has a reputation as a writer of disturbing and depressing plays and short prose fiction. Recently she has written several volumes of optimistic wondertales which may signal a need to reevaluate this reputation. This paper presents one story, “Novye priključenija Eleny Prekrasnoj,” as typical of Petruševskaja’s appropriation of the wondertale genre. She utilizes character types and magical motifs found in traditional Russian wondertales, but she employs an unconventional narrative voice for their presentation. This narrator defamiliarizes both the fairy tale elements in Petruševskaja’s stories and their familiar contemporary settings, disorienting the reader and the reader’s expectations of fairy tales. A series of ironic contemporary stereotypes about the “essence of Femininity” characterizes the title character, Elena Prekrasnaja. The narrative voice ironizes the presentation of these stereotypes while it demonstrates Petruševskaja’s concern with contemporary problems: the media, commercialism and images of women. These issues are certainly present in her other, non-fantastic prose, but their representation and evaluation are different here. The pervasive cruelty and oppressive fate which have characterized Petruševskaja in the past give way to empowerment through magic. Petruševskaja uses magic to make manifest forces of change for the better, forces completely absent in her more realistic prose. Petruševskaja exploits the potential of the wondertale for social commentary, but also, and more importantly, for its unreal possibilities and forthright acceptance of magic and miracle. In my paper I analyze the relationship between Petruševskaja’s skazka, its traditional models, and her other prose using Propp’s model for the traditional wondertale as well as the work of Jack Zipes on the social functions of the fairy tale. These tales are not skazki in form. “Novye priključenija Eleny Prekrasnoj” takes its title character from traditional tales, and some of its magic, but its plot and characterization stem from authored narrative fiction. What remains fairy tale-like in these stories is the use of magic to transform the hero/heroine and to enable a happy ending. Presenting the contemporary world through the eyes of a fairy-tale character allows Petruševskaja effects unthinkable in her other prose-attractive characters and a belief in the power of the individual to affect change in his or her own life.

The Poetics of the Interval: Modes of Mediation, Disjuncture, and Connection in the Work of Vladimir Makanin John Kachur, University of Pittsburgh This paper analyzes the means by which Vladimir Makanin represents the myriad connections and disjunctures that at once compel people toward one another and, except for the briefest moments, keep them inescapably apart. My analysis traces a complex and extremely elastic network of connections and displacements within Makanin’s work as well as in his own literary biography. Much of the problem in dealing with Makanin’s prose stems from the fact that extreme positions and pointed oppositions are not determining moments in his work. To illustrate this point, I trace two organizing motifs of Makanin’s work. The first of these motifs is defined by Russian critic Lev Anninskij as a “law of equilibrium,” a sort of inevitable cosmic balance between good luck and ill fortune, personal happiness and societal status, individual and collective memory, the past and the present, or any other pair of spiritual or material values. The second central motif might be thought of as what I call “interspace.” Interspace appears as any intermediary space, not necessarily between two opposites, but simply one point between any other two points, a moment of constant transition. Often depicted literally in terms of a physical place, interspace can also metaphorize intervals of or points in time. Interspace may provide a link between two points, but it can also mark a lack of direct continuity, symbolizing either the absence or obscurity of connections. The two motifs coincide when Makanin’s characters, while occupying interspace, teeter between universal balancing points, like a child who stands in the middle of a see-saw trying to keep its opposite ends parallel to the ground. Like the child, Makanin’s characters can strike only an imperfect balance. My paper proceeds to examine the concrete manifestations of these motifs in Makanin’s work (horizons, photographs, tunnels, mountains), and also how they function as formal or organizing elements of Makanin’s prose, seen in his tendency to rewrite works, repeat passages within works, and republish stories in new combinations. Ultimately, my analysis emphasizes not simply the dominance of the “middle” in Makanin, as Anninskij would have it, but the dynamic movement from the middle to the periphery and back. The “law of equilibrium” and “interspace,” thus, represent for Makanin not simply the “immateriality” of absolute harmony (as critic Anatolij Bočarov has put it), but also the necessity and endlessness of the search for such harmony. Makanin’s “poetics of the interval” provide a framework in which he examines questions of historical continuity, personal responsibility, and the nature of physical and spiritual connections among human beings. Panel: 30B-2: Poetry and Poetics II Chair: Michael Wachtel, Princeton University Slot: December 30, 2000, 10:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m.

Vladislav Xodasevič's Putem zerna and the Russian Modernist Poetic Cycle Sarah Clovis, Princeton University In this paper I will propose two primary models for early twentieth-century poetic cycles: a “narrative” cycle, such as Pasternak’s “Sestra moja žizn′”, which, through a largely chronological, linear linkage of discrete poems, relates key events from the poet’s life; and a Blokian “lyric” cycle, which relies on repeating motifs and symbols to provide structural unity. Within this framework my paper will consider the structural and poetic principles underlying and distinguishing the first (1920) and final (1927) editions of Xodasevič’s third book of poetry, Putem zerna. Xodasevič significantly revised this collection, adding and deleting poems as well as altering the order of key poems. I will trace the “lyric” and “narrative” elements of each edition—a task particularly fit to Putem zerna, which incorporates both short lyric poems and blank verse narratives—in an attempt to show an overall move from a primarily “lyric” cycle to a more “narrative” one. For the sake of brevity, I will concentrate on Xodasevič’s choice of opening poems—“Ručej” in the 1920 edition, and the title poem “Putem zerna” in the final 1927 collection. Paired with the final poem of both editions, “Xleby”, each poem forms a distinctive frame that sets the basic parameters for the narrative and lyric principles at work. I will then look at the placement of the blank verse narratives within the cycle and the effect of the different frames on their structural role in the cycle.

Rhythm, Meaning, and Interpretation in Brodskij's Iambic Verse Nila Friedberg, University of Toronto One of the oldest debates in the analysis of verse is the debate between a purely literary and a purely linguistic approach to poetry. Scholars of metrics typically study the formal aspects of poetic composition (Belyj 1910, Tomaševskij 1929, Taranovskij 1953, Gasparov 1974, Bailey 1975), whereas literary scholars may wonder whether these linguistic formalisms have any relevance to our understanding of poetry (Attridge 1982). In recent years, there have appeared a number of fruitful analyses of verse which have demonstrated that meter can contribute to the interpretation of meaning (Tarlinskaja 1993, Wachtel 1998). Meter is not a mere formal arrangement of syllables into weak and strong positions; meters carry strong semantic associations with the topics that they have been used for. In this paper I contribute to the issue by discussing the correlation between rhythm and meaning in Brodskij’s iambic verse. As has been shown by Lotman (1999), Brodskij sometimes employs a sub-variety of iambic rhythm which is quite distinct from the one used in the Russian iambic tradition. In the Russian tradition, the most frequently used rhythmical type is the one where the last strong position in the line is filled by a stressed syllable, the second to last strong position is filled by an unstressed syllable, whereas the third strong position from the right edge is filled by a stressed syllable (Belyj 1910, Taranovskij 1953). This tendency, which Taranovskij (1953) called the Law of Regressive Accentual Dissimilation, is illustrated in (1) (X indicates a stressed syllable; x—an unstressed syllable): (1) Kog-da ne v šut-ku za-ne-mog (xX xX xx xX; Puškin, in Belyj 1910) In the traditional Russian verse, the rhythm in (1) is significantly more frequent than the “heavy- ending” rhythm in (2). In (2), the last two feet are filled by stressed syllables: (2) Kak pra-ved-ni-ki v trud-nyj čas (xX xx xX xX; Brodskij, transl. of Donne’s “Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”) On the other hand, in some of Brodskij’s poems, the “heavy ending” rhythm in (2) is significantly more frequent than the rhythm in (1). I argue that the majority of Brodskij’s poems employing the “heavy ending” rhythm, have something in common thematically. They either constitute: (a) Translations from a foreign language, such as translations of Donne’s “Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” or Marvell’s “A Nymph Complaining to the Death of her Fawn,” and “Eyes and Tears”); (b) Poems influenced by English metaphysical poetry (Smith 1999), such as “Pen′e bez muzyki” (1970); (c) Poems written during Brodskij’s exile to the village of Norenskaja in 1964–65 (e.g. “Novye stansy k Avguste”, “On znal čto èta bol′ v pleče …”, “Na smert′ T. S. Èliota”, “Einem Alten Architekten in Rom”, “Odnoj poètesse”); or (d) Poems written in emigration (e.g. “Pjataja godovščina” (1977), “Bjust Tiberija” (1985), “Reki” (1986), “Muxa” (1985), “Vzgljani na derevjannyj dom” (1988), “Arxitektura” (1990–91), “Otvet na anketu” (1993), “Pamjati NN” (1993), “Ritratto di Donna” (1993)). Thus, all instances of this unusual rhythm can be called “the rhythm of exile,” where exile is defined as either literal (being sent to Norenskaja) or metaphorical (imaginary dislocation to a foreign land). I further show that the destroyed Regressive Dissimilation not only correlates with meaning, but also allows one to date some previously undated poems. The poem “Poxož na golos golovnoj ubor …” is classified in Komarov’s edition of Brodskij (1998) as written “roughly in the 1960s.” This poem, which predominantly uses the “heavy ending” rhythm, is most likely to have been written in 1964–65, since this is the period when Brodskij tended to violate the Law of Regressive Dissimilation.

Poètika I. Brodskogo kak al′ternativa postmodernistskomu mirovozzreniju Lioudmila Fedorova, Independent Scholar Основанием для сближения Бродского с постмодернистами (Вс. Некрасовым, М. Сухотиным, Т. Кибировым, Д. А. Приговым) часто служит для критиков его лингвоцентризм. Природе языка, особенности поэтического языка посвящены многочисленные статьи, интервью: Нобелевская лекция, статьи “Поэт и проза,” “Поклониться тени,” “Полторы комнаты” и др. Представления Бродского об авторе, о взаимоотношении языка и поэта могут приближаться к постмодернистским, однако реальная функция автора—центра произведения—с постмодернистской не совпадает. В стихах Бродского множество видов языковой игры, “лингвистических” тропов, таких, как придание словам в устойчивом сочетании их прямого значения, подчинение нескольких устойчивых словосочетаний одному общему слову, имеющему различный смысл в каждом из них, сворачивание в один образ целой идиоматической конструкции, широкое использование омонимии, трансформация слова по ассоциации,—что также формально сближает творчество Бродского с постмодернизмом. Однако произведения Бродского—не постмодернистский коллаж, несмотря на обилие цитат и аллюзий, но, скорее, палимпсест; они отражают восприятие оригинального текста через наложившиеся на него культурные слои, которые также оказываются для автора значимыми, нередко не менее значимыми, чем первый текст. Д. М. Бетеа определил это как “триангулар висион” (трехстороннее видение), точнее—многомерное, многоуровневое. Для постмодернистов же характерно стремление освободиться от наносных слоев (имеются в виду наслоения официальной культуры), показать относительность всех художественных систем, или же, как для Т. Кибирова,—вернуть подлинность и скрытый за штампом смысл оригинальному произведению. Интертекстуальность Бродского—наблюдение за полилогом предшественников, попытка применить их тезисы к концу эпохи, эхо общего разговора, участие в нем, обычно спор. Стихотворения, отражающие этот полилог (например, “Большая элегия Джону Донну,” “Театральное,” “Двадцать сонетов к Марии Стюарт”),—многослойные, многоуровневые. Например, “Новая жизнь” связывает воедино элементы художественных систем Данте, Вергилия и Мандельштама. Момент вписывания в культуру личного, собственного авторского “я,” произнесение своего слова в многоголосном разговоре определяет позицию Бродского.Таким образом, реализация интертекстуальных отношений в творчестве Бродского далека от постмодернистской. Concrete Poetry in Russia: Vsevolod Nekrasov, a Pioneer of the Trend Irene Kolchinsky, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Although a new poetic trend, designated by its first proponents as “concrete,” had conquered the world by the late 1960s, it was widely believed that countries behind the Iron Curtain remained unaffected by this process. Indeed, international anthologies of concrete poetry never included contributors from Russia or other East European countries (Czech poets were the only exception), and this was a direct consequence of the political situation in these places. The communist regimes had been notorious for their intolerance and suppression of avant-garde art, especially in its radical manifestation. As it turned out, however, the experimental tradition was kept alive by a handful of enthusiasts, who destined themselves to functioning in the literary underground, in almost complete isolation from the rest of the world. Quite miraculously, some of them managed to work in unison with the latest Western avant-garde trends, of which they remained totally unaware. Such was the case with the Russian author Vsevolod Nekrasov, whose poetic experimentation was rather similar to that of Gomringer, Fahlstroem, Ruehm, and other concrete poets. At the same time, Nekrasov’s texts displayed distinctive individuality, which made him one of the most interesting (although the least known) practitioners of concrete poetry. In my paper I will closely examine Nekrasov’s poems in a broad historical and literary context.

Panel: 30B-3: Issues in Polish Literature: Poland and the “Other” Chair: Andrzej Karcz, University of Kansas Slot: December 30, 2000, 10:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m.

The Myth of the Caucasian “Savage” in Russian and Polish Literatures of 1830–1840 Yulia Morozova, University of California, Los Angeles In Tropics of Discourse, Hayden White surveys the history of the Wild Man myth in Western cultural history, from pre-modern times through the eighteenth century, in order to show how “civilized” societies used the notion of “savagery” as a “culturally self-authenticating device.” Using Northrop Frye’s definition of myth as a projection of the ideal of freedom, or redemption, on the one hand, and of complete oppression, or damnation, on the other, White shows how societies either identified with or distanced themselves from those peoples whom they considered politically, economically, and culturally primitive. It is in this context that I will discuss how Russian and Polish exiles to the Caucasus in the 1820s–40s used myths of the Caucasian “Savage” to encode political conflicts between the Russian state and Russian and Polish dissidents. These alterity myths became a significant part of Russian and Polish national mythology. Using four texts by Aleksandr Bestužev-Marlinskij and Władysław Strzelnicki (“Ammalat-Bek,” “Mula-Nur,” “Bej-Bulat,” “Maxmudek”), I will show the multi-valence of the notion of alterity in these two cultures. I will also show how Russian and Polish myths differ from one another, and particularly how the Polish myths encode references to Poland’s national drama. The 1825 Decembrist uprising in Russia and the 1830 November uprising in Poland changed the social roles of dissidents and their relationships with the Russian state. I will explore these changes applying an anthropological model of the “rite of passage” (Van Gennep, 1909; Turner, 1969, 1974), according to which every change of man’s social position is accompanied by three stages: separation, marginalization, and reaggregation. Similar “rites of passage” can be identified in the experiences of Russian and Polish dissidents; they found themselves detached from the social structure and marginalized. I will show how the marginalization phase, the phase when the dissidents found themselves “betwixt and between all points of classification,” engendered a number of metaphors and allegories, through which the dissidents reflected on the social and political turmoil. These metaphors are marked by a polarization of the Self-“other” relationship, in which the “other,” the “Savage,” represents changes and ambiguities of the Self. In the case of Russian and Polish dissidents, the myth of the Caucasian “Savage” allowed Russian and Polish authors to rationalize the conflicts and the changes taking place in their relationship to their societies and the Russian state.

Tracing the Waters to the Source: Allusions to Deržavin in Dziady and The Bronze Horseman Clint Walker, University of Wisconsin, Madison Considerable scholarly attention has been devoted to the relationship between Adam Mickiewicz’s digression (Ustęp) in Dziady and Alexander Puškin’s The Bronze Horseman. Surprisingly, however, an extremely important intertextual source of both works, the poetry of Gavrila Deržavin, has yet to receive the attention it merits. Mickiewicz’s digression contains several allusions to Deržavin’s odes, but the most significant occurs at the end of “Pomnik Piotra Wielkiego”: Od wieku stoi, skacze, lecz nie spada, Jako lecąca z granitów kaskada, Gdy scięta mrozem nad przepaścią zwiśnie— Lecz skoro słońce swobody zabłyśnie I wiatr zachodni ogrzeje te państwa, I cóż się stanie z kaskadą tyraństva? (my emphasis) When read in a Russian context, the image of a waterfall recalls Deržavin’s “The Waterfall” (“Vodopad”), an ode that Puškin valued highly and that Mickiewicz would undoubtedly have known from his school days. On one level, “The Waterfall” is a celebration of Potemkin’s military exploits; on another, it glorifies the “divine source” of Russian autocracy—specifically, Catherine II as the “mother of waterfalls, or great men.” At the deepest level, however, the poem is a meditation on the all-consuming and relentless flow of time, the river into which all will eventually “fall” and be “smashed to pieces.” Deržavin repeatedly employs the verb “to fall” (past′/upast′), noting, “Will not into this maw fall/ From the throne a car′ and the friend of car′s?” Mickiewicz “freezes” Deržavin’s image of Russian power, poising it over the edge of a precipice. Instead of Derzavin’s patriotically “pro-Russian” water imagery, Mickiewicz depicts the Russian army as a giant lake with military columns (“little rivers”) that flow into it and drown in its depths. According to Oleszkiewicz’s prediction in “Dzień przed powodzią petersburską 1824,” soon the “frozen waters” of tyranny will thaw, releasing an apocalyptic flood that will “mount the waves,” and rear up like the bronze horseman, “chewing the icy bit.” This paper will trace the course of Mickiewicz’s water imagery back to its source, showing how he draws off Deržavin’s odes to polemicize with the legitimacy of Russian rule. I will conclude with a brief analysis of Puškin’s own allusions to “The Waterfall” in The Bronze Horseman, suggesting how they might shed light on his enigmatic answer to Mickiewicz.

Intricate Tasks: Language and Intentio in the Writings of I. L. Peretz Sheila Skaff, University of Michigan A native of Zamość, Isaac Leib Peretz was raised in the three languages in which he would later write: the Polish of correspondence and legal matters; the Hebrew of his religious education; and the of his kheyder and his home. His attempts at poetic expression in the former languages proved only mildly successful, while his stories and essays written in the latter have prompted his designation as the father of modern Yiddish literature. How does a modern artist and ethnographer approach writing in an unofficial language? In a brief and complex 1910 essay entitled “What Our Literature Needs,” Peretz defined the task of the Yiddish writer as one of simultaneous acceptance and denial of translation. “To find the heart, the essence of Jewishness in all places and times, in all parts of this scattered, dispersed yet universal people; to find the soul and see it illuminated with the prophetic dream of the future—this is the task of the Jewish artist.” For Peretz, universal art is reliant upon universal humanity, which is in turn reliant upon a return to the Hebrew Bible and to a divine presence, the Shekina, as explored in the Lurianic mythology of the Kabbalah. Peretz, a literary polyglot, approaches the intricacies of after-Babel multilingualism in a means strikingly akin to Walter Benjamin’s approach thirteen years later in “The Task of the Translator.” To read these texts together helps to shed light on the role of translation in the formation of a modern literary consciousness; to look at the specificity of Yiddish and Polish in this context offers insight into its formation in Eastern Europe. Though in the peak of his career he ceased writing but love letters in Polish, the dialogs that Peretz created in his Yiddish stories are often staged with Polish phrases and syntax, and the nuances of the Polish language are translated into Yiddish. How does literary trilingualism surface in his texts? How does it reflect upon the notion of translation advocated in “What Our Literature Needs”? What is the significance of the striking similarities between Peretz and Benjamin, who most likely had no contact with each other? By examining Peretz’s views on modernity and Yiddishkeyt at the beginning of the twentieth century, this paper analyzes the role of translation in the shaping of a modern literary language.

Matki Polski nie ma: A Lacanian Reading of Natasza Goerke's Księga Pasztetów Anke Ziolkowska, University of Wisconsin, Madison Since the publication of Księga Pasztetów (The Book of Patés), her first collection of short stories, in 1997, Natasza Goerke has been regarded, next to Izabela Filipiak, Manuela Gretkowska, and Olga Tokarczuk, as one of Poland’s most prominent young women authors. However, despite her success in Poland and Germany, where she has lived since the mid-1980s, her works have not yet received much attention by Anglo-American criticism. Her prose, described as absurd, surrealistic-grotesque, comical-sad, and postmodern, simultaneously exploits and subverts literary and cultural traditions; reviewer Kazia Szczulka writes that “everything [in Księga Pasztetów] is a parodic or ironic transformation of literary structures” (“wszystko jest parodystycznym albo ironicznym przetworzeniem literackich struktur,” Recenzje księgowe online). In the short story which provides the title for the whole collection, “Księga Pasztetów,” Goerke polemicizes not so much with a literary convention as with a theoretical approach to literature: Lacanian psychoanalysis. The story, with its focus on the Polish émigré Jan’s psychological quest for identity, revolves around Lacanian themes like the desire for the Other, the Real, and the relation between signifier and signified. Lacan’s theories therefore provide the easiest and most productive access to this difficult text; this approach opens up Jan’s unconscious not only by interpreting his actions, thoughts, and dreams, but also by analyzing the text’s linguistic features, which, according to Lacan, correspond to psychological symptoms. An interpretation which views the text only through the lens of Lacan’s theories, however, neglects numerous other intertextual references. Goerke engages in a playful and provocative dialogue not only with Lacan but also with Polish literary traditions and values. Knowledge of Polish culture is indeed prerequisite to a psychoanalytical reading, as Jan’s “symptoms” are frequently encoded in the Aesopian language used in Poland in the nineteenth century to avoid censorship by the partitioning powers. The word “Poland,” for example, does not appear even once in the text; instead, Jan expresses his unconscious desire for his homeland in psychological and linguistic metaphors which remain undesirable to readers unfamiliar with Polish traditions. Despite being rooted in Polish culture, however, Jan, with his inability to acknowledge his nostalgia for Poland and to express it in writing, stands in stark contrast to the long tradition of “great” Polish émigré writers from Mickiewicz to Miłosz or maybe he represents a new type of postmodern Polish émigré writer. My reading of “Księga Pasztetów” as Goerke’s polemic play with both Lacan and Polish traditions does not attempt to resolve all the text’s ambiguities; my aim is to illustrate one way of “decoding” this resistant text without reducing its complexity.

Panel: 30B-4: Literature and History Chair: Dan Ungurianu, Vassar College Slot: December 30, 2000, 10:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m.

Enemies and Heroes in Kosovo Songs and “Zadonščina” Minjin Hashbat, University of Michigan The historical interaction between Slavic and Asiatic peoples has been treated to negative interpretation in many historical and literary accounts. The parallel examples of such interpretation can be found in the texts about the battle in which Russians fought the Mongol- Tatars in 1380 on Kulikovo field and the battle in which Serbs fought the Osmanli Turks in 1389 on Kosovo field. Both texts have been selected in the collective memory of both modern Slavic peoples as turning points in their national histories. Both the Kosovo Songs and “Zadonščina” texts create models of the Turks and Tatars as utterly alien to Slavic culture and potentially destructive to the cultural identity of the Serbs and Russians. The negative image of these “outsiders” has been maintained and even emphasized despite the fact that both Russian and Serb civilizations borrowed aspects of political organization, and linguistic and cultural characteristics from their Asian rulers due to the relationships continued over extremely long periods of time in which high degrees of political and cultural integration were achieved in both cases. It is therefore of interest to study the evolution of these Slavic images of Asiatic peoples in order to understand the practice of constructing a “cultural enemy” and the role literary texts play in this process. The problems I would like to address using texts that record the early instances of Slavic-Asian interaction are as follows: What is the relationship between the historical interaction of Slavic and Asiatic peoples and this interaction as constructed in Slavic texts? What is the process of textual construction? How does this construction play a role in cultural and political processes important to the development of Slavic groups? In order to suggest answers to these questions, I propose a set of theoretical statements based on Lotman’s theories of culture and mechanisms of memory that guide the analysis and comparison of two early texts selected from Serbian and Russian literatures. We may presume that since the Kosovo and Kulikovo collections of cultural texts have been actuated in modern Serbian and Russian culture they have necessarily undergone transformations in which dislocation of certain elements has led to the generation of novel meaning. These new meanings in their turn not only influence a generation of new texts which are contingent on the original texts but they also determine the perception of the original texts themselves. I critique the Kosovo Songs and “Sofonija’s Tale”n order to understand how models for Turks and Mongols are constructed by way of their depiction. I pay particular attention to the boundaries that define and distinguish Slavic and Asiatic groups and also to the interaction that occurs between groups. In fact, I will try to show that it is the very threat posed by these external Asiatic groups described in the texts which consolidates and accentuates the cultural importance of key elements of the Slavic cultural codes. In the case of the Russians in the “Zadonščina” text, the Tatar threat was counter opposed to the need for inter-princedom solidarity and investment in a common Christian heritage. In this case, there could not be a more constructive catalyst provided for the growth of the Russian state then the threat of a Mongol “cultural enemy.” Likewise in the case of the Kosovo Songs, it is the terrible defeat at the hands of the Turk “cultural enemy” that illuminates the Christian faith as a foundation for Serbian civilization. The continuation of Serbian culture through investment in Christianity is therefore proposed as an ideological alternative to cultural and political submission. Therefore, the intent of this paper will be to outline a theoretical framework for the examination of textual models of external groups and to evaluate that framework through a brief analysis of two texts. The analysis will hopefully show that fundamental transformations occur in the process of textualizing external peoples and as Lotman suggests, these transformations continue over time. Karamzin and Russia's Entry into History Katya Hokanson, University of Oregon Karamzin’s work as an historian and canonizer of Russia’s world-historical status served to create a geographical-historical timeline in which Russian literature could be recognized as part of the national narrative. In the early nineteenth century, it was very typical to see Russia as part of “barbarian Asia,” Russians as utterly imitative of European culture, and having no history of their own, being mere nomads or descendants of Mongols. Adam Mickiewicz vented his fury over Russia’s domination of Poland in his famous “Digression” in 1832: No cities and no mountains meet the eye; No works of man or nature tower on high: The plain lies bleak and barren to the sight As if it had been fashioned yesternight … This level plain lies open, waste, and white A widespread page prepared for God to write— The landscape lies open and empty, awaiting, perhaps, the lines of an historian, the stamp of history. In accordance with contemporary thinking about nationality and geography, landscape was destiny—the flatness of the plains indicated a lack of cultural and historical highs and lows, names and places which should have become distinguished by historical marks but had remained empty of meaning. What was to be the answer to the characterization of Russia as a land with no history, barbarians living on a European stage set? Karamzin’s History of the Russian State brought to Russians a sense of themselves as a people with a history and therefore a rooted identity. Karamzin gave Russians not only a history, but a particular perception of Russia’s historicity: he made it possible for Russia’s history to be interpreted as comparable to Europe’s and therefore “legitimate.” In his foreword to History of the Russian State, Karamzin wrote: “Russian history adds beauty to the native land where we live and feel. How attractive are the banks of the Volxov, the Dnepr, and the Don when we know what happened on them in times long past! Not only Novgorod, Kiev, and Vladimir but also the huts of Elec, Kozel′sk, and Galič become interesting monuments, and mute objects become eloquent.” While geography served as a useful trope for critiquing Russia’s cultural status, one might also say that it was geography which helped to solve the problem of Russia’s literary entrance into history. When Puškin’s narrative poem of 1821, The Captive of the Caucasus, appeared, it captivated its readers and was declared original and “national.” Undoubtedly, the appeal of fashionable Orientalism, along with Puškin’s use of a confident, self-assured Russian poetic style tells half the story of the success of The Captive of the Caucasus. But the way in which Puškin appropriates the Caucasus as a location for national Russian literature plays just as large a role. Here was a place which had a solid foundation in History with a capital “H”: a place associated with Ovid, described in Roman history, perceived as Biblical. Nor is it an accident that Puškin’s poem appeared just three years after the publication of the first eight volumes of Karamzin’s History. Russian readers were primed for texts that would appeal to their newly-awakened sense of Russia’s legitimate place in history. The epilogue to the poem shocked some of Puškin’s contemporaries, because it proclaimed, in ringing odic style, Russia’s certainty of conquering the Caucasus at the cost of much bloodshed. The epilogue refers to Mstislav, a Russian leader who once fought with the Kosogs, “in all probability, the present-day Circassians,” Puškin adds in a footnote. Here, at this crucial textual moment establishing the Russians’ past and future control of the Caucasus and Circassians, as well as Russian literature’s claim to world status, Puškin tellingly places a footnote directing the reader to Karamzin’s History of the Russian State, volume 2, which narrates the story of Mstislav and his conquering of Rededja in 1022. With the validating stamp of Karamzin, Puškin assures his readers that they are perusing a text which fully participates in Russian and world history. Russia, and Russian literature, have entered into history. Cultural Metanarratives in Unižennye i oskorblennye: Russian Literary Tradition as Historical Consciousness in Fedor Dostoevskij's Search for the Russian Spirit Elizabeth Blake, Ohio State University The investigation of temporality in Fedor Dostoevskij’s oeuvre has encouraged the author’s characterization as a chronicler who attempts to “recover the meaning of Russian history” in Besy (Harriet Murav, Holy Foolishness, 122), as a feuilletonist who comments upon contemporary issues in such journalistic writings as “Peterburgskaja letopis′”, and as a prophet whose apocalyptic predictions become most apparent in Dnevnik pisatelja (Gary Saul Morson, The Boundaries of Genre, 33). These studies of Dostoevskij’s historiography (specifically as presented in these cited works and in Andrew Wachtel’s An Obsession with History) focus on works written during the last decade of his life and display a strong underlying Christian eschatology. However, Dostoevskij’s understanding of history as it developed in his earlier works reveal that the “intergeneric dialogue” between history and literature is derived more from an eschatology drawing on a national historical tradition rather than from the Christian utopianism Morson finds in Dnevnik pisatelja (Morson, 79). Andrej Dostoevskij’s recollection of family historical readings, including Nikolaj Karamzin’s Istorija gosudarstva rossijskogo and several Russian historical novels from the 1830s, as well as Aleksandr Rizenkampf’s description of Fedor Dostoevskij’s non-extant historical dramas (Marija Stjuart and Boris Godunov) testify to the author’s early fascination with historical genres. Despite his frequent dialogue with historical narratives in his fiction in the 1840s, Dostoevskij does not outline his understanding of the “intergeneric dialogue” between the historical and the literary until he publishes a series of articles entitled “Rjad statej o russkoj literature” in the first issues of Vremja (1861–4), the journal he established with his older brother Mixail. Also appearing in the first issues of this journal were several installments of the first of Dostoevskij’s major post-Siberian novels, Unižennye i oskorblennye. In a comparative analysis of this novel and Dostoevskij’s “intergeneric dialogue” as it is presented “Rjad statej o russkoj literature” I shall, by emphasizing the synergetic relationship between his journalistic and fictional writings, explore Dostoevskij’s dialogue with the historical. A discussion of “Rjad statej o russkoj literature” will demonstrate how Dostoevskij’s focus on Russian literature to the exclusion of European literature allows him to emphasize those historical elements in Russian literature (particularly in the fiction of Aleksandr Puškin) that he believes contribute to the on-going development of a national consciousness. As a result, Dostoevskij lends the fiction of his (near) contemporaries a historical and cultural dimension that places the literary work in a temporal continuum in order to ensure its place in the cultural sphere as a sustainer of national identity. The effects of this cultural metanarrative become apparent in the novel, Unižennye i oskorblennye, when the narrator, a young writer, accounts for his adoption of certain literary conventions (and rejection of outdated conventions) in an attempt to encapsulate the literature of his time. The narrator’s anticipation of his place in the historical progression of Russian literature, when coupled with Dostoevskij’s breakdown of temporal barriers between the historical and the contemporary, will reveal that Dostoevskij’s writings, already in 1861, betray an orientation toward the future which will only later adopt Christian eschatological overtones.

Georgij Vladimov and the Perestrojka Historical Imagination: Echoes of a Different Past Amy Isaac Obrist, University of Southern California Georgij Vladimov’s 1995 Booker Prize novel General i ego armija encountered mixed reception. On the one hand, the novel was acclaimed as a “masterful” and penetrating portrayal of events from the Second World War. Aleksandr Kogan, V. Kardin, and others defended the novel as an accurate and insightful reflection on important events of Russia’s history. Yet not everyone was enthusiastic about Vladimov’s latest work; not surprisingly, it incited a heated debate in Russia between 1995 and 1997. Even in a post-glasnost′ era, many people still fear the past. World War II has remained one of the last holdouts of conservativism in presenting and interpreting the past, despite de- Leninization, de-Stalinization, and perestrojka. There is good reason for this, since hundreds of thousands of deaths and unbelievable losses came about as a result of blunders of the Soviet High Command—from which the popular conclusion follows that much of Russia’s profound historical suffering was in vain, and therefore meaningless. Yet, in a place where lots of skeletons have already been retrieved from historical closets and are floating about, shaking off their dusty limbs, it would be an oversimplification to say that people are enraged by Vladimov’s reconsideration of Russia’s national history. What is maddening is his probing into “little” or “local” histories—the acts and statements of individual participants in the war. Thus Vladimov’s problem is at one level an issue of history. That is, he could have ignored critics who complained about his version of the facts on the grounds that he was writing a novel anyway. However, he chose to answer them, and defended his novel in the press not as a work of art, but as a fundamentally correct revelation of previously blank pages in Russia’s history. Does this relegate the novel to the traditionally “low-brow” genres of popular fiction for political purposes or historical fiction for popular enjoyment? To some extent, Rosalind Marsh’s basic argument in History and Literature in Contemporary Russia applies: Vladimov has political interests at stake and uses history to promote a certain view of present events. However, General i ego armija was written and published after the genre of historical fiction was already becoming marginalized and was therefore less influential in political terms than fiction on historical themes published between 1987 and 1994. A more essential issue is that Vladimov’s argument is concerned with more than whether history has been presented in all correctness. The novel goes beyond the perestrojka imperative of presenting unknown material, staking a claim in the fertile Russian traditional of historical novel that probe the nature of history-making and history-telling. Vladimov relies heavily on intertextual dialog with several key moments for historical fiction in Russia, from Puškin’s adoption of Sir Walter Scott’s paradigms in Kapitanskaja dočka, to Tolstoj’s “loose and baggy monster,” to the Soviet World War II novel-making General i ego armija into a forum for the discussion of the meaning of history for the individual and for the Russian people. Although several key intertexts are reflected in the novel, General i ego armija relies heavily on a dialog with Tolstoj’s Voina i mir to make its argument. While Tolstoj, according to Gary Saul Morson, argues forcefully for a teleological determinism but epistemological uncertainty that renders the individual incapable of influencing the course of events or even knowing what causes any event, Vladimov, in my argument, believes that individuals do have power and freedom to influence what happens and that the power of a leader over the masses is no illusion. The implication, of course, is that this power carries with it a moral responsibility, which to deny is tantamount to accepting the blame for any wrongs that ensued as a result of one’s power. Vladimov plays with the opposition between freedom and necessity in his novel, at times using irony and at other times discussing the issue directly to suggest that, while there is possibly a kind of determinism at work in the forces interacting in history, in that a large number of wills in agreement can overwhelm the individual, nothing is really inevitable because the choices and decisions of individuals carry both a little power and a lot of responsibility. The fact that alternatives always exist to the actions we choose, and that we are free to choose them, gives hope and sometimes makes a difference, albeit a small one, for Vladimov. More importantly, however, this view of history finds mere reconsideration of Russia’s national history is insufficient, if it is undertaken at the national level-and insists that local history is the key interface between the individual and what it means to be Russian. My interpretation of Vladimov’s novel is based on an application of the theoretical principles of Andrew Wachtel (Obsession with History: Russian Writers Confront the Past) and Gary Saul Morson (Narrative and Freedom: the Shadows of Time) as well as the paradigms of two philosophers of history, Alexander Demandt (History that Never Happened) and Geoffrey Hawthorn (Plausible Worlds). Focusing on Vladimov’s engagement of Tolstoj’s views on history, I develop an approach to recent Russian fiction on historical themes suggesting that alternative history-what might have been-plays a key role in the application of historical memory to cultural expression during the perestrojka period. Panel: 30B-5: Roundtable: Intensive Summer Language Programs Chair: Lynne deBenedette, Brown University Slot: December 30, 2000, 10:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m. Participant: Ilya Vinitsky, University of Pittsburgh Participant: Maria Shardakova, Russian Language Institute at Bryn Mawr College Participant: Donna Oliver, Beloit College Participant: Jerzy Kolodziej, Indiana University Participant: Benjamin Rifkin, University of Wisconsin, Madison (Middlebury Russian School) Participant: Natalie Lovick, Monterey Institute of International Studies

Panel: 30B-6: Forum: Student-Made Videos Based on Nachalo Chair: Gerard L. Ervin, Ohio State Univesrity (Emeritus) Equipment: VCR, Overhead projector Slot: December 30, 2000, 10:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m. Participant: Melissa Frazier, Sarah Lawrence College Participant: Arlene Forman, Oberlin College Participant: Donald K. Jarvis, Brigham Young University Participant: Larry McLellan, University of California, Santa Barbara

Panel: 30B-7: Slavic Case Chair: Alla Nedashkivska, University of Alberta Slot: December 30, 2000, 10:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m.

DLIpl of Non-Feminine Nouns in two West Ukrainian (Transcarpathian) Dialects Elena Boudovskaia, University of California, Los Angeles This paper is devoted to the development of nominal in two villages in Transcarpathian . The Transcarpathian dialects are an example of the preservation of archaic features under the condition of separation from the Ukrainian-speaking mainland (the Transcarpathian lands belonged to Hungary for about a thousand years). However, though the dialects are archaic, they nevertheless continued to develop. This development was sometimes shared with the neighbouring dialects, but sometimes was unique. The morphological development in the Transcarpathian dialects is especially interesting. It encompasses not only change in sets of endings within old inflectional types, but also redistribution of lexemes between inflectional types, which often leads to merger of the old inflectional types and appearance of new ones, conditioned by new factors. Relative ability of certain factors to underpin inflectional types varies across time. Researchers find that the general development in some Slavic languages has been from inherited, unmotivated, lexically conditioned inflectional types (where the inflectional type of a given lexeme had to be specified in the lexicon because it could hardly be inferred from anywhere else) to grammatically, semantically and pragmatically conditioned categories (Zaliznjak). It is interesting to test this hypothesis against the data of specific dialects, especially Transcarpathian, because their archaic character indicates a slower rate of development, which might mean that they display the stages already passed through by more innovative dialects and languages. The paper, based on my field recordings in the two villages (Novoselycja near Perečyn, further Nov, and Lypec′ka Poljana near Xust, further LypP) discusses changes in DLIpl of non-feminine nouns. There is a significant difference between the morphologic processes in the two villages, and not only because one of them, LypP, preserves a more archaic state of affairs in terms of the number of archaic desinences, but also because the redistribution of desinences among lexemes seem to have different directions and to be determined by different factors: 1. In LypP, an important factor for the change is the type of stem-final consonant (hard vs. soft). In Nov, this doesn’t play an important role. 2. In Nov, the gender of the noun (neut. vs. masc.) seems to be an important factor in the change, which is not the case in LypP. 3. In Nov, in the majority of cases there seems to be a generalization of one ending for all the declension types, which is not so in LypP. On the whole, in the more innovative dialect of Nov the factors determining the new distribution of endings are not morphophonemic (the type of stem-final consonant), as in LypP, but grammatical (gender). This is an unusual development for East Slavic languages which have generally preferred not to morphologize the distinction between masc. and neut. in the oblique cases of the pl. On the other hand, this distinction is also morphologized in neighboring Slovak. The Rise of the Genitive-Accusative and Genitive of Possession in : A New Interpretation Elena Bratishenko, University of Calgary The paper deals with a long-standing problem of Slavic Historical Linguistics, which is the question why in the history of Old East Slavic (OESl) there occurred a substitution of the Adjective by the of a noun as a means of expressing possession. The main postulate is that there existed a previously unnoticed connection between this substitution, on the one hand, and the rise of a new syncretic form, known as Genitive-Accusative, on the other. It is suggested that the missing link underlying both processes is the intolerance of the language to Subject-Object ambiguity. The conclusions are drawn on the basis of the data from a wide range of Medieval East Slavic original sources. The class of nouns involved includes masc. sg. animate nouns (most notably, proper names) belonging to a major declension, the stem of which typically formed a possessive Adjective. The Adjective was practically the only means to express possession in noun phrases denoting mature male individuals - prototypical Possessors. Attestations of the Genitive of possession among this class of nouns in OESl are extremely scarce. Such attestations gradually increased historically, resulting in a completely reverse situation to that of modern Russian, with its exclusive use of the Genitive of possession. The most important fact concerning the data is that the two alternative morphosyntactic sets: Adjective vs. Genitive in possessive constructions, on the one hand, and Nominative-Accusative vs. Genitive-Accusative on the other, are attested in variation. Upon a detailed and multi- dimensional analysis of the factors influencing the choice of a particular construction, it becomes evident that both sets are sensitive to the same collection of features. Moreover, the relevant features are differently ranked and thus comprise a hierarchy. Since the features on the top of the hierarchy are most typically associated with nouns denoting agents/possessors, it can be termed an “Agent/Possessor Hierarchy”. Because of the observed correlation between prototypical Agent (Subject) of the transitive action and prototypical Possessor, the Subject-Object distinction at the centre of the Genitive- Accusative debate emerges as not only relevant for the rise of the new Accusative case form, but also for the form of the attributive modifier. This underlies the claim that the hierarchy of features regulates both phenomena in morphosyntactic variation. The arrangement of shared features relevant for both sets of constructions into a hierarchy also explains why these two changes, documented at their initial stage by the OESl texts, occurred parallel to each other. The correlation of Subject with the Adjective and Object with the Genitive case of a noun may have been influenced by the same factors, as was Genitive-Accusative . Since proper personal stems representing prototypical Agents/Possessors predominantly formed possessive Adjectives, Genitive case of such nouns was not widely employed in possessive constructions. One can speculate then, that Genitive was available for the use as Object of transitive verbs with this specific class of nouns. Researchers, stressing the decline in the Genitive direct objects, have given no consideration to the unproductive Genitive usage in possessive constructions among nouns high on the hierarchy. The distribution pattern in possessive constructions could have contributed to the new productivity of the Genitive case and ultimately to the rise of the Genitive-Accusative.

Border Zones in the Russian Case System Laura Janda, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill This presentation is based on the framework of cognitive linguistics, which assumes that grammar results from metaphorical and metonymical extensions of construals of perceptual experiences (for more on the basic tenets of cognitive linguistics, see Laura Janda’s position piece at http://www.indiana.edu/~slavconf/SLING2K). In this framework, the form-meaning relationship is very real. This means that a given form (such as a preposition or a morphological category such as case) always bears its meaning (which is coherent though it is often complex), and that if form is different, meaning is also different (i.e., true synonymy is rare, though meanings may be similar). On the basis of nearly fifteen years of research on case semantics, the author has established that each case represents a coherent semantic network, and that all uses of a given case access at least some portion of this semantic network. The uses of cases and prepositions are neither arbitrary nor meaningless. The present paper is an attempt to take this research a step further by comparing systematic semantic relationships among the cases, thereby targeting semantically significant junctures in the grammatical landscape of case, namely those that are potentially ambiguous. A semantic relationship exists when there is some degree of synonymy (semantic contiguity or overlap) and/or multiple constructions are available to express various construals of a perceived experience. The ultimate goal is to explore the various ways in which a given experience can be cognitively and linguistically manipulated. The six grammatical cases of Russian are not discrete semantic islands. The cases interact with each other, variously dividing up and sharing meanings and syntactic roles, and thus weaving the whole of the case system into an interconnected, interdependent entity. I will attempt a brief typology of inter-case relationships in Russian, based on three parameters: 1) the number of cases engaged in a semantic relationship, 2) the type of semantic relationship, and 3) the factors contributing to the semantic relationship. 1) The number of cases engaged in a semantic relationship: 1 x 1, 1 x 1 x 1, 2 x 2 1 x 1 By far the most common relationship is that of a pair of cases, as the instrumental and genitive in this pair of phrases: stradat′ bessonnicej vs. stradat′ ot bessonnicy, two overlapping yet non- identical construals of an experience expressed in English as ‘suffer from insomnia’. 1 x 1 x 1 Less common, but by no means rare, are threesomes of cases engaged in a similar semantic task, as we see with the nominative, instrumental, and accusative cases, all of which can express a possessed object, as in the following three construals of a given perceived reality: U nego ogromnye sredstva vs. On raspolagaet ogromnymi sredstvami vs. On imeet ogromnye sredstva ‘He has enormous means/great wealth’. 2 x 2 There are additionally a few instances where a given concept can be rendered with two different arrays of cases, such as verbs meaning ‘teach’ which can either mark the learner with the accusative and the subject matter with the dative (uchit′), or the learner with the dative and the subject matter with the accusative (prepodavat′). 2) The type of semantic relationship: contiguous, overlapping, or virtually synonymous. Contiguous Contiguous meanings amount to a division of labor—these meanings may touch, but do not actually overlap. An example of contiguous meanings are the destinational uses of the prepositions v and na with non-humans in the accusative case and the parallel destinational use of the preposition k with humans in the . The choice is forced by the nature of the destination, but a very strong parallelism exists. Like complementary distribution in phonology, this differentiation is symptomatic of a greater unity. Overlapping Overlapping meanings provide choices for speakers, since they share at least some portion of meaning and syntactic function, although usually one option will be preferred. Certain verbs denoting waiting and wanting can appear with either the accusative or the genitive cases, and the choice is largely determined by context: Boris ždet avtobus/avtobusa ‘Boris is waiting for the/a bus’. Virtually Synonymous Occasionally the overlap between case meanings is so extensive that the resulting expressions are virtually synonymous; for example the use of the genitive or accusative with žal′/žalko ‘pity, sorry’, or the use of the accusative with izučat′ ‘study’ as opposed to the dative with učit′sja ‘study’. 3) The factors contributing to the semantic relationship: metonymic reduction, construal, abstract similar meaning, same/similar lexical trigger. Metonymic Reduction In comparison with a complete path (Bill walked over the hill), the endpoint of a path (Sally lives over the hill) is a metonymic reduction. Metonymic reduction relates the destinational (path) meanings marked with the accusative of the prepositions v, na, o, za, pod with their corresponding (and contiguous) locational (endpoint) meanings marked with the for v, na, o, and with the for za, pod. Construal The speaker can choose to foreground, background, imply blame, etc. By imposing various case roles on the noun phrases in an utterance. Although Ja xoču spat′ ‘I want to sleep’ and Mne xočetsja spat′ ‘I feel like sleeping’ can describe the same objective reality, the speaker is assigning a volitional role to the nominative subject in the first sentence, but claiming that the corresponding dative in the second sentence is but a victim of circumstance. Similarly, Ivan razbil mašinu otca makes a relatively neutral statement, whereas Ivan razbil otcu mašinu focuses on the father’s distress, though both mean ‘Ivan smashed up father’s car’. Abstract Similar Meaning Often a number of means (including various cases) are used to express a set of similar concepts with overlapping or contiguous meanings. For example, Russian has many ways to express directionality in the domain of intention (many of which are roughly equivalent to English ‘for’), among them the prepositions v, na, pro, and za with the accusative case, do, dlja, radi with the genitive case, as well as the bare dative case (as in Vot pis′mo emu ‘Here’s a letter for him’). Same/Similar Lexical Trigger Sometimes different case uses are triggered by the same or similar lexical items, such as verit′ ‘believe’, which can combine with both the bare dative case and the preposition v with the accusative case. The verb napolnit′ ‘fill’ uses the instrumental case to mark the substance doing the filling, but the related adjective polon ‘full’ can use the genitive case for the filling substance. The same/similar triggers indicate that there are some semantic points of contact between these case uses, again usually involving overlapping or contiguous meanings. This paper will examine these and other factors in an exploration of the interconnections among the Russian cases (from a database of inter-case relationships currently numbering several dozen). Time: 30C Panel: 30C-1: The Latest Literary Trends in Post-Soviet Russia Chair: Juras T. Ryfa, George Washington University Equipment: Overhead projector Slot: December 30, 2000, 1:00–3:00 p.m. A Post-Soviet Positive Hero? An Analysis of Saša Pankratov in Anatolij Rybakov's Deti Arbata Novels Lisa Taylor, University of Georgia This paper will present a formal analysis of Saša Pankratov, the protagonist of Anatolij Rybakov’s Deti Arbata series of novels (Deti Arbata, Tridcat′ pjatyj i drugie gody, Strax, and Prax i pepel′). Within a theoretical framework derived primarily from the work of Vladimir Propp (Russkij geroičeskij èpos), Lidija Ginzburg (O literaturnom geroe), and Katerina Clark (The Soviet Novel), it will trace Saša Pankratov’s literary lineage back to and beyond the positive hero of Socialist Realism, who is in turn descended from the bogatyri and ascetic heroes of Russian fable and legend, as the analysis will explain. However, while a formal critical analysis is certainly necessary, Rybakov himself acknowledged that he incorporated his own experiences into the figure of Saša Pankratov. Providing a formal analysis to the exclusion of these highly personal elements might not only present an unbalanced study, but would also be an injustice to Rybakov’s work. Therefore, this paper will also attempt to identify autobiographical elements present in the character of Saša Pankratov. Finally, it will synthesize the results of both analyses in an effort to provide a more balanced, holistic study. The reasons why such a study will be valuable are outlined below. Scholars acknowledge that there are two main plot lines within the Deti Arbata novels. One is concerned with the thoughts and actions of Iosif Vissarionovič Stalin; the other concentrates on the fate of a group of young adults from the Old Arbat region of Moscow, including Saša Pankratov, an idealistic college student and Komsomol leader who is the novel’s protagonist. However, the extant body of writing about these novels is almost exclusively concerned with Stalin as he is depicted in the novels. In contrast, comparatively little writing and analysis has been dedicated to the group of young adults. Although some scholars and critics suggest the development of many characters is incomplete, it may be shortsighted to apply this judgment to all of them, especially to Saša Pankratov. Yet beyond scholarly recognition that he embodies certain elements of Rybakov’s own youth, little analysis of this complex central figure has been done. Indeed, a careful reading of the novel indicates that many of the brief comments that have been made about him are inaccurate. Saša has variously been described as “tall,” “a prig,” and “an honest Communist,” all of which can empirically be proven incorrect. This paper aims to begin to correct these mistaken interpretations and to offer a more detailed analysis of Saša Pankratov, a figure as central to the Deti Arbata series as that of Stalin himself.

Pelevin's Allusions to Blok in “Crystal World” Tatiana Spektor, Iowa State University Russian postmodernist writers are known as ardent readers. Consequently, their works are routinely intertextual, and they allude freely and masterfully to the other texts written at all times both in Russia and elsewhere in the world. Viktor Pelevin’s short story “Crystal World” (1991) is a perfect example of postmodernist intertextual discourse. It is saturated with allusions to numerous oral and written texts of various genres: folklore, poetry, prose fiction, the essay, literary scholarship, and historical document. In this twenty-something-page story one finds references to Aleksandr Blok (1880–1921), Dmitrij Merežkovskij (1865–1941), Alexander Puškin (1799–1837), Petr Uspenskij (1878–1947), Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), Karl Marx (1818–1883), Vladimir Lenin (1870–1921), Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), August Strindberg (1849–1912), and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), to recognize only direct citations. Along with the textual quotations, Pelevin freely uses famous pictures, statues, pieces of music, and other forms of art, as well as everyday items to create a complex dynamic intermingling of various theories of culture and systems of thought. The limits of a conference paper would not allow me the pleasure of revealing all the secrets of Pelevin’s text layer by layer; therefore, I will focus on his allusions to Blok and some other references that contribute to creating what I regard as the central message of the text. The purpose of my paper is to suggest that Pelevin uses “Crystal World” as a vehicle of philosophical discourse and participates in the traditional dialogue on the messianic role of Russia. More precisely, I claim that in this story Pelevin argues against Vladimir Solov′ev’s (1853–1900) ideas of panmongolism, accepted by the “younger” Russian symbolists Blok, Andrej Belyj (Boris Bugaev, 1880–1934), and Vjačeslav Ivanov (1866–1949). According to Solov′ev and the younger symbolists, “yellow hordes” from Far East were to destroy Russia, the “third Rome,” which would have put an end to the Christian period of human culture. Instead, Pelevin contends in the story that demonic forces that actually destroyed Holy Russia in 1917 came from the opposite direction: from the West. At the same time, he does agree with the symbolists (and representatives of esoteric thought) that the “demon” could have been stopped in the 1900s by no one but the Russian symbolist writers themselves. As part of his discussion, Pelevin offers an answer to the question about the role in the history of Russian symbolism of Anna Minclova (possibly Steiner’s or the Rosicrucians’ emissary to Russia). It is my contention that by creating a cleverly elaborated system of allusions to the ancient and modern cultural myths, artistic texts, documents, and esoteric symbols and signs, Pelevin comes up in his story with the suggestion that Minclova’s spiritual assignment was to mislead the Russian symbolists as to their “mission” in history and prevent them from fulfilling their duty of defending Russia against the demon of revolution. In this she indeed succeeded. If we accept my suggestion that Pelevin is serious in discussing such notions as the messianic role of Russia and spiritual duty of Russian writers, his story emerges as an example of intricate relationship between modernism and postmodernism. Like a typical postmodernist text, “Crystal World” is a story of exceptionally well elaborated dynamic interplay with a large variety of textual structures. At the same time, the story is not a pure experiment in creating self-enclosed sign systems, but is a traditional modernist attempt to affirm the hidden absoluteness of being in search for ultimate truth.

Old Wine in New Skins or New Wine in Old Skins? Conundrums of Vjačeslav P′etsux's Theology Mark Swift, University of Auckland, New Zealand Vjačeslav P′etsux consciously continues the traditions of what he calls nineteenth-century “Russian Christian Realism” (Elisabeth Rich, South Central Review). His narrators and characters “conduct relaxed discussions on the eternal questions” (Basinskij, Literaturnaja gazeta) and he has earned acclaim as a writer whose gift is to breathe new life into traditional themes of Russian literature by transposing them into contemporary settings (George Gibian in Ewa Thompson, ed.; also Tarošina, Literaturnaja gazeta). P′etsux’s antecedents in Russian thought include Čaadaev, Berdjaev, Solov′ev and Dostoevskij. In response to an interviewer who pointed out that his philosophising heroes appear so intelligent because they don’t cite their sources, P′etsux confessed a lack of erudition that causes him on occasion to “reinvent the bicycle”; that indeed, since the realm of human thought is limited, all writers since Ecclesiastes in effect only perceive and articulate the same notions. In the context of contemporary Russian society and in his inimitable narrative that combines the comic tone of a Zoščenko-like chatterbox with the perception of “a suffering intellectual” (Lev Anninskij), P′etsux develops traditional themes: the fate of Russia and the Russian national character, the relationship of literature to life, the nature of evil, questions of morality, mortality and the existence of God. In discussions surrounding religion and spirituality in post-Soviet Russia, P′etsux’s voice has been one of moderation. In his prose fiction and non-fiction essays alike, he develops an eclectic humanistic theology that comprises elements of Christianity, pantheism, primal religion, agnostic spirituality, and intellectual skepticism. He “defamiliarizes” common concepts with novel definitions. For example, “faith” in P′etsux’s jargon is not a dogmatic certainty, but “an ability of perception, somewhere between longing and hypothesis, knowledge and hope.” P′etsux’s theology is an amalgamation of certainty and vagueness, of views both traditional and liberal. His rejection of the exclusiveness, legalism and preoccupation with ritual common to religious traditions appeals to the modern sensibility. At the same time, his relativistic faith and belief in a God “who doesn’t care whether people believe in Him or not” presents challenges of a different order which this paper explicates: How does P′etsux reconcile the notion of expiating suffering with his rejection of life after death?; how is it that all can be both forgiven and also accountable?; how does he handle monotheism’s central problem of theodicy?

On Some Tendencies of Development of Russian Prose in the End of the Twentieth Century Ludmila Szewczenko, University of Kielce, Poland The socio-economic changes that took place in post-perestrojka Russia, as well as its integration into the world cultural and civilizational process significantly influenced common stereotypes and the very mentality of the people. Many traditional “Russian traits,” formerly regarded with a “plus” sign, now, in the context of world culture, are clearly viewed negatively. The quest for new guidelines mandates critical analysis and re-evaluation of the “Russian passion,” the traditional dual model of national culture and much more, which inevitably reflects upon the development of literature. The prose of the 90s sees the vanishing of its heroes acting on the edge of human possibilities, “on the verge of breakdown,” and heroes whose moral searches, reaching their limits, put them on the edge of an existential abyss. The exceptions are works of so-called “transmetarealism,”—The Underground, or the Hero of Our Times by V. Makanin, The Sign of the Beast by O. Yermakov, and a few others. In the 90s, as previously, Russian culture continues to be the culture of “turning oneself inside out and pushing it to the limits,” as defined by M. Epstein. As before, the hyper-moral, reaching its limits, joins the hyper-immoral. Yet, unlike in previous decades, the limits, or the poles, are localized not inside the hero, not inside one text, but spread among the author’s intentions depicted in different pieces of art work and, more widely, among entire literary trends. On the margins of these trends and inside of them appears something that is adverse and that negates them, but that at the same time has a middle posture in relation to both. These are the art works that open new horizons of viewing values not only ideal and brought to their outer limits (the highest or the lowest), but, rather, values inherent to everyday actuality, depicted on the scale of the material and spiritual life of ordinary heroes. This is evidenced by the prose of “neo- sentimentalism” and the emergence of the “literature of existence,” such as the latest works of V. Vojnovič, L. Ulickaja, M. Kuraeva, M. Sanaev and other contemporary authors. Analysis of these works, and especially a detailed analysis of the text of The Lines of Destiny, or Malaševič’s Treasure Box, recipient of the Booker Prize (along with the works of V. Makanin, A. Bitov, O. Ermakov and other prose writers) form the ground for this report.

Panel: 30C-2: Baxtin Chair: Anke Ziolkowska, University of Wisconsin, Madison Slot: December 30, 2000, 1:00–3:00 p.m. Reshaping Baxtinian Chronotope Suk-Young Kim, University of Illinois, Chicago Baxtin’s concept of chronotope has contributed significantly to the understanding of literary text by providing a balanced interconnection between time and space. Traditionally, literary criticism has focused largely on the aspects of time as the basic category of existence. However, the configuration of both time and space should be considered as a form-shaping ideology for the artistic text. It is Baxtin who recognized the indivisible relationship between the two axes, one of which cannot be regarded as less important than the other. Furthermore, he has pointed out that each chronotope, as well as genre, has its own speech zone which exists in dialogic relationship with others. Baxtin himself acknowledges the importance of mutual inclusiveness and co- existence of chronotopes. However, he has put more effort to the typology of chronotopes of different genres and authors and as a result, the interrelationship among chronotopes on various levels has been relatively neglected. The aim of this paper is to modify Baxtin’s theory of chronotope by emphasizing the “interrelationship” among various time-space models rather than identifying the nature of individual chronotopes in literary texts. For this purpose, it is needed to premise the following: 1)The configuration of time and space is not a fixture but a fluid movement itself as to be involved in more than one chronotope model. The actual nature of chronotope in literary text does not consist of single time-space axes, but the web-like connection among time1-space1, time2-space2, ad infinitum. It consists, at least, of four types: the visible chronotope of given text; the chronotope of intext, subtext and context; the chronotope of the author; the chronotope of the reader. Assuming that the chronotope of the reader varies countlessly and the numbers of other texts conversing with the given text may reach infinity, these four chronotopes should be understood as the minimum components for the fluid actualization of time and space. 2) It should be emphasized that “synchronism” is the genuine spirit of dialogic relationship among above-mentioned four chronotope models. They exist and interact simultaneously. Such notion should be taken into account even for diachronic studies of literature or literary evolution of an author. The interconnection of more than one third-dimensional chronotope creates the fourth dimension, the area which serves as a common denominator for all chronotopes involved in actualization of the text. This is the fourth dimension which enables the convergence of opposite systems such as traditional Biblical motives and folklore, history and myth. It is where the effect of carnivalesque grotesque and fantasy arises. The fourth dimension also opens the possibility of physical and metaphysical ambivalence; visible and invisible, sacred and secular. As seen from Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita or Gogol’s Petersbug Tales, the abrupt switch of scenes or sudden disappearance of characters should pass through the fourth dimension which gives plasticity and adaptability to the third-dimensional chronotopes of mechanical world. Marina Cvetaeva's Construction of Childhood in Time and Space Dominique Gore, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill In her autobiographical essays of 1934–37, Marina Cvetaeva presents us with an image of the precocious child as always-already the artist. It is an image which defies traditional ideas of development. This is in large part due to the mythologizing nature of her poetic vision, in which each event exists on two planes simultaneously. As Olga Hasty writes in Tsvetaeva’s Orphic Journeys in the Worlds of the Word, Cvetaeva defines the role of poetry in its “capacity to affect translations between the quotidian and the transcendent.” (2) Baxtin’s concept of the chronotope as discussed in his essay Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel can help to unravel the interplay between daily time and space and mythical time and space. Baxtin states that “every entry into the sphere of meanings is accomplished only through the gates of the chronotope.” (258) In this paper, I will use the idea of chronotope to consider the image of childhood constructed in these texts. In literary depictions, the spaces of Russian middle-class childhood in the nineteenth and early twentieth century are primarily domestic. However, the accounts which defined the original literary form of the Russian childhood were located primarily in the chronotope of the family idyll. Cvetaeva’s depiction of childhood, like those of many modernists, is a far remove from the patriarchal estate life of Old Russia. I will look first at the ways in which Cvetaeva represents the spaces of her childhood, considering such key loci as the piano and Valerija’s room in their house at Three Ponds and the family summer home at Tarusa. I will then consider aspects of her concept of time: both its daily flow and Cvetaeva’s unique concept of development which places all events of significance in early childhood for “čto znaeš′ v detstve—znaeš′ na vsju žizn′, no i čego ne znaeš′ v detstve—ne znaeš′ na vsju žizn′.” (Cvetaeva, “Moj Puškin”) The second half of this paper is devoted to the essay “Moj Puškin,” in which some of Cvetaeva’s most interesting ideas regarding the significance of childhood events and contacts are developed. She identifies the Puškin monument on Tverskoj bul′var as her first measure of time and space. Thus, the concept “Puškin” is a chronotope in and of itself containing all of the world worth knowing. We can see here her use of mythological time: “ubili, ežednevno, ežečasno, nepreryvno ubivali vse moe mladenčestvo, detstvo, junost′.” Past and present are continuously transformed into the eternal. She considers many Puškins in this essay: the Puškin of the painting in her mother’s bedroom, Pamjatnik-Puškin, the Puškin of her sister’s blue bound book with gold lettering, the “xrestomatijnoe” Puškin offered in the schools and even a theatrical Puškin. Each of these Puškins is shown to have had a determining effect on the child’s consciousness and thus the child-poet partakes of the great poet’s power and destiny. In conclusion, I consider the appropriateness of the essay form as format for developing this interplay of chronotopes, as opposed to the more traditional biographical unfolding of character through time which dominated nineteenth-century accounts of childhood. Baxtinian Elements in Andrzej Wajda's Dramatic Adaptation of The Devils Alexander Burry, Northwestern University Andrzej Wajda’s 1971 production of The Devils for the Stary Teatr in Cracow exemplifies the capacity of a transposition to argue fruitfully and provocatively with its source. Drawing on Camus’ 1959 dramatic adaptation as well as Dostoevskij’s novel, Wajda makes radical departures from both. His emphasis on creating dialogues, both with his audience and with the original texts, suggests the influence of Baxtin’s theory of polyphony. This influence can be seen in Wajda’s directing style as well as his treatment of the novel. Although Baxtinian theory has been applied to Wajda’s film by Janina Falkowska and mentioned briefly as an influence in his 1984 adaptation of Crime and Punishment (Maciej Karpiński), it has not been explored specifically in relation to The Devils or used more generally to analyze his directing techniques. However, Wajda’s methods as a theater director display various parallels to Dostoevskij’s works and creative process as interpreted by Baxtin. Wajda’s favored procedure is to control the casting and staging for a production meticulously, but to allow the actors maximum interpretive freedom in their rehearsals and performances. This method parallels Dostoevskij’s manner of carefully orchestrating scenes by putting the proper characters together and allowing the dialogue and plot to unfold autonomously, as it were, according to the various personalities involved. Wajda shows a tendency to submerge his directorial voice and avoid dictating the actors’ performances, much as Dostoevskij’s authorial voice, according to Baxtin, coexists and interacts with those of this characters without subordinating or synthesizing them. Wajda’s choices in recasting Dostoevskij’s material similarly show the influence of Baxtinian theory. He adapts The Devils in such a way as to capitalize on and add to its multivoicedness and ambiguity. For example, his use of black-clad stagehands derived from Japanese Bunraki puppet theater offers what could be seen as a concrete representation of devils, thus adding another interpretation of a title that already has several possible points of reference in the novel. The black figures also allow him to create resonances between the historical contexts of the novel and Communist Poland. They conspicuously control and censor the action of the novel, preparing a noose for Stavrogin and cutting off the last lines of the narrator as he informs us of the protagonist’s sanity. This last example reinforces the play’s open-endedness; Wajda emphatically avoids giving any kind of “finalizing word” that would reduce the dialogues and ambiguities of the original. His placement of the suppressed chapter “At Tixon’s” as the first scene of the play (Camus inserts it in its original position at the end of Part II in his version) constitutes an even more significant departure from Dostoevskij, putting other parts of The Devils involving Stavrogin in a very different light. It further complexifies rather than resolves the long-standing critical debate regarding the question of the chapter’s inclusion, as Wajda goes far beyond Camus and other commentators in arguing for its centrality in the conception of the original. Through such changes, Wajda reinforces and furthers the polyphonic texture of The Devils. His adaptation thus testifies to a Dostoevskian influence based not only on choice of material, confluence of ideas and the applicability of the novel’s material to Wajda’s historical context, but also on a similarity of creative method that contributed greatly to the director’s personal artistic development.

Panel: 30C-3: Bearing Witness: Russian Literature and Historical Testimony Chair: Eric Laursen, University of Utah Slot: December 30, 2000, 1:00–3:00 p.m.

Galloping Cavalrymen and Porcelain Shepherds: A Portrait of the Soviet Society in Vasilij Grossman's Fiction of 1937–1940 Elena Monastireva-Ansdell, Oberlin College By the late 1930s the topic of the Revolution and the Civil War in Soviet literature was pushed into the background by a new stress on the country’s industrial progress and the struggle with “enemies of the people.” As the country deviated ever further from the original precepts of the Revolution under Stalin’s totalitarian rule, references to the founding period of the Soviet state had to be controlled and manipulated to suit Stalin’s model of socialism. In his drive to consolidate power and to gain complete control over interpretation of the Soviet past, Stalin, in 1935, dissolved The Society of Old Bol′ševiks and the Society of Former Political Prisoners and Exiles. The severe purges of the following years eliminated most of the “old Bol′ševik guard;” thus almost an entire generation of the most experienced and devoted revolutionaries was wiped out of Soviet society. Writing about contemporary life in a series of short stories from 1937–1940, Vasilij Grossman introduces a number of references to the Civil War and old revolutionaries while addressing the problem of the state of Soviet society in the late 1930s. Even though the stories were not intended or suited for publication in the years of Stalin’s totalitarian rule, Grossman expresses his ideas on the Stalinist regime in the form of fleeting references to the revolutionary period, seemingly insignificant details and symbolic images. Carefully selected and added together, they constitute a systematic and comprehensive outlook on a system which has broken its ties with its revolutionary past. In this paper, I undertake a selective analysis of Grossman’s two short stories, “The Young One and the Old One” and “A Few Sad Days,” with the goal of recreating Grossman’s vision of his country’s past and present during the years of the most severe Stalinist repressions. Although some perceptive comments have already been made on certain individual symbolic images in both stories (Frank Ellis, John and Carol Garrard), there has been as yet no attempt to conduct a more comprehensive analysis of the image system as a whole, with the inclusion of the most fleeting and obscure but equally important references. I first discuss Grossman’s concepts of severed connections and of a society which has lost its core, expressed through such images as a heroine’s speedy car ride to her dacha, a deceased engineer’s library, an elaborate collection of pine cones, a bed of yellow lilies planted at a dacha by an old revolutionary, and a stagnant community well. I dwell for a little longer on Grossman’s treatment of the dacha as a repository of cultural and historical memories and as a failing model of the alleged Stalinist “paradise on earth.” Another significant episode, in which a veteran of the Civil War looks through a pile of his old and more recent photographs, takes us to a discussion of a juxtaposition Grossman creates between the contemporary state of Soviet society and the early revolutionary years. A few seemingly harmless details noted by the beholder in the “brighter” pictures of the “resort years” (Grossman), come together to reflect a festive but portentous facade of the Stalinist regime. The exalted Soviet idyll is later figuratively portrayed in a laconic image of a playful cupboard display, featuring “galloping cavalrymen and porcelain shepherds.” I will discuss the symbolism of the image, while speaking of Grossman’s irony over the false continuity which the Stalinist regime forged between the two periods of Soviet history.

Textual Analysis of Axmatova's “Requiem” and Čukovskaja's Sof′ja Petrovna Jennifer Ryan Tishler, Dartmouth College Although the literary and personal relationship between the writers Anna Axmatova and Lidija Čukovskaja has been thoroughly studied by such scholars as Beth Holmgren and Stephanie Sandler, to date there has been no comprehensive textual comparison of two “sister” works: Axmatova’s poetic cycle “Requiem” and Čukovskaja’s short novel Sof′ja Petrovna. These works are linked by their theme and their time of composition: they record the experiences of mothers who lost their sons during the arrests and purges of the Stalinist 1930s and were written while— or very soon after—the events they describe were unfolding. Both works have borne limiting characterizations as “documents” or “heroic acts,” often at the expense of their vitality as literary works (Holmgren 44). That the two works are connected in the minds of their readership is evidenced in the fact that the first, unauthorized, version of Sof′ja Petrovna published was given by its editors the title The Empty House [Opustelyj dom], a phrase taken directly from the “Requiem” poem “The Sentence” [“Prigovor”]. Careful reading of these two texts demonstrates many parallels. For example, in Chapter Ten of Sof′ja Petrovna, we read the heroine’s introduction to the rules of the prison line: “Mnogoe uznala Sof′ja Petrovna za èti dve nedeli—ona uznala, čto zapisyvat′sja v očered′ sleduet s večera …” (48). This phrase resonates with the Epilogue of “Requiem”, where Axmatova writes: “Uznala ja, kaka opadajut lica,/ Kak iz-pod vek vygljadyvaet strax” (3:28). Other points of comparison in the two works include the realms of public and private space, and the “crime of motherhood” (Holmgren 55). One key contradistinction between the two works is that Axmatova’s speaker witnesses the arrest of her loved one in the poem “Uvodili tebja na rassvete” (3:23). By describing the small but significant actions at the moment of parting (“the children cried,” “the candle sputtered”), Axmatova’s speaker preserves this scene, true to her command to herself “Don’t forget!” This final glance is a privilege denied Sof′ja Petrovna, who badgers her son’s friend Alik, present at the time of the arrest, to describe what he saw: “Zato ona s žadnost′ju rassprašivala Alika pro to, kak èto bylo, kak uvodili Kolju” (50). As part of my literary analysis of “Requiem” and Sof′ja Petrovna, I will also address the question of influence. Given the closely related biographies of these two writers, can all cases of textual similarities be traced to the influence of one writer on the other? Or were both Axmatova and Čukovskaja simultaneously reacting to (or anticipating) greater literary and societal trends? Selected Bibliography Axmatova, Anna. Sobranie sočinenij v šesti tomax. Ed. T. Gor′kova. 3 vols. to date. Moscow: Èllis Lak, 1998–1999. Axmatova, Anna. Sočinenija v dvux tomax. Ed. N. Skatov. Vol 1. Moscow: Pravda, 1990. 2 vols. Amert, Susan. In a Shattered Mirror: The Later Poetry of Anna Akhmatova. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1992. Cavanagh, Clare. “The Death of the Book à la russe: The Acmeists under Stalin.” Slavic Review 55.1 (1996): 125–135. Čukovskaja, Lidija. Sof′ja Petrovna. Ed. John Murray. London: Bristol Classical Press, 1997. Čukovskaja, Lidija. Zapiski ob Anne Axmatovoj. 3 vols. Moscow: Soglasie, 1997. Holmgren, Beth. Women’s Works in Stalin’s Time: Lidiia Chukovskaia and Nadezhda Mandelstam. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1993. Naiman, Anatolij. Zapiski ob Anne Axmatovoj. Moscow: Vagrius, 1999. Nerler, P. “Fantastičeskaja jav′.” Oktjabr′. 10 (1998): 202–204. Pratt, Sarah. “Angels in the Stalinist House: Nadezhda Mandel’shtam, Lidiia Chukovskaia, Lidiia Ginzburg, and Russia Women’s Autobiography.” In: Engendering Slavic Literatures. Ed. Pamela Chester and Sibelan Forrester. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1996. 158– 173. Sandler, Stephanie. “Reading Loyalty in Chukovskaia’s Zapiski ob Anne Akhmatovoi.” In: The Speech of Unknown Eyes: Akhmatova’s Readers on Her Poetry. 2 vols. Nottingham, England: Anstra, 1990. 267–282.

Cracks in the Wall of Testimony: Polemical Allusions in Russian Prison Literature David J. Galloway, Hobart and William Smith Colleges Most of the autobiographical texts which describe the Soviet GULAG incorporate allusions to other earlier works on prison. These allusions have a pragmatic role, particularly in the case of those which emerged early on and were revelatory either to the West or the Soviet Union. The linkage to other prison works through allusion strengthens both accounts, as authors compare their own experience with that of others in similar time periods and even identical camps. Thus, as a document which bears witness to the GULAG, these works support each other through allusions. They combine to form a “mega-text,” which consists of all testimony on the GULAG, and which exists primarily to confront any denial or assertion of falsehood from its intended readership. Just as some writers include explicit protestations of truthfulness before they describe the horrors of the camps, allusions indicate that the mega-text is the result of hundreds of witnesses, which increases its credibility. As a result of this primary role, the first texts to emerge detailing the GULAG tend not to criticize other authors and accounts in their allusions. These linkages between works are made in the spirit of solidarity, not dissent. A united front is presented, a united testimony which is made strong by its uniformity. However, starting in the late 1960s and into the 1990s, we begin to see writers who oppose the interpretation or depiction of the camps offered by their peers. Writers still make allusion to other prison works, but this allusion now may function as part of a polemic with the other author rather than a show of solidarity and common belief. There is still a respect for the shared experience, but a watershed has been reached, and it is now permissible to criticize one another. This new freedom for authors mirrored a freedom for critics. Tomas Venclova noted in 1979, “now we can make an attempt, which seemed blasphemous not so long ago: we can compare new prison texts with the traditional prison texts, finding the archetypes and patterns which either accompanied mankind from ancient times or were transfigured by new experience” (66). Venclova indicates that a minimum separation has been reached, and that now there are critical opportunities available which did not exist in the past, in a time closer to the emergence of these works. Earlier, Venclova implies, critical analysis of a prison memoir could be construed as callous and inappropriate. Now, however, literary analysis can proceed without immediately encountering resistance from those who find the venture incompatible with the socio-historical value of these accounts. In this paper I examine select instances of effect in several authors and memoirists of the GULAG, including Anna Larina, Varlam Šalamov, Sergej Dovlatov, and Lev Razgon. These men and women find themselves at times in opposition to ideas and beliefs long-espoused in GULAG literature. In each of their works, they seize these moments of contradiction and squarely lay their objections out for the reader. Thus, they reflect an important development of critical distance in the Russian prison memoir, as well as illustrating how Russian prison texts interrelate and continue to debate with each other long after the event which prompted their creation. This dynamic aspect of prison literature is enough to warrant further study of the dialog between writers, but is also intended as a reexamination of texts which have been largely neglected in literary studies, though their historical and testimonial value has never been in doubt.

Panel: 30C-4: Heritage Speakers in the Language Classroom Chair: Olga Kagan, University of California, Los Angeles Slot: December 30, 2000, 1:00–3:00 p.m.

Language Standards and the Written Russian of Heritage-Speaker Students Neil Bermel, University of Sheffield For some years now, the Russian teaching community has been grappling with the influx of students who emigrated from the former Soviet Union. This paper will examine the written language of such students, focusing on the extent to which they demonstrate an active, idiomatic control and understanding of written Contemporary Standard Russian. The study is based on a corpus of approximately one hundred written language-proficiency exams administered to students in area high schools in 1995–1996. The exam relied on a combination of techniques to assess proficiency in written Russian: declension and conjugation of set words in sentence-length contexts, cloze tests in longer passages, English-Russian translations, questions on a reading passage, and a short composition on a personal theme. Students provided basic biographical and linguistic information (date of emigration, amount of schooling in the FSU, native language of student and parents). Building on an earlier study (in press), which established “profiles” for degrees of literacy among heritage speakers, this paper will examine the data from a different angle, taking as its focus the frequency of certain error types, their co-occurrence, and their correlation with external factors indicated in the student questionnaire. Errors selected for examination represent a range of types: spelling in word stems and endings; deficiencies in grammatical paradigms; loss of entire grammatical categories (determinacy, aspect, case, etc.); non-Russian syntax and phraseology; and stylistic/cultural inappropriacies. The first study pointed to a sliding scale in what we could (following Polinsky) call the “reduction” of written fluency. At the apex were students who were linguistically competent, but possibly deficient in their knowledge of what we could call “language culture” (more specifically the “culture of written language”), while at the bottom were students who lacked a firm grasp of the relationship between written and spoken signs in Russian. However, this sliding scale was only partially reflected in the grading, a point which can be rectified by looking more closely at error type and co-occurrence. It is expected that “acrolectal” (high-end) errors will show up with much higher frequencies in all texts than other errors, while the variety of errors among “basilectal” (low-end) writers will be highly variable. I will focus especially at basilectal errors that are generalized across a large number of papers, as they could conceivably be the most reliable indicators of written language loss or failed acquisition. The study will also briefly touch on the specific differences between characteristics defining reduced written language and those characterizing reduced spoken language. Reference will be made to the few existing studies of written language loss, as well as to studies of spoken language loss, especially as concerns Russian and other Slavic languages. Selected Bibliography Dorian, Nancy. “Natural Second Language Acquisition from the Perspective of the Study of Language Death.” In Andersen, Roger, ed. Pidginization and Creolization as Language Acquisition. Rowley MA: Newbury House Publishers, 1983: 158–167. Gonzo, Susan and Mario Saltarelli. “Pidginization and Linguistic Change in Emigrant Languages.” In Andersen 1983: 181–197. Henzl, Vera M. “American Czech: A Comparative Study of Linguistic Modifications in Immigrant and Young Children Speech.” In Sussex 1982: 33–46. Kouzmin, Ludmila. “Grammatical Interference in Australian Russian.” In Sussex 1982: 73–87. —. “The Morphological Integration of English Lexical Items in the Russian Speech of Bilingual Migrants Living in Australia.” Melbourne Slavonic Studies 8 (1973): 10–19. Polinsky, Maria. “Structural Dimensions of First Language Loss.” In Parasession on Variation in Linguistic Theory, Chicago Linguistics Society 30 (1994): 257–276. —. “Russian in the US: An Endangered Language.” Manuscript, 1995. To appear in E. Golovko, ed. Russian in Contact with Other Languages. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. —. “Cross-linguistic Parallels in Language Loss.” Southwest Journal of Linguistics 14 (1997): 1–44. —. “American Russian: Language Loss Meets Language Acquisition.” In Wayles Browne and Natasha Kondrashova, eds. Formal Approaches to Slavic, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997 Stoffel, Hans-Peter. “Slav Migrant Languages in the ‘New World’: Cases of Migranto-Before- Death?” Australian Slavonic and East European Studies 7 (1993), no. 1: 75–89. Sussex, Roland, ed. The Slavic Languages in Emigre Communities. Edmonton: Linguistic Research Inc., 1982. Sussex, Roland. “The Phonetic Interference of Australian English in Australian Polish.‘ In Sussex 1982: 141–153.’” —. “The Slavonic Languages in Emigration.” In Bernard Comrie and Greville G. Corbett, eds., The Slavonic Languages, pp. 999–1036. London and New York: Routledge, 1993.

The Heritage Speaker: Developing Writing Skills Joan Chevalier, Brandeis University Several American universities have experienced a marked increase in the number of heritage speakers enrolling in Russian language courses. This new generation of Russian language learners have specific needs that are entirely different from those of L2 learners. Recent studies by Kagan and Bermel (MS) and by Polonsky (MS) have identified the linguistic features characterizing the progressive stages of language attrition in heritage speakers. Features of heritage speakers’ written language vary according to the level of L1 attrition, from confusion of stylistic norms and inadequate knowledge of orthographic rules, to lack of familiarity with the grammar system, regular interference of English, and a limited lexicon. This paper presents an overview of materials and methods used successfully in Russian language courses at Brandeis University designed specifically for heritage speakers with a minimal level of formal education in Russian. The courses focused primarily on the development of reading and writing skills. The course material was selected to address specific problems with orthography, punctuation, stylistics, and grammar that have been documented by my own analyses of heritage speakers’ writing and by Kagan and Bermel (MS). The paper describes a systematic approach integrating material used to develop writing skills in L1 students with reading and writing assignments designed to develop proficiency with a wide array of stylistic genres. Cited Literature Kagan, Olga and Neil Bermel. “The Maintenance of Written Russian in Heritage Speakers.” Forthcoming in The Learning and Teaching of Slavic Languages and Cultures: Toward the 21st Century. Ed. Olga Kagan and Benjamin Rifkin. Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2000. Polonsky, Maria. “Russian in the US: An Endangered Language.” Forthcoming in Russian in Contact with Other Languages. Ed. E. Golovko. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Accommodating Native Speakers in the Intermediate Russian Class Nellie Belin, University of Akron In my presentation I am going to share some experience of using poetry in intermediate Russian class as well as present some ideas for curriculum development based upon using poetry. Everybody teaching a foreign language needs to figure out how to deal with “special needs” of native speakers joining the class. Last year there were five native Russian speakers in my 201 and 202 classes. Two of this students graduated from school in CIS and were credited by examination and a special assignment in individual reading (in both cases a biography) and writing a paper in Russian based upon the book they have read. Another three students came to the United States after completing three to six years of school back in Russia and Ukraine. Their spoken language was fluent, so they got easily bored while their American peers struggled with making simple dialogs. But their ability to write was rather poor. From the first week in addition to usual classwork the native speakers started to get additional assignments. At first, exercises from an original Russian school textbook (seventh– eighth grade) were used. They basically correlated with a grammar topic being studied in class. They were also asked to go through rules as those were put in the book. All the students wrote essays, and the native speakers were always asked to present their essays before the class, so the non-native speakers could benefit from listening and asking questions. In about two months writing skills of these three students significantly improved. They started to make translations first from Russian into English, which was easier for them, and eventually from English into Russian, as well as to write summaries on information in Russian (newspapers, magazines, Internet). To increase difficulty of texts I came upon the idea of doing poetry translation. I recited some poems by Puškin in class, and it turned out, that the native speakers were not familiar with his poetry except the fairy tales. Next time I brought them a selection and suggested that they make a translation into English of poems they liked most. This task was a definite success. American part of the class also showed a significant interest for poetry, so we analyzed some poems by Puškin and Axmatova. In my paper I will give a more detailed description of this activity. The next set of additional tasks for the native speakers was based on American poetry. They got selections of R. Frost, O. Nash, W. H. Auden and were asked to pick two poems and make a translation into Russian. It was a challenging and very popular assignment. By the end of the semester one of the last poetry readings was from Iosif Brodskij’s Čast′ reči. Translations the students made this time into English and their comments made both them and me proud, and the rest of the class enjoyed a poetry reading session. Next semester I will be teaching Russian 101. I do not know whether there will be native speakers in my class, but I sure will use poetry even at the beginning stage. I plan to use D. Xarms, N. Olejnikov, K. Čukovskij (with my own translations). In my paper I will show how I am going to use this material in class.

Panel: 30C-5: Slavic Contact Linguistics Chair: Keith Goeringer, Raytheon, RTSC Equipment: Overhead projector Slot: December 30, 2000, 1:00–3:00 p.m.

Turkisms in Bosnian Literature after 1992 Masha Belyavski-Frank, DePauw University While Turkisms (also known as “Orientalism” or words borrowed from Turkish, Arabic, and other languages through the medium of Turkish) have been an important part of both the standard and colloquial language in the literature of Bosnia-Hercegovina since the beginning of the Ottoman occupation, it is since the early nineties, in particular since the beginning of the war in 1992 that their already strong role has become even stronger in the nascent Bosnian language. This paper examines the function of Turkisms in a range of Bosnian literature published since 1992. Using mainly colloquial contexts in short stories, novels, and drama written by the various nationalities in Bosnia, I discuss the role of Turkisms in both stylistically marked and relatively unmarked contexts, in particular where a choice exists between a Slavic word and its Turkish counterpart. It is my contention that for a number of words a shift has occurred or is in the process of transition in the relative markedness of many Turkisms vs. the Slavic synonyms. For instancehefta (‘week’) is becoming much more frequent, and in colloquial speech reflected in literature is now almost as frequent as its Slavic synonym sedmica, which earlier was the norm. Likewise, jaran (‘friend’) is increasingly being used in preference to prijatelj or drug, the latter word now avoided because of its connotations with the era of socialist Yugoslavia and its politics. Methodology will include analysis of the relative frequency of Turkisms and their Slavic synonyms, as well as semantic and stylistic analysis of Turkisms in context. A list of “core” words, which occur frequently in Bosnian, including Turkisms and Slavic words for ‘friend,’ ‘people,’ ‘week,’ ‘news,’ ‘morning,’ etc., will also be compared for frequency and usage in various contexts. The same words in a control group of texts from the 1970’s and early 1980’s will be be discussed. For example, here is the ending of Midhat Ajanović’s science-fiction novella Gadjan (1999): Prvo su bile dvije atomske pečurke, a nakon njih bukadar kamenica pade na to mjesto u okeanu tako da tu nastade jedno pusto ostrvo. Ribe niti ikakve durge hrane nije više bilo nigdje na svijetu pa ona raja na Novom Zelandu i Islandu pokrepa od gladi. Tako nestade dunjaluka. Vala kakav je bio i nije neki jazuk. (Ajanović: 1999:93–94) [correction: durge hrane should be druge hrane] First there were two atomic mushroom clouds, and after them a lot of little rocks fell on that place in the ocean so that an empty island appeared there. There weren’t any fish or any other food anywhere in the world anymore, so those people in New Zealand and Iceland died from hunger. That’s how the world’s people disappeared. That’s really how it was and it isn’t a shame/it’s no great loss. The use of Turkisms contributes to the highly colloquial style. Ajanović’s choice of both raja and dunjaluk (‘people’ and ‘the world’s people’, respectively) instead of the more neutral ljudi) or narod, and especially vala (‘really’) and jazuk) (‘shame,’ ‘loss,’ ‘damage’) as the final summation of the events of the novella instead of the unmarked zaista (‘really’) and šteta (‘shame,’ ‘damage,’ ‘harm’) are highly ironic and contribute to the black humor which pervades the novella. Furthermore, they contribute an unmistakable Bosnian flavor to the narration, even, as is the case in this excerpt, when the destruction of the people in New Zealand and Iceland, and ultimately, the world, is the subject.

Speculations on the Identity of the South Slavic ā-stem gen. sg. Desinence -ę Marc L. Greenberg, University of Kansas In his recent overview of Slavic in the context of Indo-European, Andersen writes: “The identity of the ā-stem genitive singular and nominative-accusative plural -y is difficult to understand; the umlauted counterpart, ESlav. and WSlav. -ě ‘gen. sg., nom.-acc. pl.’ but SSlav . -ę ‘gen. sg., nom.-acc. pl.’, likewise” (Andersen 1998: 437), echoing Toporov’s assertion that the “… origin of the genitive case marker … remains one of the darkest spots in the history of Slavic declension” (1975: 288). For example, OCS ženę ‘woman, wife’ gen. sg., nom.-acc. pl., Russ. ženy ‘idem’; OCS dušę ‘soul’ gen. sg., nom.-acc. pl., ORuss. dušě ‘idem’ (note also the conflation of the gen., dat. and loc. sg. in *-ě in Novgorod Birchbark documents, eleventh– thirteenth centuries [Ivanov et al. 1995: 212]). Tracing back through the putative Balto-Slavic merger of the genitive and ablative cases, we would expect Slavic **-ā (< I.E. *-eh2e/os or *- eh2e/ot; cf. Gr. -as gen. sg., Att.-Ion. -ēs; Lat. -ād [Sihler 1995: 269]), resulting in homophony with the nom. sg. (Erhart 1982: 117; Watkins 1998: 65–67); similarly also nom. pl. *-eh2es and *-eh2ms would have yielded Slavic **-ā and possibly -y or **-oþ, respectively. Though Meillet (1934: 398) believed in a phonetic development *-ās > -y, most scholars ascribe the appearance of *-ę to analogy, e.g., Mikkola 1950: 33; Vaillant 1958: 48–49; Vondrák 1928: 31; see also Toporov’s detailed rejection of the earlier views (1975: 288–289). It is clear that there can be no direct phonetic connection between the traditionally-reconstructed I.E. desinences and their Slavic reflexes; and the motivation for the analogical developments remain to be explained. As has long been known, the Slavic adnominal genitive is innovative, where it partially replaces older relations such as adjectival constructions and datives of possession (see Schelesniker 1976 and literature cited there). As to morphology, Toporov 1975 has indicated the unique parallelism that obtains between the singular and plural genitive forms once it is realized that the forms all derive from a formant with a nasal element, e.g. *gwen-om-s: *gwen-ōm (sg.:pl.). This parallelism is strikingly similar both in type and identity to the Uralic genitive (*-n-, cf. Mordva moda, modan′ ‘earth’ nom., gen./acc. sg.; modat′n′e, modat′nen′ nom., gen./acc. pl.). A Uralic connection has not yet been entertained in the literature (to my knowledge) for the explanation of the Slavic desinences. It seems there are two logical possibilities. One approach treats the Slavic desinences as relics of a common Uralic-Indo-European declensions system (in accord with Kim and Osipova 1995); the other as a result of convergence with the Uralic languages in the general sense of Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 238–251). As to the Northern Slavic *ě3, it may be seen as a regional development of a long nasal vowel, which means that the development discussed here may be viewed as applying to all of Slavic (Newman 1971). Selected References Andersen, Henning. 1998. “Slavic.” The Indo-European Languages (ed. by Anna Giacalone Ramat and Paolo Ramat): 415–453. London and New York: Routledge. Bednarčuk, L. 1997. “Konvergencii balto-slavjanskix i finno-ugorskix jazykov v strukturnom i areal′nom aspekte.” Balto-slavjanskie issledovanija 1988–1996: 91–108. Moscow: Indrik. Erhart, Adolf. 1982. Indoevropské jazyky. Srovnávací fonologie a morfologie. Prague: Academia. Ivanov, V. V. et al. 1995. Drevnerusskaja grammatika XII–XIII vv. Moscow: Nauka. Kim, A. A. and O. A. Osipova. 1990. “Problema obščnosti indoevropejskix i ural′skix jazykov v oblasti sklonenija.” Uralo-Indogermanica II (Balto-slavjanskie jazyki i problema uralo- indoevropejskix svjazej. Materialy 3-ej balto-slavjanskoj konferencii, 18–22 ijunija 1990 g.): 101–109. Moscow: Institut slavjanovedenija i balkanistiki. Hakulinen, Lauri. 1961. The Structure and Development of the Finnish Language (= Indiana University Publications Uralic and Altaic Series, vol. 3) (trans. by John Atkinson). Bloomington: Indiana University/The Hague: Mouton. Kortlandt, Frederik. “On Final Syllables in Slavic.” The Journal of Indo-European Studies 14/1– 2: 153–185. Meillet, Antoine. 1934. Le Slave Commun. Paris: H. Champion. Mikkola, J. J. 1950. Urslavische Grammatik III. Formenlehre. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag. Newman, Lawrence. 1971. “On Reconstructing a Third Jat′ in the Northern Dialects of Common Slavic.” Slavia 40/3: 325–341. Schelesniker, Herbert. 1976. “Der slavische Genitiv auf -y/-ę und der awestische Lokativ auf - ąm.” Opuscula Slavica et Linguistica. Festschrift für Alexander Issatschenko (= Schriftenreihe Sprachwissenschaft, Universität für Bildungswissenschaften, Klagenfurt, Band 1): 383–400. Klagenfurt: Verlag Johannes Heyn. Schmalstieg, William R. 1971. “Die Entwicklung der ā-Deklination im Slavischen.” Zeitschrift für slavischen Philologie 36/1: 130–146. Sihler, Andrew L. 1995. New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thomason, Sarah Grey and Terrence Kaufman. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: U. of California Press. Toporov, V. N. 1975. “Neskol′ko soobraženij o proisxoždenii fleksii slavjanskogo genitiva.” Bereiche der Slavistik. Festschrift zu Ehren von Josip Hamm: 287–296. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Vaillant, André. 1958. Grammaire Comparée des Langues Slaves, Tome II. Morphologie. Première Partie: Flexion Nominale. Lyon: IAC. Veenker, Wolfgang. 1967. Die Frage des finnougrischen Substrats in der russischen Sprache (= Indiana University Publications: Ural and Altaic Series, vol. 82). Bloomington: Indiana University; The Hague: Mouton. Vondrák, Wenzel. 1928. Vergleichende slavische Grammatik, II. Band. Formenlehre und Syntax (2. Auflage). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. Watkins, Calvert. 1998. “Proto-Indo-European: Comparison and Reconstruction.” The Indo- European Languages (ed. by Anna Giacalone Ramat and Paolo Ramat): 25–73. London and New York: Routledge. Zaliznjak, A. A. 1988. “Drevnenovgorodskij dialekt i problemy dialektnogo členenija pozdnego praslavjanskogo jazyka.” X Meždunarodnyj s″ezd slavistov. Slavjanskoe jazykoznanie (ed. by N. I. Tolstoj): 164–190. Moscow: Nauka. Aspects of a Typology of Contact-Induced Change in Sorbian and German Dialects Gunter Schaarschmidt, University of Victoria That language contact, especially of a long-standing variety, can influence the historical development of the contacting languages, has been established in the literature on the subject (for a recent, comprehensive summary, see Hock 1986:380–531). In fact, it has been said that such contact can lead to a tendency for the involved languages “to streamline … and thus render uniform to a considerable degree their overall shared typological profile” (Birnbaum 1985:2). Linguists have also theorized about the question what might constitute a possible contact- induced change, based no doubt upon the observation that certain rules, constructions, or parts of the vocabulary lend themselves more easily to borrowing than others. Thus, Jakobson ([1938] 1949:359) maintained that “la langue n’accepte des éléments de structure étrangers que quand ils correspondent à ses tendences de développement.” And, similarly, Weinreich (1964:25) attributed any foreign influence to a “trigger effect, releasing or accelerating developments which mature independently.” This idea of a language being internally prepared for contact- induced change does not exclude the possibility that items or rules can be borrowed without such a motivation, a phenomenon that seems to be more common than allowed in previous theoretical, especially functional frameworks (Weinreich, Labov and Herzog 1968:155–165). Sorbian, a Slavic-language enclave in Germany, with few direct contacts with other Slavic languages since the sixteenth century, would seem to be a prime candidate for streamlining parts of its grammar with that of the adjacent and co-territorial dialects of German. Conversely, the lengthy contact between Sorbian and German cannot have left the German dialects, dominant as they seem to be today, completely untouched. Obviously, we must examine those changes in Sorbian that either did not occur at all in any of the other Slavic languages, or that have been reported to be due to German influence in these other Slavic languages as well. And, for possible Sorbian influences in German, the linguist must determine whether such changes occurred in other German dialects far removed from the Sorbian language area. In the first category, i.e., suspected German-induced change in Sorbian, there is (1) the phenomenon of umlaut (also assumed for Czech); and (2) the development of a definite article (also reported in Czech but developed systematically in Bulgarian and Macedonian as well). In the second category, i.e., suspected Sorbian-induced change in German, there is (3) the neutralization of vowel length in New Lusatian, a dialect of East Central German in the Sorbian language area (also reported in western dialects of German bordering on Romance, but also in less peripheral dialect areas; see Wiesinger 1983:1088–1101); and (4) the rise of voice assimilation across the morpheme boundary in New Lusatian (not reported elsewhere in the core area). Of these contact phenomena, only (2) and (4) seem to merit the status of contact-induced changes (see also Schaarschmidt 1983 and 1997:156, respectively). For (1), the chronology and conditions of umlaut in Sorbian differ substantially from those in German, while (3) appears to be an instance of a universal tendency to eliminate binary quantity distinctions. Getting to the Heart of Anger Among The Slavs and The Baltic Finns: A Case for a Contact-Induced Innovation James Weller, Ohio State University Nearly every Slavic language has morphologically identical ‘heart-anger’ lexemes. The most telling feature of these words is the uniformity of root and affixes. The root used in these words derives from *sĭrd–, the old primary noun for ‘heart’, not the originally diminutive form *sĭrdĭko. The rare and unproductive adjectival suffix –it is used in the adjective ‘angry’—OCS srŭditŭ, Polish sierdzity—and most of the verbs expressing anger use the i-theme—Bulgarian sărdia se, Russian serdit′sja, et al. In addition, two factors assist in determining an approximate date for this phenomenon: the primary denominal adjective for ‘heart’ and the Russian verb serčat′. The former bears the direct reflex of the fifth–sixth centuries CE first palatalization of velars (e.g., R serdéčnyj), indicating that *sĭrdĭko must have replaced *sĭrdĭ as the primary noun for ‘heart’ prior to this sound change. Any ‘heart-anger’ lexemes derived from the younger stem also bear the direct reflex of velar palatalization, e.g., R serčat′ ‘to be angry’ and possibly the SCr srčiti (se) ‘ibid.’ This early date accounts for the morphological uniformity found in the Slavic languages. Slavic-Finnic linguistic contacts are believed to have begun in the late eighth century CE. By the twelfth century, western Baltic Finns were part of the Swedish realm, the eastern were subjects of Novgorod. Speakers of Baltic Finnic (BF) languages also view the heart as the seat of anger, but the data present variation. First of all, the data are found only along the periphery of Slavic- Finnic contacts: Southeastern Estonian, Northern and Southern Karelian, Eastern Finnish, and two dialects of Central Vepsian. They are not found in Livonian, Central and Western Estonian, Western and Southwestern Finnish, the Central Karelian dialects of Olonetsian and Ludic, and most of Vepsian. I have approached the BF data from three perspectives: 1) Derivational morphology; 2) historical migrations; and 3) comparison with other Finno-Ugric (FU) languages. From BF derivational morphology three developments are detectable. In Eastern Estonian, speakers derived a denominal transitive verb sũdandada ‘to anger’ (< *sydän ‘heart’) from which they derived a reflexive verb, sũdanduda ‘to be angry’. In contrast, Karelian speakers first produced the reflexive verb sydäntyä ‘to be angry’, from which they derived the causative verb sydännyttää ‘to anger.’ Two questions immediately arise: Why do the data appear only in the border of Slavic-Finnic contacts, and why do they lack morphological uniformity? Historical information sheds some light on this matter as it pertains to the Karelian data, particularly the verbal derivatives. The Ladoga Karelians underwent three relevant migrations. The westernmost Karelians migrated westwards into what is now eastern Finland giving rise to the Savo dialects of Finnish. These Karelians completed their linguistic separation from the main body of Karelians by the eleventh century CE. Ladoga Karelians also settled the southern regions of the Ladoga Isthmus giving rise to the ethnicity known as the Ingrians, by the thirteenth century. In the seventeenth century Sweden wrested the province of Korela from Russia, after which many Karelians left to settle in northern Russian Karelia and Tver, near Moscow. These last migrations gave rise to the Northern and Southern Karelian dialects. Several linguistic developments coincide with these dates. The Savo Finns (orig. Karelians) who separated by the eleventh century have only the reflexive verb sydäntyä ‘to be angry’, and apart from other secondary intransitive derivatives, no transitive verb. The Ingrians have both the reflexive verb and its derived causative, *sydännyttää ‘to anger’. Likewise, the Korela Karelians who departed for Northern Karelia and Tver in the seventeenth century have both the reflexive and derived causative verbs. From these data it is clear that the Karelians had derived a reflexive verb by the eleventh century, but the causative came later, perhaps as early as the thirteenth century, but certainly no later than the seventeenth. In order to determine whether there existed an ancient FU ‘heart-anger’ concept, I decided to compare the BF data with those of other FU languages. What I found was that only Mansi (M) has relevant data, a fact which has led some Finno-Ugrists to claim that an ancient FU ‘heart- anger’ concept was preserved peripherally (in the Baltic area and east of the Urals). This claim does not withstand morphological and historical scrutiny. First of all, M and Khanty (Kh) separated during the early first millennium CE. While it is true that the Mansi view the heart as the seat of anger, they also secondarily view the heart as the seat of courage. The Khanty, however, view the heart exclusively as the seat of courage. Historical migrations and events make it possible to place a rough date on the M ‘heart-anger’ concept—it could have arisen in M no later than the sixteenth century CE when the southern dialects were permanently severed from the northern dialects. Thus, in southern M, šømėnj means first ‘anger’ then ‘brave’ (<šøm ‘heart’), as it does elsewhere in M. In every Kh dialect, including the southern dialects, səmənj means ‘brave, courageous’ (< səm ‘heart’). Another expression for anger, M nar/nur ‘anger’ ~ Kh ńer ‘ibid.’, dates to the Ob-Ugrian (OU) period and is reflected in both languages. Given the concurrence in one meaning (‘courage’) and the preservation of other OU expressions for anger, it seems that the Mansi innovated after the dissolution of OU, but no later than the sixteenth century. Based on the evidence, I conclude that contact with the Slavs was responsible for the adoption of the ‘heart-anger’ concept in three different places along the border of Slavic-Finnic contacts. This innovation probably began in the tenth century when the cultures of the Baltic Finns and the Russians were clearly merging. It then continued to follow Russian models in Korela Karelian and its offshoots, Northern and Southern Karelian. The ‘heart-anger’ concept was probably once more widespread in Eastern Estonian, but it diminished leaving traces in various dialects. It was weakest in Vepsian where it is unknown save in two central dialects. However, the case of the ‘heart-anger’ innovation demonstrates that Slavic-Finnic linguistic contacts had indeed become quite intense as early as the dawn of the second millennium CE.